To begin with, a mosaic of linguistic affirmation and the traditional and impossible minute of silence. Music and an idiot who screams without respecting the dramaturgy of silence in memory of Josep Maria Fusté. He was a singularly talented player, a practitioner of the ancestral Lleida irony, which the more he tries to appear dry, the more funny he is. Already retired, he kept the activity of the veterans alive and, like a Malayan drop, he hung around the locker room –until Ronaldinho’s time– to sell Christmas lottery to the stars.

On the pitch, the sun of a magnificent Sant Jordi pays homage to Xavi, who, no matter how hard he tries to repeat that the schedule is not an excuse, seems to believe that it is. The game improves, thanks, in part, to the omnipresence of De Jong, who is to midfield what the Station Service is to local commerce. Luckily, in the first minute Griezmann did not score a goal that, if it had gone in, would have a dramatic Shakespearean dimension.

Not too much trust. The proof is that many culés do not take long to demand Ferran’s expatriation and to resort to one of the rituals of resignation: signing the tie. Signing the tie is one of the piano keys of pettiness, the resource of a defeatist sense of life. Poetic justice: Ferran scores the winning goal, which keeps alive the certainty that football in general and Barça in particular don’t make any sense.

During the break, Els Tíets (or whatever the hell they’re called) try to get the spectators to dance a kind of indie sardana that they can tell their grandchildren. In the box, Stoichkov looks like he misses the days when coaches and players made bets and you could go down in history for stepping on a referee. Seeing Pedri again provides us with some oxygen, without knowing if, like other hypertrophied calendar years, he will get injured again.

Araújo, who continues to be the best player on the team, celebrates the end of the game with a rage that is as expressive as it is symptomatic. All three points are important because all points are, especially when you consider the threat from Madrid (who are by far the most psychologically intimidating team in the world). Winning saves us from falling into the spiral of panic mathematics, signing future draws and calculating the losses we can afford. In the end it all depends on trying to take advantage of opportunities.

I return to Josep Maria Fusté through an article by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (1970), who wrote with a talent and freedom that we can no longer afford today. Put on your bib and, in respectful silence, enjoy: “Word I never know what Fusté will do when he catches the ball. So, invariably, I lean more towards the countryside and focus as I would focus on an equally unpredictable Samuel Beckett poem. And, like a Beckett poem, Fusté sometimes disappoints, but sometimes it makes up for it with a piece of soccer culture. And when things go well for him, he leaves happy, running, head down, with very expressive elbows, as if creating an impossible escape trail inside a bullring where he is cornered, under the omnipotent voice of the public, stuck in a strange mess that has always seemed absurd but fascinating”.