Vinicius elevated Guti’s status.

The greatness of a work of art is known when, many years later, something similar brings it back into conversation. This happened with Madrid in Philadelphia under the rain, as soon as Vinicius dried the ball, leaving it behind him for Valverde to shoot. One word circulated on the activated phones: “Guti.” Guti in Riazor, also under the rain, with Benzema instead of Valverde. But the work of number 14 remains untouchable and withstands all comparisons. Guti had the Deportivo goalkeeper in front of him, ready to dribble him, cross the ball, or chip it: Guti’s options were those typical of a one-on-one situation, and he produced a level of genius that no one expected, leaving the goal wide open for Benzema. In other words, it was the best option, the one no one had thought of—only the one who had the ball.

I interviewed him nine years ago in Valdebebas, when Guti was at his peak as a coach and was being considered for various roles (his youth team at Madrid didn’t resemble him: “You have to run. I’ve taken the defensive concepts from Capello that I apply to my team: solidarity, order”). “I used to lift my head before I had the ball. I already knew where everyone was before the ball arrived,” he said. “When I was about to receive, I knew what pass I was going to make. That’s why I decided so quickly. And that’s why sometimes I urgently asked for the ball: because I was seeing the space, and the space could disappear at any moment. With the ball, you can’t think—you have to do it beforehand.” In another regard, he confessed to having problems with his neighbors because he filled his house with chickens to eat, as the Marquis of Leguineche would, some “delicious eggs.” However, he had to get rid of the rooster: it woke up the entire neighborhood.

Vinicius (and Benzema before him, with a backheel for Casemiro against Espanyol) moved away in the play from the goal with a rival close by: there were few options other than to step on the ball, set it down in front of Valverde, and let the Uruguayan score. Vinicius was skillful and quick, but he wasn’t a genius. Both he and Benzema had few better options than to leave the ball behind. Guti, however, had many options and created a new and superior one to the rest.

Guti did not leave the mark in Madrid’s trophy cabinet that Benzema did, whose genius was less outrageous and more consistent, though he was also accompanied by accusations of apathy (how can one accuse someone of apathy, with how distracting that is for rivals?). And surely, barring any twists, Vini’s impact will be greater and more constant at Madrid than Guti’s. But Guti, the exasperating anarchy of Guti, the whimsical quality of Guti, which appeared when it suited him if he was in a good mood, has left in Madridism the memory of the dust on a butterfly’s wing, the unique and different thing that makes one soar. Hemingway once said of Fitzgerald in a beautiful passage from Paris Was a Feast and could have said it of Guti in There’s No Party Without Guti: “His talent was as natural as the dust pattern on a butterfly’s wing. There was a time when he did not understand himself, just as one does not understand the butterfly, and he did not realize when his talent was bruised or damaged. Later, he became aware of his battered wings and how they were made and learned to think, but he could no longer fly because he had lost the love of flight and knew how to do nothing but remember the times when he flew effortlessly.”