Sometimes football is an exact science, like when the leader of the competition comfortably beats a dying team. In addition to the result, the way to achieve it is comforting because it puts the success of the forwards -Lewandowsky, Ansu Fati and Ferran- first, who broke the spell of an increasingly omnipresent statistic. This inertia of the well-managed advantage is the most important tool for Barça today. The rest not only do not follow the principles of the exact sciences, but also establishes a climate of aspersion that triggers theories, rumors, panics and intuitions, creating a climate of communicative chaos that is interestingly speculative.
The interest is variable. According to the president Joan Laporta, the interest of the villains who slander the club prevails, although many culés in good faith hope that the board of directors will answer a chain of doubts –reputational, financial, conceptual, sports– fed conscientiously. To complete this effervescent smoothie, revive a hypothetical return of Messi. 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 such as “Messi’s environment”. Messi’s entourage 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 Messi. Or a formula as perverse as the “they tell me” of someone who actually hears voices. The Messis are not a defined mass either and, as often happens in the world of football, they vampirize the inflation of people who speak on their behalf. On the part of Barça, the balloon probes part of a defining characteristic of Laportismo: emotionality as the engine 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 seedier 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 got hooked on this story because, whether from skepticism or an act of faith, it does not cost us anything and allows us to wander about issues that, unlike the Negreira case or the club’s finances, flatter our brother-in-law and anesthetize our senses. critical. In fact, when in a conversation between culés you try to establish a certain rational criterion and remember that Barça has not been able to register Gavi and has to reduce the salary bill by 200 million euros a year, the response is a look of contempt that accuses you of being a fucking killjoy tribune and castrator of dreams. And the most incredible thing is that the contagion works and the conversation continues in deliciously absurd terms. The interlocutor tells you that it’s okay, that it’s impossible for Messi to come back because the club is ruined. And then he pauses… -and here he changes his gaze- and, with a luminous smile, he asks you: but what if he came back?
