We're going to take you back to April 2011 for this first episode, the 27th of April 2011.

So 10 and a half years ago now, wow, back to the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, it is the semi-final

of the Champions League, it is a Classico, it's in the midst of the horrendous facet run of

Classicos, four Classicos in 18 days, and we're talking about this two-neil win for Barcelona

in the Bernabéu, both goals scored by Messi. Why are we starting with this one, Sid? There are so

many for us to choose from, but you've often said, haven't you, that this is almost like a forgotten

performance from Messi? I really think it is and I think it speaks to the way that we came in and

that idea of taking Messi for granted a little bit, it speaks that idea of the sort of the normalisation

of the absurd, it speaks I think in a way to that idea that sometimes Messi was almost too good

for it to be a story, and you look back on, as you say, those four Classicos in a row starting with

the league, then the Cup, then the Champions League, Classicos, and I think, and I'd love to

know actually if our listeners agree with this, they may well think I'm talking nonsense, but I

think that when people think back to that run of four games, and in particular when they think

to the two Champions League games, which of course were the culmination of it, and in a way actually

the fourth game, the second Champions League game almost doesn't happen because it happens in

this game, the third game. I think people look back on it and they will think about the sort of the

arguments and the confrontation, and Pep Guardiola in the press conference during the Poudouamal

thing, and the kind of sense that this was, if you'd like a high point or perhaps a low point,

depending on your point of view, of the intensity of the rivalry and the way in which it actually got

genuinely quite nasty, and I think in some ways of course it's exhilarated and exciting to look

back on this as kind of this point at which it was absolutely huge, but I think a lot of it

detracts from the football itself, and look, I'm as guilty as anyone in this because of course

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