A Timely Reminder of Andres Iniesta's Genius as Spain Look Good for World Cup

As ever with Andres Iniesta, it was all about the timing.

Melancholic translators across the globe had barely finished delivering the news this could be his Indian summer with both Barcelona and Spain, when he reminded us what we'll be missing when he's gone. 

A genius.

"I don't want to be around just because of who I was," he had said on Thursday, in an interview with El Larguero on the Spanish radio station Cadena Ser (via Marca). "At the moment, naturally, this World Cup will possibly be my last appearance for the national team. For the moment and with everything, it's similar to what happens to me in my club."

The 33-year-old sounded like an elderly relative in fear of becoming a burden while suspecting the rest of the family think he'd be better off in a home but are too polite to say.

A day later, as Spain drew 1-1 with Germany in Dusseldorf, he put in a performance of such decisive elegance that talk of swapping his boots for slippers, his homeland for China, seemed nothing less than a betrayal of his once-in-a-lifetime gift.

While only the truly pious wouldn't at the very least be surreptitiously Googling a currency converter if reports of a purported $43.1 million-per-year offer from Chinese Super League side Tianjin Quanjian are literally on the money, surely it is a little too soon?

That cash would probably still be on the table when he's 40. The modern game is not awash with enough truly great talents for one to leave the party before he is kicked out. 

Iniesta drifting into the shadows of his own volition feels like a private collector threatening to closet away a priceless artwork, which has always previously been hung in a public gallery for everyone to appreciate. Quite reasonably, the Chinese public may well vehemently disagree.

Last year, he signed a "lifetime" contract with Barcelona. His coach in Catalonia, Ernesto Valverde, uses his captain as one might a mink coat, dusted off for the big occasions but not necessarily needed for more prosaic affairs.

The signing of heir apparent Philippe Coutinho, along with Ousmane Dembele's return from injury, means Iniesta is no longer the first name on the teamsheet. Biannual interest in Antoine Griezmann means it is unlikely to change any time soon, either. It's not purported to sit well, even if he accepts it.

New signing Arthur has been touted as Iniesta's long-term successor, and while the Brazilian insists his dream is to line up with a player he idolised as a kid, they could prove to be proverbial ships in the night.

Iniesta insists he will take any sentiment out of his decision. A fear of injuries impeding his ability to maintain the immaculate standards he has set since making his Barcelona debut as an 18-year-old in 2002 is clearly at the forefront of his thinking. 

"It will not be a matter of love, it will be about me feeling what I think I am able to contribute," he added.

"If injuries respect me, I can see myself in the Barcelona XI for the next two years."

For a player in touching distance of a ninth La Liga crown—whose vastly edited trophy haul of over 30 titles also includes four UEFA Champions League winners' medals, two European Championship triumphs and a World Cup final-winning goal—to express doubt, in most cases, could be construed as false modesty.

Can a player who quite conceivably would still make it into any other club side in the world—and in his pomp, arguably any in the history of the game—really be plagued by self doubt?

Even withstanding a succession of muscular injuries that have interrupted Iniesta's campaign to date, it all feels a little like Daniel Day-Lewis retiring from acting every other year, before invariably getting an itch to add a new gold statue to the old ones.

If Iniesta expresses a childhood desire to become a cobbler, then we'll know it's all cobblers.

Except Iniesta isn't just unique as a footballer on the field. Off it, while hardly loquacious (he is the quiet diplomat, while his former co-Barcelona editor-in-chief Xavi can be as cutting as one of his passes), he has in the past eloquently expressed what it is to be Andres Iniesta the man, as opposed to Andres Iniesta the footballer. One is decidedly more complicated than the other.

In his book, The Artist: Being Iniesta, published in September 2016, he wrote of how the death of his childhood friend Daniel Jarque, captain of Espanyol, to a heart attack in 2009, triggered a period in between winning the treble with Barcelona and the World Cup with Spain a year later, where he was by his own admission suffering from, "Not depression exactly, not illness either, not really, but an unease. It was like nothing was right."

