Inclusion. Style. Empowerment. Diversity. Emotion. And again people. A lot of people at the Camp Nou. 54,667 spectators sang the tenim un nom que el sap tothom while witnessing how the women’s Barça managed for the sixth time in its history and fifth in a row to qualify for the semifinals of the Champions League, beating Roma. The link between this Barça and its audience continues to be record-breaking. The four best entries in the history of the top European women’s competition are from the Camp Nou. After the two world attendance records achieved last year with more than 90,000 spectators, the one that took place against Roma was the third best entry in the history of the Champions League.
The joy began to feel soon. An hour before the game, the queues to get out of the metro and the crowds around the Camp Nou made it clear that, this time, an audience with a very different magic from the one that comes to see the men’s tournament, already knows that you have to go to the Camp Nou with time to not miss anything that happens on a pitch where the mark left by Piqué’s Kings League was still intuited. Before entering, some families were lucky enough to receive the League F sticker album with two envelopes and the first stamps to begin completing them.
Despite the differences, they vibrate with the songs like nobody else. The trip continues on the Camp Nou esplanade where boys and girls wearing Mapi León, Alexia or Aitana shirts dance on game day performed by a brass band. They are accompanied by some giants and a blaugrana bighead, elements of local and festive identity. The animation stands were commissioned after the chants continued to sound inside the Blaugrana fiefdom.
The joy continued to grow after Barcelona’s fifth goal. Like the trajectory of the team, increasingly consistent in Europe. Let’s go back in time. Season 2016-2017. Exactly six years ago, on March 29, 2017, the women’s Barcelona won their first passport to the European semifinals in the long-awaited Miniestadi and in front of 7,350 spectators with Xavi Llorens on the bench. There is no one left, only Mariona Caldentey who watched the game from the stands along with Claudia Pina and the also longed for Alexia Putellas. The Camp Nou reminded her that she was waiting, who knows if in the semifinals, chanting her name.
Vicky Losada was also in the Blaugrana eleven on that March 29, 2017. Today in Rome, the great ex-captain, without a doubt one of the architects of Barcelona being a competitive and winning team today, was moved when she stepped onto the green of the Camp Nou for the first time in her third game with the Romanista team. Being a starter was a gift that Losada appreciated. She completed 45 minutes and began the second part on the bench due to injury. She staged her feelings by breathing hard and momentarily closing her eyes. At one point in the game, the cheerleaders chanted her name. The Camp Nou was also able to applaud Andressa Alves, another ex-Blaugrana in the Romanist ranks who retired in 1978. In Jonatan Giráldez’s Barcelona, ??the Blaugrana players Lucy Bronze and Keira Walsh made their first appearances and did not stop smiling.
The sun has gone. The German referee Riem Hussein and his assistants added three minutes, and the Camp Nou completed another tradition to close the party: the lighting of the telephone lanterns. The game is over. President Joan Laporta celebrated it in the box, embracing the director responsible for women’s football, Xavier Puig. Sergi Roberto, the sole representative of the men’s team, also applauded.
As the players from Real Madrid, Wolfsburg, Rosengård and Bayern have done before, the Roma players applauded the Camp Nou, grateful for the feat of a movement that began in Barcelona and has also served as an example for clubs like the Italian one that opened their stadium, the Olimpico in Rome in the first leg. Just like the rest of the teams that played in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. The party ended in the center circle. Mariona, Alexia and Claudia Pina came down to celebrate the victory with the team. And the stands insisted: Being from Barça is the greatest thing I have done.
