The great revenge of Luis Suárez in the end of Ronald Koeman

Who was going to tell Koeman. That they were going to appear in his last photo at Barça. Precisely them. Luis Suárez and Griezmann. But soccer has these things. The whimsical rematches. And there is no enemy more intimate than an ex: he knows how to give where it hurts. Koeman travels to Madrid like a carcass. It is there but no, it will no longer be. The immediacy of the calendar, the Metropolitan Wanda only three days after that 3-0 in Lisbon that confirms the announced death. No time to settle a substitute, with the bills and the calculator in financial ruin. Neither Koeman was the coach for Laporta nor all the noise surrounding their relationship and tug of war favors his team. Nobody knows what would happen if his Barça wins 0-3 tonight. It sounds like science fiction, but who knows, it's football. But not even that, a victory like that, seems capable of saving him. He chews his goodbye. The break comes, time for him to come and take the reins. The Metropolitan, where he will not be able to sit due to sanction (his second, Schreuder will do so), will be his epitaph (follow today's game live on As.com).

A week ago everything looked different. A week ago the quicksand under his seat had stopped. Levante 3-0, Ansu's return, Gavi's great game. Seven days later the black has returned. And darker. In between that other 3-0 but against, in Lisbon, against Benfica, in the Champions League, which may be, 21 years later, that Barça does not pass the group stage. Zero points has. As zero are the shots on goal when he plays with that system of three centrals that Laporta likes so little. It was his shot in the foot. Koeman's. Against Bayern and Benfica. On what today stands staggering, it is not known. Only that Alba returns, that Pedri is not there (muscular problems, penance from so much; Barça, Eurocup, Games), that Gavi, therefore, will once again be the owner.

Griezmann, bench. Lemar and João, starters

And, opposite, is the Cholo. A Simeone who seeks to repeat with the public what only last season he achieved in his absence: to beat Barça in the League. He wields his pending accounts before Koeman: that Luis Suárez who does not forget “the contempt” of the deal, “as if he were 15 years old”, as he acknowledged in an interview with Sport, when Koeman called him in the middle of the burning of Messi's burofax, and Barça (from Bartomeu) pushed him to “train separately in the preseason”, as he told in another interview with TVE. The rage in his boots traveled on the Barcelona-Madrid airlift last season (21 fundamental goals to make Atleti League champion). That rage in his boots that is still latent. His gunpowder may be the one that fills Koeman's body on his last day. And if that doesn't work for Cholo at first, he has Plan B: Griezmann.

A Griezmann whom Koeman called to be his star without Messi. A Griezmann that not even without Messi reached his table. Two years after leaving the Metropolitan, football showed him that his best possible place was next to Cholo and he returned here. Unexpected turn and end of a market that took Saúl and brought another gift with a Camp Nou address in August. Like Villa, like Suárez. The French. Its lace is, for the moment, the breakdown.

Because in their two years away, Atleti was champion. Because in his two years away, Atleti stopped being Oblak's stop, Griezmann's goal. Because in his two years away, on the Cholo bench, men made names for themselves. Trippier, Carrasco, Lemar, Correa, each game a tetris. Tonight, Suárez will start and Griezmann will do it later, from the bench, substitute. Headlines will be João Félix, Lemar, defender of three and Llorente, and not Trippier, in the right lane. Without Kondogbia (suspended) and Cunha (injured), Savic will return. Another certainty, clear, among the blackest black that he brings tonight. Koeman's last drink. After today it will no longer be.