Was this ultimate order or ultimate chaos? On a night of greasy, lawless entertainment, the temptation was to err towards the latter. Bielsa and
Pep Guardiola are frequently described as coaches whose teams like to dominate. Here, every fresh attempt to do so seemed to bury the game in fresh lashings of anarchy, from skittish start to frenetic finish. Guardiola admitted he needed “time to process” the game. Bielsa declared there were “no tactical aspects which were significant”.
Was Bielsa right? Was this simply one of those games that defied the chalkboard, that surfed along on a wave of high energy, high emotion and high caprice? Well, yes and no. Certainly as the chances began to pile up, as the ball began to slingshot from end to end, it became increasingly hard to tell what was choreographed and what was chaotic, what was adaptation and what was pure, brutal instinct.
And besides, is it really chaos if both teams have willed it so? It was a game that had been pegged in advance as a high-scoring fiesta of attacking football. Yet what transpired was something far more nuanced and interesting than a cartoon slugfest. It seemed to evolve and mutate at a supernatural rate, as if by machine learning: games within games, games around games, games spawning games.