In episode 330 of the La Sotana podcast, broadcast a day before the match with PSG, a sentence was uttered that deserves to be engraved in marble. It defined exactly the relationship between the Barça fans and their team at that point in the season. It was not about satisfaction, optimism and new expectations, but about something deeper, about the release of anxiety, about placing football on its rightful plane and returning the fans to a healthy state. In short, to put things in their place. “Barça has ceased to be our problem to be the distraction of our problems”, said Magí García Vidal, one of the four members of a talk show that solves an almost impossible equation every week: mixing in the right proportions the most irreverent wild with the truest sanity.

For a month, Barça returned to normal. He played well and even very well on occasions – the match in Paris was comparable to any of those remembered in the most glorious stage of the team – he did the math with the results and was stable in his performance . After a long time, people began to think that Barça could walk alone, without the ailment that has accompanied it for years. A natural relationship had been reestablished between the team and the fans. Play, win, inspire, on the one hand. Enjoy, maybe dream, of the other. And breathe, finally.

It is not easy to determine the general state of Barça after the defeat against PSG and the elimination in the quarter-finals of the European Cup. Perhaps today’s match at the Bernabéu will clarify some questions. What has recently been called the classic usually has the virtue of clarifying doubts. He solved them twice for Xavi, who settled into the position after 0-4 in his first season and got it tactically right in the Super Cup final presided over by the inclusion of Gavi as a false winger and a true midfielder together with Busquets, De Jong and Pedri.

But the matches with Madrid have also damaged Xavi’s position, especially the last three matches: last year in the Cup and this season in both the Liga and the Superliga. Three indigestion defeats that have weighed on the atmosphere and on the consideration of Xavi as a coach. The two teams come from opposite outcomes in the quarter-finals of the European Cup. Barça, punished by the early expulsion of Araújo, the four goals he conceded, the serious mistakes he committed and Xavi’s umpteenth outburst, which went into combustion again, when the team needed clear ideas and control of emotions

Barça inflicted more injuries on themselves than PSG did. He got away too easily from his two goal lead. He did not lack courage, nor the opportunities to engage the French team, which felt a kind of horror in the void when it felt so close to the classification. It is clear that old ghosts are still haunting PSG.

Anything other than a Barça victory will leave the League doomed. It already seems so with Real Madrid’s eight point lead, but football is always sensitive to perceptions. It is Barça’s turn to take on the last remaining role this season, that of a last-minute agitator. If the defeat with PSG once again opened the gap of doubt, against Madrid he has the possibility to return to the previous month and make it clear that this Barça is closer to distracting from the problems than becoming the problem.