La Liga · 2000
Figo goes back to the Camp Nou in white
Three months after Real Madrid paid his buyout clause, Luís Figo returned to Barcelona. The noise, the banners and the missiles were for him; the goals were for Barça.
Luís Figo spent five years at Barcelona. In July 2000 he left for Real Madrid, who met the buyout clause in his contract and made him the most expensive footballer in the world. The deal went back to an agreement Florentino Pérez had signed with him before he became Madrid president: if Pérez got the job, Figo would join.
On 21 October he went back.
Before kick-off
That morning Alfredo Abián, deputy editor of La Vanguardia, published an editorial under the headline "Que Figo nos perdone": Figo, forgive us. The newspaper SPORT gave its readers posters of Figo printed as banknotes. Steve McManaman would not sit next to him on the team bus. "I felt as if in the skin of a murderer," Figo said.
The bus was pelted as it arrived. "The police made a special passage for the bus as we entered the Nou Camp, 25 metres on each side," one Madrid player told Sky Sports. "Still, fans threw glass bottles, stones, everything."
The game
Inside, the banners read "Traitor", "Judas", "Scum" and "Mercenary". Every time Figo touched the ball the noise rose, and so did the missiles: oranges, bottles, lighters, coins, golf balls, mobile phones and thousands of fake banknotes bearing his face. "One was a mobile phone, which must've been a luxury accessory back then," said the referee, Alfonso Pérez Burrull, who picked some of it up. Riot police stood by the corner flag at corners. Figo did not take any.
Carles Puyol was given one job. "I had only purpose in that game – to stop Figo," he said. By one count Figo lost the ball 13 times, managed one shot on target and was booked.
Barcelona won 2–0. Luis Enrique, who had made the opposite journey from Madrid to Barcelona on a free transfer in 1996, scored the first. Simão added the second.
Afterwards
"That night hurt him, you could see. His head was bowed," said Iván Campo. Figo later said that "physically and mentally, it is impossible to ignore 75,000 people shouting against you… I was worried that some madman might lose his head."
Vicente del Bosque's Madrid won the league that season, with Barcelona fourth. Figo would return again, and in November 2002 the Camp Nou found something worse to throw: a pig's head.