Anatomy of an iconic photo: The birth of Barcelona’s ‘MSN’ era with Messi, Neymar & Suarez’s joy

The numbers were ridiculous. Goals, assists, trophies — stacked to a level that borders on parody. It almost feels obscene that Lionel Messi , Neymar and Luis Suarez were allowed to line up together, at the peak of their powers, at Barcelona . Give someone else a chance, eh lads?

But numbers alone don’t explain why it worked the way it did. They don’t capture the feeling.

You look at the base ingredients today, with hindsight, and it feels like world domination was inevitable.

Neymar is Brazil’s all-time top goalscorer, the most eye-catching, dazzlingly talented player of the post-Messi & Ronaldo generation. He was winning Puskas awards and being named on Ballon d’Or shortlists when he was a youngster at Santos.

Suarez arrived fresh from one of the greatest individual campaigns any player has had in English football history. Steven Gerrard recently named the Uruguayan as his greatest-ever team-mate.

There’s little left to say about Messi’s legacy. Only 18 months before Suarez’s arrival, he’d scored 91 goals in a calendar year. He was just 23 when the likes of Arsene Wenger were already declaring him the greatest footballer in history.

Luis Enrique is now widely regarded as one of the best coaches in the world, having led PSG to the treble with a hardworking team built in his image. It’s the second he’s won in Europe.

Surely, you stick that all together and greatness was always in their destiny? Rewind to January 2015, and that looked anything but the case.

Luis Enrique was under great pressure in his first season in charge of Barcelona. It was his first elite-level job, and he still had everything to prove at that stage of his coaching career.

The former Barca midfielder had struggled at Roma, done a decent but not especially spectacular job at Celta Vigo, and his combative, uncompromising manner led to a frosty reception from the infamously hypercritical Catalan press.

Neymar had shown plenty of promise in his debut season, but it ended without any major silverware.

He struggled with injuries, and a question lingered over his ability to adapt to the physicality and speed of the European game.

The talent was unquestionable, but he’d been overshadowed by the considerably more powerful Gareth Bale over in the capital.

Suarez had just bitten Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup. Regardless of the lengthy ban that ran into the early months of the 2014-15 season, his signing came shrouded in controversy – not least for a mammoth transfer fee. Would such a volatile character upset the apple cart?

Messi, of course, was Messi. But there was a prevailing sense that the Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu presidencies were failing to build a team worthy of his talents, especially in the wake of Real Madrid looking ominously relentless in the six months following La Decima .

People were genuinely talking up Carlo Ancelotti’s side as Madrid’s greatest-ever. If any team looked like winning a treble midway through that season, it sure wasn’t Barcelona.

They won 18 of their first 21 outings in La Liga, including a resounding 3-1 victory over Barca, and carried a record 22-match winning streak into the new year.

Barcelona’s ‘MSN’ trident hadn’t exactly hit the ground running. Suarez eventually made his long-awaited debut in El Clasico in late October and offered a hint of what was to come by assisting Neymar after just four minutes.

But Madrid fought back to win 3-1 at the Bernabeu, taking advantage of a Barcelona side that lacked balance with their new superstar frontline.

The three of them started the following week against Celta Vigo and drew a blank in a 1-0 defeat in Galicia.

Suarez believes the start of Barcelona’s golden ‘MSN’ era really began with a 2-0 victory over Ajax, bouncing back from those back-to-back La Liga defeats.

“Against Ajax, Luis Enrique wanted Messi as a false nine since he was used in that role,” Suarez recalled in a podcast appearance back in 2023.

“Neymar and I were on the flanks, but Messi saw that it didn’t work & told me: ‘Oi Gordo, stay in the No.9 position & I’ll open the pitch for you on the right side.'”

Far be it from us to contradict Suarez, but it would be a while yet before the ‘MSN’ were really flying. Suarez is right about the tactical machinations and positioning, but the timeline doesn’t quite match up.

