Sometimes football is an exact science, like when the league leaders comfortably beat a struggling team. In addition to the result, the way of obtaining it is comforting because it prioritizes the success of the forwards РLewandowski, Ansu Fati and Ferran -, who broke the curse of an all-too-ubiquitous statistic. This inertia of the well-managed advantage is the most important instrument of Bar̤a today. The rest not only does not follow the principles of the exact sciences but also creates a climate of aspersion that triggers theories, rumours, panics and intuitions and thus creates a climate of interestingly speculative communicative chaos.
Interest is variable. According to the president Joan Laporta, the interest of the wicked who slander the club prevails, although many fans in good faith expect the board to respond to a chain of doubts – reputational, financial, conceptual, sporting – fueled by conscience . To complete this effervescent smoothie, relive a hypothetical Messi return. The structure of the rumor follows the ancestral protocol of invertebrate lollipops disguised as imminence – pure mythology – vertebrate.
It is a magical phenomenon that does not depend on reality. It feeds on concepts like “Messi’s environment”. Messi’s environment is a crown of influence so remote that it often doesn’t even exist. It can be born from the comment of someone who, without any data, had, many years ago, a certain relationship with the Messis. Or a formula as perverse as “they tell me” of someone who actually only hears voices. The Messis are not a defined mass either and, as usually happens in the world of football, vampirize the inflation of people who speak on their behalf. On the part of Barça, the probe balloon starts from a defining characteristic of Laportism: emotionality as the driving force of history.
How many times has Laporta defended ideas that, on paper, seemed irrational? Many, and sometimes it has worked for him. The thrill of a desired fiction works better than having to explain a reprehensible practice long exploited by the more sordid side of the club. In the moment of instability that Barça is experiencing, Messi represents a romanticism that has the advantage of being free. We stick to the story because, whether from skepticism or an act of faith, it doesn’t cost us anything and allows us to ramble on about issues that, unlike the Negreira case or the club’s finances, flatter our sister-in-law and it anesthetized our critical sense. In fact, when you try to establish a certain rational criterion in a conversation between culers and remember that Barça has not been able to sign up Gavi and has to reduce the wage bill by 200 million euros a year, the answer is a look of contempt that you He accuses me of being a fucking tribune who crushes guitars and castrates dreams. And the incredible thing is that the contagion works and the conversation continues in delightfully absurd terms. The interlocutor tells you that it is okay, that it is impossible for Messi to return because the club is ruined. And then he pauses… – and here his gaze changes – and, with a bright smile, asks: but what if he came back?
