Messi took the ball from Busquets about 45 yards from the goal. Four Madrid players surrounded Messi, but he deftly escaped. First, midfielder Lass Diarra was screened by Busquets. He caught up to Messi’s right shoulder and reached for the ball, but Messi sensed Diarra’s presence and touched it left. To keep from fouling, Diarra retreated with a dainty hop. Alonso quit after a few strides, also hopping in surrender.
Messi gathered speed and intent. Sergio Ramos charged at him, but Messi shielded the ball with the inside of his left foot, pushing it safely to the right. Taking the ball from him had become a blundering game, reaching for a dollar bill attached to a string.
Raul Albiol now had his chance in the Madrid defense, but he is 6-2 with a high center of gravity. He backpedaled and crouched, but his balance was all wrong and Messi was coming too fast. Futilely, Albiol thrust out a leg. Messi blew past and Albiol spun around and bent over, all his weight on his right leg. For a moment he seemed to be playing the wrong sport, appearing less a soccer player than a man who had just hurled a javelin.
With another touch, Messi pushed the ball five yards ahead into a vacant spot and sprinted into the penalty area. Marcelo, a defender, desperately rushed from behind, but a foul would have given Messi a penalty kick, so Marcelo pulled back, hands thrown up and knees bent as if parachuting from a plane.
Messi touched the ball with the outside of his left foot, once, twice, and Ramos made one last hustling charge, but he was too late. Sliding to the turf, Messi cuffed the ball with the inside of his right foot. A final drip of the honey, as Hudson sometimes says in his excitable commentary.
The ball seemed to roll under Ramos’s foot, or between his legs. Beaten again, Ramos became tangled with Messi and tumbled in exasperation. Casillas moved to his left in goal, but the shot went to his right, squirting inside the far post. Real Madrid was all but finished in the Champions League. Casillas went to the ground on his backside and rose with his gloved hands upturned in a way that signaled disbelief and anger and resignation. And maybe awe.
On television and radio, Spanish-language broadcasters began their prolonged, ecstatic screams, “Gooooooooooooool!” extending the sound for an entire breath, but this was more than a goal, it was a supergoal, and so the shrieks became “Gooooooooooooooolazo!” as Messi again jumped into his teammates’ arms.
“It was all instinct,” Messi said. “Only when I watched it later on television did I know what happened.”
