Jesus Gil he threatened not to show up at the Camp Nou, angry with the Competition Committee. “If they don’t come, thank you very much,” he said. bobby robson on the eve of the second leg of the quarterfinals of the 96-97 Cup, after 2-2 in the first leg. “One thousand peel, A million of peel, But no, I don’t have much: I bet a million that they come”said Jose MourinhoRobson’s assistant. And on March 12, 1997, the team of Radomir Anticeffectively, jumped to the green of the Camp Nou. And in the 31st minute he was already winning by 0-3, with a hat trick by Milinko Pantic. “Everything went perfectly in the first half. I played some spectacular games against Barça, the best,” acknowledges Pantic. A course before, the one with the double athletic, had decided the Cup final against Barça with a header in extra time. In 93-94 he watched the final in Athens live: “I really liked the philosophy and idea of Barça, especially because of Johan Cruyff, a teacher. I still have the entry. Milan gave us an important shake, a beating.”
When Pantic made it 0-3, Robson sent to warm up Juan Antonio Pizzi and Hristo Stoichkov. “We said to each other ‘what are we going to do?’ ‘I don’t know if we’re going to have the time and the ability to turn this around,’ I thought,” admits the Argentine, author of a brace in the first leg and top scorer in the 95-96 league. two jumped onto the pitch in the 40th minute, replacing ‘Gica’ Popescu and Laurent Blanc. The Camp Nou fired their team with shouts of Nunez, resignation. She also chanted the name of Carlos Busquets, as punishment for Vítor Baía.
the conjuring
At halftime, Pizzi remembers that “We looked at each other and said ‘here we are all saved or no one is saved. Whatever happens we will be together, united'”. Robson told his pupils, as he said later, “That we had 45 minutes, that they had to think about the shirt and win 4-0 in the second half”. The team returned to green with Baía; Couto, Abelardo, Sergi; Guardiola; Figo, Of the Rock, Luis Enrique; Ronaldo, Pizzi and Stoitchkov. At the break Stoichkov told Ronaldo “If you are the best in the world now you have to prove it”, and the number ‘9’ closed the gap with two goals, at 47′ and 50′. “Ronaldo was a beast. The best player I’ve seen live. It was impossible to stop him, outrageous, a technically gifted Ben Johnson,” agrees Pantic. “Fear entered us, we did not know how to protect the result,” laments the Serbian.
In minute 51, he rounded off his performance and froze Barcelona with his fourth goal, but destiny was written. Pizzi recalls: “We noticed a euphoria in people, maddened, that pushed us. We looked at each other surprised by the atmosphere, wonderful, out of the ordinary. The atmosphere, the shouting and the noise of the people empowered us and encouraged us and gave us confidence. And he made Atlético see that what finally happened could happen. It was the beginning of the comeback”. Figo scored 3-4 in 67′ and Ronaldo 4-4 in 72′. “‘The fifth is going to fall by inertia,’ we said. And so it was,” adds Pizzi. louis van gaalAjax coach, Atlético’s rival in that Champions, watched the game from the fifth row, taking notes in a small notebook. He got up several times. Like Joan Gaspart, Barça vice-president: consumed by nerves, he left his seat in the box at 4-4.
Gaspart missed it
“I didn’t see the last goal”, it says. “It was normal for me. I sat in a seat facing the aisle to be able to leave the box quickly. When Barça has candy in its mouth, and I know that it only takes a little while for the joy to be complete, the tachycardia. And I’d rather not see it,” he adds. “In the box I already had my room, but since it was wall to wall with the field, the screams were heard. The bathroom is the only place in which nothing is heard: it is a matter of flushing the chain every time the tank has just been filled. When Pizzi scored, I don’t know if he was in the room or in the bathroom, “reveals Gaspart. The press of the time assures that he was in the bathroom.
Pizza He gets emotional when he relives his goal, at 83′. “It was a move down the right wing. The ball ends up in Pep. At first he throws a cross to the penalty spot and abelard hit a great header. The goalkeeper takes the ball out and the rebound comes to me. Without time to stop it, I kick and the ball enters, very close to the post”. “I hit it with my soul, with my heart. The celebration was unforgettable. I looked at the stands and it was terrible: the people overwhelmed. Looked like drugged“, he recounts.
Joaquim Maria Puyal shouted “Pizzi, you are macanudo”. “I don’t remember anything from then on, no play, nothing: the fervor that was in the crowd deprived us of enjoying the rest of the game,” he continues. He doesn’t even remember if his wife and children were his. He still keeps the shirt at his house. “25 years have passed and the memory is still very present in the fans and in those of us who were lucky enough to be there. That night remained in the retina. In the history of the club. I remember it with great emotion and joy, like a privileged”, he concludes, protagonist of a magical night.
Gil’s disbelief
Gaspart didn’t come out of the bathroom until the game was over. “They could have tied,” he says, always pessimistic. “When they told me that we were classified, I ran back to the box. Jesús Gil, a good friend, at the break told me ‘don’t get angry, Juan’, and in the end he repeated ‘I can’t believe it’. The same partners as in the rest they insulted me they came up telling me that we were the best, a unique club. They hugged me, praised us. They were the same people. Some were friends of mine. I could give names. And I looked at them thinking ‘this is football, this is Barça’. The culers we’re like that,” he nods. “That day I had a hard time sleeping, of course. The euphoria of when you see one thing lost in life and suddenly, in a minute, the disaster turns into success is wonderful, and the happiness tears come out quickly,” he recalls.
Nunez’s cry
After the game he went down to the locker room with Josep Lluis Nunez. Núñez cried before reaching the elevator. “We will be champions,” Ronaldo shouted, and they would be after beating Betis in the final. Ivan de la Pena baptized as little buddha, called his parents: “I told them that I have never experienced anything like this. I couldn’t find words. I carry a joy in my body that doesn’t fit me.” Emmanuel Amunike repeated “Fivefour!“.Robson,”It’s unbelievable!“. La Gazzetta dello Sport Title amazing barca and L’Equipe, Unbelievable Barca. “Soccer is like that. It’s romance. Each game is a different story. It’s not like a bullfight, which always ends with the death of the bull,” Robson said at the press conference. Figo repeated “this is Barça”, while David Torres closed the chronicle The newspaper: “Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe Atlético never managed to win by 0-3. Maybe the 5-4 is the fruit of imagination. The comeback was very close to unreality and far from logic, but it happened.
“You score four goals at the Camp Nou and lose. He has balls”
Milinko Pantic
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It happened, and it was the climax of a unique rivalry in the 90s, with 143 goals in 35 games (4.1 per game). And 9,143,000 viewers saw it on television, a 51.3% audience share. In Catalonia, 57% in the first act and 70.6% in the second, more than two million viewers, despite the fact that TV3 He offered the meeting without speech for a strike. In Valencia, Portugal and Turkey the match was repeated the day after. “It was crazy,” said Van Gaal. “It was a nice game. The bad thing was the result,” says Pantic. ‘I ended up screwed.’FuckMan, you score four goals at the Camp Nou and you lose. He has balls’. It was hard. I remember talking about that night with Ronaldo on the phone and jokingly saying, ‘bastardyou have taken away my night, you have stolen my night,'” he explains. And he laughs. Two days later Andrea was born: “My wife made up for everything.”