“We’re back, we’re back.” How many times has that proclamation sounded hollow. How many times she empties. How many times exaggerated and gratuitous. Because of the uncertainty and the haste. Barça had been coming back with blows, with promising episodes, with a lot of sacrifice, with work and with kids. With all that and 1-0 after 1-0, Barça was League champion but had not yet returned definitively. “We are on the path,” Xavi Hernández had also said in the meantime, when he opted for common sense and lowered the soufflé of the always impetuous Laporta.
But this time yes. This time Barça is back. Because what he did in Paris, surrounded by light, technicolor and Star Wars scenery (Star Wars for those of us who are already classics), should be wrapped in cellophane paper and glossed as it deserves. Optimism had been growing as the weeks went by, with good results and, above all, with a much more solid and defined structure, essential traits to compete in the Champions League. But who most and least feared the ogre Mbappé, the intense Luis Enrique and the always unpredictable Ousmane Dembélé.
Behind these fears is the whole black legend that has accompanied Barcelona in the competition since it last won in 2015. That string of goals against, blows and ridicule weighed on the retina like a stone.
But the past is there to be reversed and turned upside down. And also to think that the rival also has fears. Because PSG, built with mountains of petrodollars, has always had its forbidden Eldorado in the Champions League. 0 titles in their showcases in the tournament compared to 5 for Barça. That statistic doesn’t win games but it influences. Because doesn’t anyone remember what it cost for the Barcelona team to triumph for the first time? And what did Manchester City also suffer, for example, to debut in these competitions?
Barça was asked to compete and Xavi was asked to show that he was prepared for the Champions League. In Naples he already showed his team what he could be capable of and in the Parc des Princes he confirmed it. It’s not about shining more or less, nor about scoring a handful of goals. It is essentially about being prepared, about putting the pace, intensity and mentality required in a tournament in which everything can fall apart at any moment.
Barça had its phase of anxiety and recovered like no one remembered. If Luis Enrique sought to destabilize Xavi by showing off more Blaugrana DNA than his colleague, he did not succeed. Because the pupils of Terrassa functioned as a joint collective, as a group of solidarity, Stakhanovite and committed to almost the entire game. The aid system to stop Mbappé was excellent and he was hardly seen.
There is still work to do, there would be more to go, but this Barça has earned every right to dream. Which is not little.
