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Andres Iniesta’s farewell could not have gone have better on Sunday night and neither could his handing over of the baton to Philippe Coutinho.
Iniesta stopped in his tracks and applauded as the former Liverpool player curled in the only goal that won Iniesta’s last match for Barcelona. He then trotted across to embrace his heir.
No one at Barcelona expects the Brazilian to be a carbon copy of a midfielder who played the last of 647 games for the club on Sunday night.
Iniesta has been at Barcelona since he was 12 and that showed in every first-team game he played.
He understood all the mechanisms of their positional play. He gave the team that continuity of possession that Sir Alex Ferguson once described – from the opponent’s point of view – as being put on a carousel and turned dizzy. Coutinho will not be able to emulate all that.
But the former Liverpool man will start next season in the position that Iniesta occupied for most of his 13 seasons in the first team – on the left of the midfield three.
And for all that he will not be able to do as well as the great man, there will be one very important thing he will be able to do better – score goals.
Iniesta only managed 57 goals, Coutinho already has 10 in all competitions and he has only been at the club for half a season.
He finished the campaign as Barcelona’s third top -scorer behind Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez despite giving everyone else a four-month head start. And his tally is more than Iniesta has managed in his last five seasons.
It’s Coutinho’s relationship with Messi and Suarez that also fills the club with belief that the record-breaking fee they paid for him will ultimately have been worth every last euro.
Great importance is always placed on a player’s ability to find his place in the Barcelona hierarchy and be content within it.
One of the reasons why Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Alexis Sanchez underachieved at Barcelona is because they were unhappy – and in the case of Ibrahimovic, could not accept – their place in a pyramid that is always topped by Messi.
Coutinho lives in the same Bellamar private estate as both Messi and Suarez and they are pals with young families away from the pitch.
Bellamar is the Catalan footballers’ Beverley Hills set back into the mountains that overlook the 4-mile stretch of sandy beach at Castelldefels just south of the city.
The players get the sea views but they also get the privacy of the tough-to-get-to private estates up in the hills. One of Spain’s most famous basketball players Marc Gasol is another resident.
The mansions are large –usually around 2000m squared – and the walls and tree-lined perimeters keep them far from the gaze of wandering sightseers. Messi’s private security also helps the players keep themselves to themselves too.
Suarez was asked at last year’s Golden Boot ceremony what Messi was like as a neighbour. He grinned and said: 'Well, he has great security, which helps us all.'
Coutinho's family are settled. And in his club Audi, on the occasions when he does not share a ride into the city with Suarez and Messi, he can drive from his doorstep to training in under half an hour. In the early days he would travel in with his two team-mates on match days.
The bond with Suarez is especially strong and it helped Coutinho avoid having to spend his first months in a hotel.
‘Luis saw a home close to his that was available. We saw the photogrpahs and wanted it straight away,’ Coutinho said not long after he signed.
Barcelona had planned on finding him and his wife Aine and baby daughter Maria a hotel until they found somewhere permanent. It was seen as a very positive sign when he told them it would not be necessary.
On the pitch he not only has the 12 goals – he also has his first two trophies. And in the Copa del Rey victory over Sevilla he was one of Barcelona’s best performers scoring and linking brilliantly with Suarez and Messi.
Suarez grinned broadly leaving the Wanda Metropolitano that night when asked how the Liverpool connection was going. Both players will be hoping their former club triumphs on Saturday night in Kiev – next season alongside Messi, and the in-coming Antoine Griezmann – they will want to be in the final themselves.
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