While physical tests showed no tangible issues, he was often unable to complete sessions. Privately, unbeknown to his team-mates, it got so bad he turned to then-manager Pep Guardiola and the club's doctors for professional psychological treatment.

Iniesta wrote:

"The next few days were awful. I felt like I was in freefall, like everything had gone dark. I went to find the doctor: 'I can't take anymore.'

"There are moments when your mind is very vulnerable. You feel a lot of doubts. Every person is different, every case. What I'm trying to explain is that you can go from being in good shape to being in a bad way very quickly.

"I don't know if this sounds too strong, if it's the right way of expressing it, but I felt like, somehow, I came to understand how people can be driven to madness, into doing something crazy, completely out of character.

"…People see footballers as different beings, as if we're untouchable, as if nothing ever happens to us, but we're people. Of course we're privileged but in the tangibles we're the same."

His winning goal for Spain against the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup final in South Africa proved cathartic. It helped to lift a debilitating veil only those closest to him knew was there.

Even with his darkest period behind him, playing in front of 98,000 supporters at the Camp Nou brings its own pressure, even for a player as decorated as Iniesta. Maybe he has just quietly had enough of the endless exposure.

What he proved on Friday, indeed what he proved when setting up Lionel Messi's crucial equaliser at Stamford Bridge in the UEFA Champions League in February, is that the decision whether to call time on life at the highest level will be his alone. Not because of his reputation, but rather the fact he is still a sensational footballer. He still holds all of the best cards.

That he has completed just four 90 minutes for club and country this season should only become an issue if FIFA bans the use of substitutions. That's kind of what they are there for. Otherwise, if he says he'll only stay at Barcelona for another season if he is permitted to wear silk pyjamas during matches, the only thing they need ask is if he'll require a matching eye mask.

Just as Messi says when Barcelona are in trouble the first player he looks to is Iniesta, so too he is the heartbeat for Spain. In Dusseldorf, even in the most elevated of company, he made the other 21 players on the pitch play to his tune, at his pace.

Iniesta could be playing with a stick and still be able to use it to conduct proceedings from the centre of the field.

Even heavily caveated by the fact it was only a friendly, that Iniesta bossed the world champions who went into the game unbeaten in 21 games, with their qualifying campaign seeing them clock up 10 victories from as many matches, suggests reports of his terminal decline are overwrought to the point of being ridiculous. 

With Thiago Alcantara prompting from deep with a game intelligence that belies tender years, Isco again proving he is a better player for Spain than he is with Real Madrid, and David Silva demonstrating it doesn't matter what shirt you put him in he's still a glorious footballer to watch, it felt like one was observing a potential World Cup winning team in the process of fine-tuning. Or as AS put it triumphantly on Saturday (via AFP): "Spain senses its rebirth. We have sent a message we are equal to the champions." 

A rebirth perhaps, but it is one replete with a raft of its forefathers still very much in the picture. Add the injured human metronome Sergio Busquets into the mix and Spain look like they may just have the best midfield in the tournament. 

By the end of the contest, after a shaky start, Germany looked like Germany. That's nothing if not ominous for the rest of the field heading to Russia. Those who flicked between Germany-Spain and England's match against the Netherlands, quickly realised how, in comparison, the encouraging press Gareth Southgate's side received for making baby steps was effectively like praising a child's drawing of a horse, when they were trying to draw a cat. It's all relative.

What England could do with a player of Iniesta's ilk. Probably misuse him, but that's by the by. A 45-minute highlights reel before he was withdrawn at half-time, presumably to a throne rather than the bench, was a classic study in how less is more.

In the country of Dieter Rams, he demonstrated why the pre-eminent designer's mantra—good design is as little design as possible—rings true in almost all facets of life. Iniesta is a minimalist. He has all the skills in the world but clearly believes ornament is crime. Everything he does has a purpose. Even when it looks as if he's taking the piss by playing a succession of two-yard passes to Messi, it's just their way of drawing opponents out.

