"[Alvaro] Arbeloa completely stopped [Lionel] Messi, denying him the space he usually thrives on." Nowadays that sentence may sound like a footballing impossibility but eight years ago, it figured in bold print in a match summary by Spanish newspaper El País.
At that point, back in February 2007, Rafael Benitez was coaching Liverpool. In the first leg of a Champions League round of 16 round against reigning champions Barcelona, he decided that he had to pull something out of the hat to prevent the already threatening Lionel Messi, coming back from injury, from winning the tie for his team.
"You will play on the left," he announced a startled right-footed Arbeloa. "Messi starts most plays on the right of their attack and then cuts inside, so you will be able to stop him." That was exactly what happened; Messi never looked comfortable with Arbeloa watching his every move, and the Reds won 2-1 in the Camp Nou.
Benitez repeated the trick in Anfield, which led Messi to lose six balls and shoot only once in 90 minutes. Arbeloa only fouled him once. Thus, Liverpool eliminated Barcelona on their way to a lost Champions League final against AC Milan in Athens. Of course that was a previous, slightly more predictable version of Leo Messi, but it was also a very different one of Alvaro Arbeloa.
Benitez signed him from Deportivo La Coruña only a month earlier, where Arbeloa played centre-back, the same position he'd occupied since he was a kid. Benitez moved him to the flank, the beginning of the most successful phase of Arbeloa's career.
Fit and focused, he enjoyed two-and-a-half reasonably successful seasons in Merseyside but then fell out with Benitez. "We were close to winning the Premier League title in my last year but then he decided to spend his money on another full-back [Glen Johnson]. I thought that it was my chance to go back to Real Madrid," Arbeloa explained in an interview last year.
And so he did. A solid first year, only tainted by a hesitant performance in the Copa del Rey debacle in Alcorcon that very likely cost Manuel Pellegrini his job, was followed by an increasingly leading role under Jose Mourinho. Arbeloa became instrumental to facilitate Sergio Ramos' move from full-back to centre-back, something the current skipper perfected during the first two seasons of the Portuguese manager in Madrid.
Ramos' transition was the exact opposite to that of Arbeloa earlier in his career and came to fruition in part thanks to two solid seasons from Arbeloa, the second one as a starter of the record-breaking, La Liga title winning Real Madrid side.
Except for his marked inability to cross the ball properly, Arbeloa's game in those two seasons was solid. But he then added a series of tricks to unsettle rival forwards that took his reputation to a different level. Towards the middle of Mourinho's tenure at Real Madrid, Arbeloa started to embody Real Madrid's perfect villain in the eyes of rival supporters, a perception that has persisted even after the Portuguese manager left.
On the pitch, Arbeloa fouls hard -- and often dirty. He keeps a constant dialogue with referees, especially when opposition players commit bookable or even non-bookable offences, trying to get them cautioned or sent off. He provokes opponents with words and gestures. He seems to have the gift to be present in every single fight that happens on the pitch, as he takes his role of both enforcer and protector of the Madridista stars a bit too far. And, in the occasion of top rivalry matches, he ups all of the above one or two notches.
In summary, Arbeloa has become as close as a player can possibly get to a full-back version of Diego Costa.
According to most sources, it was this kind of behaviour in a Madrid derby, with precisely Costa as a target, that led Spain's coach Vicente del Bosque to leave him out of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, despite the fact that he had been a starter since 2011 and had made the team since Euro 2008.
Some of his statements off the pitch right before the list of players was published -- "People say we have to be an example for the children. I don't have to be an example for anybody," he said in an interview -- must not have impressed Del Bosque either.
For some time, the fact that he defended Mourinho under any circumstances granted Arbeloa the affection of a sizeable section of the Bernabeu, but his last few displays on the pitch have turned the tide against him, who knows if for good.
Time has passed, shape has gone and the 32-year-old Arbeloa couldn't even foul Jackson Martinez after having presented Yannick Ferreira-Carrasco with the ball that ended up in Real Madrid's goal during the last derby. He was only on the pitch because two right fullbacks, Danilo and Dani Carvajal, were injured.
Even though the most extended opinion within Real Madrid's dressing room portrays Arbeloa as a great veteran, the kind that will help the youngsters to develop into top-level professionals with his discipline and advise, it's a shame that most fans will identify him based on this final part of his career.
Through infantile mistakes, reckless challenges and ill-advised public statements, the Arbeloa of late is patiently erasing any memory of his exceptional defensive performances on Messi, Ronaldinho or Wayne Rooney, his tremendously consistent seasons with Liverpool or Real Madrid and the titles he won with the Spanish national team.
It would be a shame if in his last year with the Merengues, the last thing we remember from Arbeloa is a lost ball and a late tackle that made Real Madrid drop two points in a derby. Unfortunately, everything points to a bitter end for the full-back at this point, and in no small part because of his own decisions.