A couple of days before last season's Champions League final, Luis Enrique explained to me that the biggest factor in his team being in a position to win the treble was the players in his squad who had barely featured in his starting XI from January on. It's a conversation that the events of the last few dramatic La Liga games have brought back to me with new emphasis.
There were two parts to his argument. During the first half of that 2014-15 season, players like Jeremy Mathieu, Marc Bartra, Rafinha, Munir, Sandro, Adriano, Xavi and Pedro regularly started or played significant game time as substitutes.