The scene dates back to January 13, 2016 on the lawn of the Cornella El-Prat stadium.
In the round of 16 second leg of the King's Cup, Espanyol Barcelona host FC Barcelona for the third derby in eleven days.
At the very end of the game, as Barça is heading towards qualification in the quarter-finals, an exchange first tense, then smiling, takes place between Alvaro Gonzalez and Lionel Messi.
A battle of words between two captains, Alvaro wearing the armband since the release of his namesake Abraham Gonzalez.
In 2019, at the microphone of RMC Sport, after his arrival at the Olympique de Marseille, Alvaro Gonzalez developed this anecdote. "It's pretty funny," smiles the adopted Marseillais. It was a period with three consecutive Espanyol-Barça derbies. High intensity matches. We answered tit-for-tat. I tell him:
"You are really small, tiny".
He looks at me and replies:
"You are really bad at football"
. I had the last word by telling him:
“Yes, we're both right”
. We laughed together and this story made people smile a lot in Spain ”.
This Sunday evening, it will therefore be the occasion for a new reunion between Alvaro Gonzalez and Lionel Messi. The two men faced each other 13 times between 2011 and 2019 on the lawns of La Liga. Player of Racing Santander, Espanyol or Villarreal, Gonzalez has never beaten Barça of Messi. He has even lost 10 times and his team has conceded 2.6 goals on average over this series… So what will happen to the OM-PSG clasico?
The liabilities are burning between the Parisians and Alvaro Gonzalez.
On September 13, 2020, during Marseille's victory at Parc de Princes (1-0), the defender was accused of having uttered racist insults against Neymar.
He had also hooked up with Angel Di Maria, who ended up spitting in his face.
The latter had received four games of suspension while the Alvaro-Neymar affair did not result in any sanction, for lack of sufficient proof.
See you now on Sunday evening for the Di Maria-Messi-Neymar trio against Alvaro Gonzalez and a sold-out Velodrome stadium.