E l Barça has reached a point where it needs an Asimov to tell the tale. Installed in a peculiar temporal reality, he travels from one era to another and sometimes finds himself in three different periods at the same time. Past, present and future are confused in a dizzying transit, coming and going, before the astonished gaze of the world of football.
The rabid present places him in the League, ready for his confrontation with Girona at the Camp Nou, a game in which he cannot make the mistakes that penalized him against Real Madrid. Barça has been labeled champion, but football is carried by the devil and viciously punishes skids.
While the team strives to forget the loss of the Cup and recover the pulse of the championship, the club looks to the future, requests loans, pushes levers, gets up to its eyebrows in debt and dreams of a productive remodeling of the Camp Nou, prologue of the greats times to come
Until then, Barça works with an obvious logic: it solves the problems of the present and prepares for the challenges of the future. But it is the past that returns again and again, an irrepressible drive that takes him back to an earlier time, undoubtedly happier and more pleasant, although disturbing. The obsession with the past in soccer presents the same complications as the return to childhood in adults. It is the most obvious symptom of unresolved difficulties.
A good part of the Camp Nou chanted Messi’s name in the 10th minute of the game against Real Madrid. With the advantage acquired at the Bernabéu, Barça had the high possibility of reaching the Cup final. On the field, the team included several youngsters who intend to make a career and earn good money, youngsters like Araújo, Gavi and Balde , coveted by the best clubs in Europe and crucial for the progression of Barça. His ears heard the name of a footballer who is adored at Barça, but who plays for another team.
The scene had a Kafkaesque air, if it weren’t for the fact that Barça is prisoner of a melancholic loop, from which it does not escape. The past inevitably runs through the heart of Barcelona and in no instance is it more evident than in the board. Since the return of Joan Laporta to the presidency, the most symbolic actions have been dominated by nostalgia.
The massive presentation of Xavi and Alves at the Camp Nou claimed to be linked to an exceptional period for Barça, close in time, very distant in the cruel reality of football. The call to the classics made sense in the turbulent days that followed Koeman’s dismissal and the team’s failures against Bayern and Benfica. It was convenient to alleviate the wounds, but time passes and it is not convenient for Barça to settle into a perennial nostalgia.
Barça and Messi will end up understanding each other, as Real Madrid and Di Stéfano understood each other after a stormy breakup. In this case, the club experiences this situation as duels with the deceased are experienced, without forgetting the guilt complex that is seen in the Barcelona world, exacerbated by Messi’s resounding success in the World Cup. The duel is likely to be double. Messi hears whistles in Paris, in a team that makes him richer, but not happy. Another thing is the chance of reunion.
If Barça is determined to look to the future, they will have to abandon their melancholy. Messi, this Messi, produces a passionate but nostalgic relationship. He will ease sorrows, but his time has passed. He will come to you at another time, in another activity, in a future that will be more desirable if Barça once and for all abandons the loop that slows them down and misleads them.