No player enjoys more of the ball than Iniesta. And that's the key. He enjoys the ball. To lose it is to insult it. In a wonderful interview with So Foot, Xavi, Iniesta's brother from another mother, perhaps put it best when he said: "Clearing the ball is an intellectual defeat."

He also said, presumably in the voice of Barry White: "You have to play with Iniesta to know what pleasure means."

A bad word about Iniesta is rarer than one of his misplaced passes. Even Sergio Ramos loves a player who has made the FIFA FIFPro World XI, as voted by fellow professionals, for the previous nine years.

"Iniesta is the boyfriend that every mother wants her daughter to have," Ramos once cooed, in a sentiment that can't help but recall the end of The Karate Kid when bad boy Johnny Lawrence hands the trophy to Daniel LaRusso. 

Zinedine Zidance simply went with: "He reminds me of myself." There can be no greater compliment for a footballer to receive. 

In football, an economical dribbler is largely oxymoronic, but Iniesta is very much an outlier. When he runs with the ball, it's because it is the line of best fit. There is no ego to his play, which given he has more control of his left foot than most of us have of our left hand, is quite the feat of self-restraint. Except it isn't restraint.

There is no hardship to play by the accordion of Johan Cruyff, to which he has been schooled since joining Barcelona's youth academy, La Masia, as a boy.

He has come a long way since crying daily as he tried to make his way at Barcelona as a 12-year-old who craved nothing more than to be back home with his parents in Fuentealbilla, Albacete. From childhood tears to the here and now, his assist against Germany was the perfect encapsulation of why even as he closes on his 34th year, he is still as good as it gets in terms of being a complete midfield player.

When he takes the ball from Jordi Alba's throw-in 40 yards or so from Germany's goal, in the milliseconds he has earned by making a short return pass, he is already thinking through his next few moves as though playing chess.

By the time Isco has played a return pass of his own to Alba, Iniesta has long since left the scene like a detective who has seen enough to make up his mind already. Quietly slipping away, he's made a yard of space to receive the ball without anyone noticing. When Alba makes a simple 10-yard pass to him, Iniesta takes possession facing the touchline; seven Germany players are ahead of him and just two of his team-mates. 

The slide-rule pass he conjures with his second touch to allow Rodrigo to race on to, and finish with an immaculate clipped effort, has rightly been hailed as a mini-masterpiece. However, it is his first touch, again with his weaker right foot, that illuminates his genius. In opening up his body to suddenly face the way he is playing, it's as though a rock has been removed from the entrance of a tomb. Suddenly there is light.

He clearly practises what he preaches, having told FourFourTwo's Andy Mitten:

"Before I receive the ball, I quickly look to see which players I can give it to. Always be aware of who is around you: if you feel them closing down, take a touch to move the ball away from them. Try and put yourself in space to get the pass: the more space you have, the more time you have to think."

From a solitary touch, a nothing situation, with Germany well set, becomes Iniesta's plaything. With his head tilting one way and the ball travelling the other, his dissecting reverse pass could not have been more disguised had he adorned it with a Groucho Marx moustache and glasses. Mats Hummels may choose to don them after getting his bearings so wrong he is being touted to go into Sat Nav voiceover work when he retires.

Watch Spain's goal again and read back what Iniesta told the Guardian's Sid Lowe in 2006:

"Most things come from inside, they're intuitive; that's the way I am. There's tactics, strategy but I understand football as something unpredictable, because you have to decide in a thousandth of a second. If the ball is coming and there's someone behind you, I'm not thinking: 'I'm going left or should it be right?' I just go and it comes off … well, sometimes it doesn't."

More often that not, it still comes off. And when that stops being the case, history suggests in terms of winding down his playing days, Iniesta will get the timing just right.

After all, he's made a pretty decent career of it so far.