Barcelona’s players woke up to a downpour on Thursday, proving that the rain in Spain does not fall only on the plain. The night before, the European champions sent out a message that, despite taking qualification for the next phase to the wire, they are alive and well in the Champions League.
Barcelona, moreover, may be about to prosper. Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi are yet to return from injury, while Ronaldinho is in such form that Eidur Gudjohnsen left the Nou Camp saying: ”One of these days he will make the ball talk.”
Even by Ronaldinho’s standards, his was an exceptional performance, capped by a goal that had his colleagues talking animatedly about an hour after the final whistle. Seeing that Werder Bremen’s players were going to jump in the wall at a free-kick, Ronaldinho struck the ball under them and Barcelona had their breakthrough in the 13th minute.
”It is fantastic how clever the guy is,” Gudjohnsen said of Ronaldinho. ”He seems ready for every situation and the bigger the game, the more he can handle it. He saw that they were going to jump. What he said in the dressing room afterwards was the two really big guys in the wall wouldn’t jump so he put it under the smaller ones.
”He’s a great player and I guess that makes him psychic. When you play with him and see what he does with a ball, nothing surprises me any more. One of these days, he will make the ball talk.”
Giovanni van Bronckhorst was equally enthusiastic about the Brazilian: ”He knew exactly what he was doing. It was all premeditated, although I have never seen him try it before, in training or matches. He thought what the wall would do and he pulled it off. It’s amazing, but that’s what you get from the best player in the world.” — Â