Beauty isn’t supposed to make sense. It is just supposed to exist so that we can marvel at it.
In thinking of Andres Iniesta, who today announced that he is retiring from the game, the only thing that comes to mind is that something beautiful and extraordinary is departing the game, in a diminutive colossus who looked nothing like the sporting titan he was. He was a dose of fairy dust in human form.
One of my absolute favorite Iniesta moments was the commercial featuring him, posing as a worker in the Sony store in Barcelona. What is wonderful about it is that he helps people, and some have an inkling, others don’t, he just does his thing, helping people in a way that another celebrity might not have. Talking about the product, showing people how things work. He disappears into the part, just like he disappeared into football.
By “disappear,” there is a different meaning. Not vanish, but to become an inextricable part of something, existing within it so seamlessly that he becomes it and it becomes him.
No player in the history of the game was as beautiful. Not Zidane, not Bergkamp, not anybody anyone might care to offer. In many ways Iniesta’s beauty was frustrating because sport is supposed to make sense. Athletes huff, and puff, and run and strive and create magical moments by dint of effort. Messi’s runs are remarkable, his goals stupendous. He works, and that work is incredible to watch.
Iniesta just glided around, almost like he existed on a track embedded into the pitch. You never saw him running super hard, never saw muscles bulging from exertion. It all looked so easy, like anyone could do it, even as we all knew that deep down inside, it was impossible.
How many times would we see him, pinned on the sideline by a pair of defenders, the chalk line of demarcation acting as a third defender, only to have something happen — you couldn’t quite make it out, almost like one of those movies where the digital feed glitches for a few seconds and suddenly everything is different — and Iniesta is gliding away, ball at his feet.
His running style was even beautiful, none of that pumping knees thing denoting exertion. He ran with his feet close to the pitch, always ready to receive the pass, head up even when the ball came to him because his feet knew what to do when presented with the pass, which liberated the rest of him to consider possibilities.
Once in describing Iniesta, my words were something like, “Messi runs up and cuts your throat, where Iniesta talks to you in soothing tones, convincing you that really, it’s the best thing for you to put your neck on that block … the one right there.”
People often said that he made football seem logical but for me it was the diametric opposite. He made everything beautiful and impossible. He was short, without a lot of muscle. He was neither quick nor fast, possessing none of the skills that traditionally contribute to athletic dominance, yet he was, when on the pitch, utterly dominant in a way that compelled.
Opposition supporters cheered him when he came off the pitch, because how could you not? Watching him play was like watching a master paint. There you were, in the studio. He didn’t seem to have ego, didn’t do his tricks to humiliate or show up opposing defenders, he just did things as a part of his job, a way to get from here to there with the ball.
Ray Hudson called Iniesta “Illusionista,” which is still one of the most apt monikers ever bestowed upon a player, because almost everything he did looked like magic. A side foot assist off the dead run, chipped perfectly for a teammate in stride? Sure. A shift of the hips while running at a defender, just enough to intimate that a move to the left was in the cards, then running past the frozen opponent? Check.
He played the game like it was a giant geometry puzzle, a maze of angles, problems that only he had the solutions for, football as snooker.
Iniesta didn’t score a lot of goals, which was part of his beauty. With Messi, you expected goals. From Iniesta, we expected beauty and magic, moments that contributed to someone else doing something extraordinary. He would dematerialize then pop up with a flawless pass to Xavi or Messi, who then did the damage on the scoreboard. All we wanted from Iniesta was to be beautiful, to leave us with eyes agog and mouths hanging open as he did it yet again.
Defenders never figured him out because it’s easy to suspect that even he didn’t know what he was going to do until he decided to do it. He was an unlimited player in the sense that players, even great ones, have a skill set defined by their capabilities. If you watch them long enough, play against them enough times, you can learn to deal with them, manage them in a way that limits their harm.
Not Iniesta.
In disappearing into the game, one of the most selfless players to play it, he became impossible to deal with. His only task was to get the ball to the place that can help his team. You couldn’t play him for the shot or the dribble, couldn’t play him for the pass because he could dish with either foot, didn’t need to stop or cut to do it. It just happened, like he was a PlayStation glitch, or a code you unlock with enough points in a given game.
When he scored goals, they were whoppers. Spain at the World Cup, against Chelsea for Barça, the goal some called the Iniestazo, others called the Baby Maker. As weird as it sounds, some players you don’t want to score. When Messi makes a run that doesn’t result in a goal, there is the deflation of disappointment, because Messi scores goals. Iniesta just does Iniesta things, and those things are satisfying in and of themselves.
You don’t ever hear talk of a “next Iniesta,” which is as it should be. Every now and again someone tried to make it happen with Pedri, but nobody takes it seriously, not to diminish Pedri. It’s just that … well … Iniesta.
It sucks that for many culers, their last memories of him were being buffetted about like a leaf in the wind against the Roma press. He deserved more, deserved better than to receive long balls amid taller, more aggressive defenders. Leave it to a manager to be the one to find his Kryptonite.
The club gave him a lifetime contract, but Iniesta knew that it was time. It was a sad day when he left the club, but the consolation was that football still had him, still had the beauty and possibility. And now that this, too, is gone, we wonder how he will live on. It won’t be in statistics, won’t be in assists or goals scored, or in any other objective parameter.
It’s wonderful to think that Iniesta will live on in the hearts and minds of people who, when talking about him and having watched him play, will pause — their face will light up and their eyes will twinkle as they describe something he did that lo, these many years hence, they still can’t believe. And more likely than not, they will call it beautiful