Ansu is sad. What happens to Ansu? It is a matter that worries Barcelona fans, a lot. He dreamed of a flagship player, a differential striker who entered the team like a glove. The kind of player who alleviates any pain. He was a kid, but he played with the security of an adult. Half a dozen games were enough for him to proclaim himself a figure, without the slightest reproach. The agreement was general: Ansu Fati is one in a million. When he played well, almost always, he scored goals. When he played a little worse, he also holed out. He carried the goal in his body, but the magic evaporated. A knee injury, several operations, an eternity to return, doubts, criticism, pressure, fear of the irreversible, the debate around an eventual transfer. While Barça plays in the League and almost enjoys the title, Ansu Fati disputes another championship: against the memory of the fabulous youth that everyone fell in love with, against the bitter memory of his injury and successive operations and against the impiety of the disbelievers. Perhaps because of all that burden, his goal in Elche, one of the four that Barça scored against the bottom of the League, acquires a special resonance.
Will we see Ansu Fati in his old version or will we get used to a pale version? It is the question that is not only asked by the Barça fans. Any football fan detected the aroma of special players in the first Ansu. He emitted a special light, an I don’t know what that transcended his innate condition as a scorer. In that decadent Barça that he looked at, he transmitted something more than a breath of hope. His precocious naturalness guaranteed Barça the kind of player that would lighten the duel in Messi’s final years. Made at home, in addition, Ansu Fati claimed the fantasy of a return of the team to the origins, the MasÃa, the style and all that.
We don’t know what will happen with Ansu Fati’s career at Barça or at any other latitude. He is going through a period that will require a mental strength as great or greater than his physical one. Not so long ago he was the most impressive Spanish player in the world of soccer. He now rarely makes the headlines. And when he enters the team, he does not enter as any player or as a footballer in a recovery period after four operations. The fans, the journalism, everyone loves the previous Ansu Fati and wants him now, without delay, a cruelty very typical of sport that in football acquires an unhealthy magnitude.
Around Ansu a gigantic storm has broken out. At the age of 20, he has to deal with pressure that destroys anyone. It is the reason that explains the importance of his goal, one more for any Barça player, a very special one for a striker who needs to look like the striker who honed without apparent effort with the goal. Any detail that reminds him, that reminds us of it, will help heal his fears, frustrations and anxieties.
It is already known that the goal is a highly effective medicine in football. If the goal accurately reproduces the best of a footballer, its value is multiplied. The best of Ansu Fati in Elche was not his goal, but what he reported in his long escape, the excellent driving and the naturalness of his shot. It was Ansu Fati in its purest form, a goal that resembled what we all remember from his brilliant entry into football. A healing goal. Hopefully.
