At midnight on January 28, when referee Teixeira blew the final whistle, Messi stood on the penalty spot at Villarreal's El Madrigal, raised his head, and gazed at the pitch-black sky. His eyes were filled with confusion.
What was wrong with Barcelona?
Why had this happened?
The enormous red scoreboard in the stands at El Madrigal displayed the final result: 0–0. Neither side had managed to score. No matter how frantically Barcelona organized and launched attacks, they had never been able to create any real threat.
Messi had borne the brunt of it. He had missed at least three one-on-one opportunities.
The first had come in the seventeenth minute of the first half. Alves sent a through ball, and Messi successfully beat the offside trap before charging into the box. He went one-on-one with the goalkeeper and chipped a shot over him, but the ball brushed past the outside of the right post and failed to find the net.
After that, Messi had played several brilliant passes and taken free kicks, making Villarreal suffer terribly. Their defenders had paid the painful price of three yellow cards to stop him, yet Barcelona had always remained just a tiny step away from scoring.
In the final ten minutes, almost the entire Barcelona team had surged forward, with everyone joining the attack. Messi had received two more one-on-one chances, in the eighty-seventh and eighty-ninth minutes, but both were bravely thwarted by Villarreal goalkeeper Diego López.
Three glorious one-on-one chances, and not a single one had gone in. Messi was extremely dissatisfied with his performance that night.
The match had kicked off at exactly 10:00 p.m., and by the time it ended, it was nearly midnight. But for Messi, who was already accustomed to Spain's schedule, that posed no problem at all. For Spaniards,