Andrés Iniesta’s struggles were the saddest part of Barcelona’s collapse against PSG

Paris Saint-Germain embarrassed Barcelona on Tuesday, 4-0. It seemed that every PSG player decided to play at their best in the same game that each Barcelona player, minus Marc-André ter Stegen, who tried his hardest to keep the scoreline respectable, and Neymar, who was a futile positive in the attack, was at their worst. There’s an abundance of disappointments in terms of players, some who can serve better as vehicles for the systematic failures of Barcelona this season than others. That’s you, André Gomes. You’re the hill that Luis Enrique wants to die on.

Gomes has played badly before. He’s tedious in movement, cowers under pressure and seems to always push the ball too far ahead of him, even with his long legs. Sergio Busquets had tough games in the first few months of the season, where he looked as he did now, like a store-brand version of the maestro that he is. Giving the ball away, late in tackles or otherwise a step too slow and overwhelmed by attacks. He’s already in the tasking position of killing attacks and counters before they start, in a Barcelona team that leaves him in a frightening amount of space, which makes the job more difficult than it already is, and his sense of timing and position more paramount. When he plays badly, it shows in the worst way possible, as it did against PSG.

Lionel Messi is a bit odd as well. His standard is excellence. He does such a multitude of attacking jobs, so well and so frequently, that to see him struggle as he did against PSG, to see players take the ball off of him repeatedly, takes time to register. It’s absurd. Yet, we’ve seen this happen before, especially with Argentina in major tournaments. When teams make it a mission to double team and get him off the ball as soon as he gets it. Even though in this game, he lost the ball and struggled numerous times in one-on-one situations. He played badly on his own.

Luis Suárez just couldn’t get on the ball because the creation wasn’t happening. And when he did, he lumbered over and lost it, which is not too shocking because there was no one for him to combine with.

The defense was under duress for the whole game, and you can only fight against waves and waves of attacks until they finally drown you in goals. That’s not to absolve Jordi Alba though. He sucked.

But the one disappointment that was really surreal to watch was Andrés Iniesta.

Iniesta was weird because this was his type of game. This is where he usually is at his best. In these games where Barcelona need someone to be the release valve from the opponent’s pressure. To beat two defenders with a feint and a turn, to relax the midfield and run circles around his counterparts — the juniors who wish to be him eventually. They needed Iniesta to be the building block for their attack and the lifeboat for their defenders, and he just wasn’t there.

Well, he was there, but not Iniesta as we’ve known him for a very long time. This was the half-fit version and old version. The one ravaged by injuries. The one that is painfully making his way to the fringes. This was a very declined Iniesta.

At his best, Iniesta is a great representation of what Barcelona does. The game flows through him. He exists in an almost supernatural dimension where he can hypnotize opponents with one- and two-touch passing, beat defenders by using their own momentum against them, and see the entire field. Even behind him. In those moments, he’s omnipresent.

When he’s playing really well, he dictates what happens in the game, even if he doesn’t make the final pass or score a goal. He makes everyone around him look more calm and composed, because they have him to combine with and he never seems to take a bad touch or make the wrong pass. He gives the attackers freedom to run and be themselves because he will either find them with a pass or bring the ball up to them, and he puts the defense at ease because they always have him as a last-ditch option.

Then he combines with the midfield, drifting and passing around in such a mesmerizing manner that the other team realizes that it’s just better to sit back than to try to take the ball. When defenders do try to put him under pressure, he wriggles out of it masterfully, and so they have to respect him and back off in fear that he will turn and take them out the game with a few touches. All of this makes him so invaluable.

And when he’s doing that, when he’s in his zone, Barcelona are irresistible. They flow. Things come easy. Everything is fun. When he’s not, it’s all disjointed. When he’s giving the ball away against PSG, running into dead ends and being spooked by defenders closing him down, he doesn’t look like Iniesta and Barcelona don’t look like Barcelona.

They look like a team that was outscored, outshot, and plainly outplayed by a great and prepared PSG. It was a game where they lacked control, and coincidentally the best and usual architect for that role struggled.

The surrealness of him playing badly in this game is doubled and emphasized by Barcelona being overran. And it shows every time they lose by a large score. They have no idea how to deal with such a reality. A world in which the predator becomes the prey. They just look stupefied.

They continue doing what they’ve always known because it’s always worked, and the hope remains that it will again. They don’t know how else to be. Iniesta does it as well. He couldn’t do anything else but play as he’s always known. To desperately try to control the game, even as it ran by him. To try triangles when he was misplacing the pass. It’s always worked for him and his play is so innate that he should feel a defender 10 yards before they try to surprise him from behind. And when he doesn’t and the ball is taken, he looks just as astonished as his teammates did when PSG kept scoring and they couldn’t.

This is not to say that he is at fault for the result or that he is the only one who had a miserable game. Just that it’s almost a vile and unexpected thing that this decline should sneak up on him. In the same way that it doesn’t feel real watching Barcelona get destroyed by PSG, even if this type of result has happened before. Each time is just as absurdly comical.

It was telling that when Barcelona needed to make a change to gain a foothold in the game, Iniesta was taken off for Ivan Rakitic. That’s how bad he had been. One of the best midfielders of his generation substituted in a game that called for him the most. He just couldn’t get anything going and Barcelona couldn’t either. His era is unfortunately coming to a close, as they all do, and it seems fitting that this Barcelona cycle is ending with him as well. They will regroup and rebuild for a new round of dominance, and they will do so without Iniesta. They will have to find someone else to run the show. But the truth is that only Iniesta can do what Iniesta does. Barcelona will have to build a different identity after him.