Gone are the days when you could see Barça on the field and read about it in the sports pages. It hasn’t been that long. Football’s first millennials soaked up their fandom with the prodigies of Messi, Iniesta and Xavi, with Barça winning all six titles and the treble under Luis Enrique. Back then, things were simple. Barça was more than just a club, the team was the envy of world football and every aspiring footballer dreamed of wearing a Blaugrana shirt. The previous generation told the story of Cruyff and the dream team, and so on it slid down the slide of history until it reached Gamper. This is, in short, what football and Barça have been like for the feverish supporter, the average fan and the indifferent one who hears bells from time to time. Not anymore, and much less at Barça.
With football, and especially with Barça, a surprising phenomenon is happening. It aims to explain what happens in the sports pages for an audience that has historically rejected economic jargon in the football narrative. The current fan likes the economies to be sorted out in the offices and to know which line-up the coach will have in the next game. For this he pays a fortune in the various ways of consumption that the football business has made available to him. All the other things confuse him, confuse him, worry him and put him on guard. The supporter wants things clear and the ball in the box. Something frankly dysfunctional happens when the fan is confronted in the sports press with the fearsome jargon that occupies the economic pages of the newspapers, the salmon universe that has entered the world of football like a shell and threatens to overwhelm it.
In fact, it will be anorized very soon. A fact: almost 40% of European clubs are in the hands of investment funds, companies whose purpose is to buy, sell and make a profit for their customers. Even if he doesn’t recognize it and it bothers him to admit it, Barça already has a foot and a half in this universe.
The Barça supporter has resignedly accepted the storm that has been hanging over the club in recent years. He assumes that the club has slipped, that Messi is a memory that was lost on the horizon and that he will not see any of the figures who would kill to play for Barça. Yes, those who approach sunset and maintain the dignity that prevents them from selling themselves for a few barrels of oil get there. They are players, Lewandowski and Gündogan, who grew up in the heyday of Barça, admired it from other destinations and wanted to have the pleasure of ending their careers in Barcelona. The fan greets them with gratitude and imagines the future feats of Pedri, Gavi, Lamine Yamal and all the young people who have entered as a salvation army to a club that forgot about them for a decade.
The Barça fan aspires to this particular universe of excitement and big dreams, but on the sports pages he finds the economy pages, a bad trip to the universe of leverage, financial fair play, salary caps, crypto companies, investment funds, private investors, Goldman Sachs, CVC, BLM Merchandising, Barça Studios, Sixth Street Capital, Socios.com, Orpheus Media, Libero Football Finance, NIPA Capital, NFT, Gestifute, Web 3.0 and the string of acronyms that sprinkle the information that deals with the vicissitudes of the club. This abstruse world, undoubtedly substantial for the future of Barça, is faced with suspicion and anxiety by the common fan, who yearns for a sigh, something that makes him return to a sense of innocence, to indulge himself to see Pedri, Gavi and Yamal together, to enjoy, in short, a game that will not be saved from the greed that has invaded it.
