Barcelona 3-1 Juventus: Luis Suarez and Neymar find ultimate redemption in Berlin passion play
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Updated 07/06/2015 at 20:38 GMT+1
It was fitting that Luis Suarez and Neymar used the Champions League final to help ease the anguish of some agonising experiences at last summer's World Cup finals, writes Desmond Kane.
Barcelona: Luis Suarez and Neymar find their ultimate redemption in Berlin glory
Image credit: Eurosport
From the ridiculous to the sublime in less than a year. Time can indeed be a great and glorious healer. Hallelujah, and praise the Lord in his blue and red scarf.
The lofty path to the Champions League final in Berlin was also the road to redemption for Luis Suarez and Neymar of FC Barcelona, and one paved with considerable gold for those intrepid football explorers and their exalted treble-winning companions.
Here are two men who discovered that it's not about where you're from, it's where you're at. It's where you are going to. Like Ali in the Jungle, like Simpson on the mountain, as The Hours fabled ditty plays out.
It was just after the hour of their side's joust with Juventus and the scoreline tied tantalisingly at 1-1 in the German capital when both of these breathtaking South American snipers discovered fresh meaning regarding their already burgeoning stations in the world game.
While Lionel Messi had lost a World Cup final to Germany after extra-time last July, he at least sloped out of the finals with the consolation of being named player of the tournament. In contrast, Suarez and Neymar had started their seasons still harbouring the feeling of severe regret and disorder following their expedition to - and ultimately joyless expulsion from - Brazil's grand bash.
Yet they ended a tumultuous year rejoicing in moments of sultry magnificence in the heat of Berlin that not even they could have predicted when they were slung out of South America in various degrees of shame last summer.
Suarez, then of Liverpool, was a figure banned by the football authorities for the first two months of the season for plunging his teeth into the Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini during a group game against Italy in Brazil.
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Uruguay's Luis Suarez (R) reacts after clashing with Italy's Giorgio Chiellini during their 2014 World Cup Group D match at the Dunas arena in Natal, June 24, 2014.
Image credit: Eurosport
He was even branded a £75m stooge by some when his debut last October saw him substituted in a 3-1 loss at Real Madrid. The hardened Juventus defender Chiellini was injured for his rematch with Suarez on Saturday, but it is doubtful if he could have halted the Uruguayan forward's peerless predatory instincts in helping Barca deliver their winning line.
Then there was the devout Neymar, better known as Junior to his friends, who finalised his night out declaring his commitment to Jesus on a headband having contributed to a Catalan party that almost felt like a gift from God amid Barca adding Big Ears to their Liga and Copa del Rey riches.
Neymar was the poster boy for a nation in Brazil, but injury, a broken bone in his back of all things, forced him to sit and endure Brazil's infamous 7-1 humping by Germany in the World Cup semi-finals.
There is no point crying over spilt Brahma. Not when celebratory fresh German steins await.
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Brazil's Neymar is carried off the pitch after an injury during the team's 2014 World Cup quarter-finals against Colombia at the Castelao arena in Fortaleza July 4, 2014.
Image credit: Eurosport
While football has the ability to take away, it also doles out plenty in return. Even to multi-millionaire football sorts. It could probably be argued that only this grand sport can provide worthy enough gifts for monied men like Barcelona. Moments like this remain priceless as the tournament's title sponsors suggest.
Suarez restored Barca's lead on the 68th minute after the Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon had failed to claps a Messi shot that was hardly scorching.
But it would be churlish to hold Buffon as a hostage to his side's demise. Barcelona were better and more clinical despite the undoubted spirit of the Italian champions in restoring parity courtesy of Alvaro Morata after Ivan Rakitic's early goal.
Neymar added the third in the death throes of the match when he finished off a Barcelona break to score with virtually the final move of the contest.
It handed him solace when a headed goal was justifiably disallowed for handball that would have taken Luis Enrique's side 3-1 clear and out of sight before the final 15 minutes.
The image of Berlin's Olympiastadion is steeped in history, some adverse, like much of a ravaged Europe after two world wars.
Some locals wanted it to crumble like the Colosseum in Rome back in the 1990s such was the feeling of indifference towards it due to the historical connotations with the Nazis who erected the original stadium for the 1936 Olympics.
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Barcelona celebrate victory.
Image credit: AFP
Yet out of the ashes rose a majestic sporting arena that has hosted a World Cup final in 2006 and now a Champions League final in 2015.
In welcoming Barcelona's finest, it has again become representative of true gladiators. Messi, Suarez, Neymar and the rest can stand proudly alongside Jesse Owens and Andrea Pirlo, who sobbed deeply and may well depart Juventus having failed to realise his career ambition of European Cup sparkle with the Old Lady who breathed fresh life into his career after Milan.
He can console himself knowing he went down against the best.
Much has been made of Messi as the leading component of MSN, but Barca required the final two parts of the equation to nudge them over the line to a second treble inside the past six years. The Blaugrana become the first club to manage such a feat twice.
Of the 122 astonishing goals recorded by the trio over the season laced with copious assists (for the record books, 55), Messi has scored 58, Neymar 39 while Suarez has wallowed in 25 after his two-month enforced absence.
Like the curious escalator that carried players to and from the dressing rooms in the enormous Berlin ground, Juventus discovered that what goes up tends to come down in football. Suarez and Neymar passed them on the way up. Somebody up there likes them.
Wherever those two go from here, they will always have Berlin.
Desmond Kane
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