Form remained sketchy with a goalless draw at Getafe, while Luis Enrique paid the price for resting Messi and Neymar – who couldn’t rescue things off the bench – as Barcelona kicked off 2025 with a 1-0 defeat at Real Sociedad.

On paper, Barca had assembled the most fearsome attack in European football history. But they were somehow failing to score goals and paying the price for it.

There were hints of their potential, with all three scoring in a Champions League group stage victory over PSG, but put simply this was not yet a functioning team.

‘Are Barcelona suffering from an identity crisis under Luis Enrique?’ read one headline in ESPN published on Christmas Eve 2014.

That seems wild now, but it was a reasonable taking of the temperature at the time.

“As one commentator put it: ‘the best thing we can say about 2014 is that it is over,'” noted writer Sid Lowe.

“The problem is that, right now, 2015 doesn’t look likely to be much better. Last season ended without any trophies; the fear is that next season will too.

“Worse still, some have decided, Barcelona are just not Barcelona.”

The Catalans were four points behind Madrid at the halfway stage of the 2014-15 season. Reigning La Liga champions Atletico Madrid were level on points and defeat to Diego Simeone’s rugged band of upstarts might’ve seen Luis Enrique sacked in early January. The era might have ended before it even began.

But it was in that game that everything changed. From that point on, they never looked back.

Neymar opened the scoring after just 12 minutes. Set up by Suarez. Twenty minutes later it was the Uruguayan on the scoresheet, with Messi acting provider. Mario Mandzukic fired back for Atleti midway through the second half, but Messi sealed all three points in the closing stages.

As Messi wheeled away to celebrate, he was joined arm-in-arm by Suarez and Neymar. All three absolutely jubilant. Their beaming grins were captured for eternity by the pitchside photographers.

– Sunday, 28 May 2023

The image inevitably made the front pages of Spain’s sports dailies, as well as the likes of L’Equipe and Gazzetta dello Sport across Europe. It received over 300,000 likes on Barcelona’s Instagram page, back when that was a massive number.

The symbolism was clear. The ‘MSN’ era was born that night. Not only did Barcelona boast three of the finest forwards on the planet, but they were linking up superbly and getting the best out of one another.

They even developed strong bonds away from the pitch, with Messi and Suarez especially tight to this day.

A 3-1 victory, a massive three points, but most importantly a superb performance. Not only did Neymar, Suarez and Messi all get on the scoresheet, but Luis Enrique had nailed the foundations of a brilliant, unstoppable team.

The same 10 outfielders would start their treble-capping 3-1 Champions League final victory over Juventus five months later.

The key shift was dropping an ageing Xavi Hernandez, the tiki-taka symbol of the glorious Pep Guardiola era, for Ivan Rakitic.

The Croatian midfielder wasn’t anywhere near as tidy a passer as Xavi – he couldn’t run a game – but his tireless running and boundless physicality offered the perfect balance behind the front three and alongside old Pep stalwarts Sergio Busquets and Andres Iniesta.

Luis Enrique’s Barcelona, defined by that front three, turned into an all-conquering juggernaut in the months that followed.

They turned over Atleti twice more in the Copa del Rey quarters. Scorelines of fours, fives, sixes and even eights were routinely racked up as Barca went on to win 16 of their last 19 in the league. Man City, PSG, Bayern Munich and Juve were all put to the sword in Europe.

The collective stats of Messi, Neymar and Suarez were utterly outrageous . With a combined 451 games together, they produced 363 goals and 272 assists.

There’s a good chance we’ll never see such a fearsome attack ever again. It all started with that celebration in that win over Atletico.

It’s not often that a team, a historic treble-winning season, and a whole era can be summed up by one photograph. But legacies aren’t built in trophy lifts alone.

Sometimes, they live in a single frame — one that tells you everything about who they were, and why they’ll never be replicated.

By Nestor Watach