Diego's hat-trick: "The night belonged to him"

Some nights a match is a contest; others it is a corrida, and the bull knows it from the first pass. On Wednesday at Ponferrada Stadium there was no contest at all. Dinamo 1948 SA arrived hoping to hold the cape and found themselves trampled, 8-0, on a Champions League evening that began as a fixture and ended as a demonstration.

At the centre of it, where he likes to be, was Diego. The Brazilian plays as a defensive midfielder on the team sheet — a position that usually asks a man to sweep up and hand the ball on. Diego treated it as an invitation. Three goals, an assist, seven shots, five dribbles, and thirteen and a half kilometres of ground covered. Ten out of ten. The crowd sang his name long before the end and did not stop.

He opened the account himself, and the floodgates came with him. Götz Rosen, the summer signing from Hertha Berlin, was irrepressible on the right, and his three assists tell only half of it; the two of them pulled Dinamo apart with the ease of a matador turning his wrist. Federico Rocchi, the free transfer from Sassuolo, scored twice before he was withdrawn on 58 minutes, and the man who replaced him, Fran Belmonte, scored twice more. Eight goals, and not one of them cheap.

The visitors lost more than the match. Cristian Marín and Tarald Lydersen, regulars both, were missing from the team sheet, and the shape was not Dinamo's usual one. Adrián Ubeira was taken off at half-time; Sebastian Leu came on. It made no difference. By the end Ponferrada had finished in a 4-2-4, pressing forward as if the scoreline were still level, and the statistics read like a confession: twenty-six shots to two, sixteen on target, eleven corners, and a hit on the woodwork for good measure. Dinamo's two shots on target came from a night spent chasing shadows.

"I have played many games," Diego said afterwards, still in his kit, "but some nights the ball wants to be with you. Tonight it wanted to be with me. I only had to run where it asked." There is a poetry in that, and the Bierzo crowd knew it.

What does it mean? It means Ponferrada, a club that spent years climbing back from the depths and has lately been beating its neighbours for fun, can turn a European night into a procession. It means Rosen and Gérson, the two new wingers, are beginning to look like the men the money was spent on, and that Rocchi and Belmonte give this side two ways to hurt you through the middle. And it means Diego, twenty-six and a respected name on this continent, has produced the kind of evening that a season is remembered by.

The bullfight metaphors are easy on a night like this, so forgive one more: the picadors did their work early, the banderillas went in, and Diego finished with the sword. Eight-nil. Los Bercianos will talk about it for years.