Night not to forget yesterday's Ruslan Neshcheret. The 18-year-old goalkeeper had to be in charge of defending Dinamo Kiev's goal at the Camp Nou due to the numerous casualties of his team due to COVID. And despite his youth and little experience, Neshcheret signed one of those anthological performances with 12 stops, eight of them within the area, and, above all, the recognition of Messi, Fati and company.
With thirteen casualties, Lucescu's team traveled to Barcelona. Thirteen of those twelve were those of his starting goalkeeper and substitute, Georgiy Bushchan and Denys Boyko. Therefore, the debut of an unknown 18-year-old adolescent was highly probable.
An hour before the game, with the line-ups in hand, the not so surprise was confirmed: Neshcheret, 18, would have to beat six-time Ballon d'Or winner Leo Messi. They painted wands for Nescheret. “Nothing could be further from reality, “he would think at the end. And that after five minutes, the Argentine star had already beaten his goal. However, the fact that he guessed the direction of the penalty already said many things, all of them good.
The first to suffer the exalted night was Ansu Fati, also 18 years old. As if it were a schoolyard duel, winger and goalkeeper met again and again in goal. Against all odds, the unknown Neshcheret came out the winner, stopping three of the four attempts by the new star of the culé quarry.
The Dinamo keeper was already launched and ready to face an even bigger hunter, Leo Messi. With the memory of a maximum sentence almost stopped and his stops at Fati or Griezmann, Neshcheret stopped each attack of the Argentine until reaching the maximum point with a popcorn to a masterful lack of Messi in the second half. To wallpaper your room with snapshots of this moment.
“If there had been an audience, the kid would have left amid applause,” says our chronicler Santi Giménez. Reason is not lacking and is that the night of Neshcheret is to see it one day after another. The young man's career has just begun and anything can happen, but last night nobody will take it away.