San Mamés, the old and the new, has never been a simple feud for Barça. Nice, yes. But also intense and passionate. A field of those who press. Accompanied, of course, by a well-earned patina of nobility and lineage, of recognition of the opponent. But, as the playground is, Barça stood in the Cathedral with the shame on top of the Negreira case. A cross that promises to carry like a calvary through all the fields of the firmament from now on. A martyrdom that the team has to endure in the form of chants that I had never heard before. “In Second, hey; a Segona, oé”, they chanted unanimously to Barcelona from the crowded tribunes of the Basque stadium.
For different reasons, the Barça team has received shouts against it in various ways throughout its life, but until now “A Segona” was not part of the repertoire, because this is usually sung as a mockery of a team that is doing badly in the classification That they dedicate this chant to the leader of the competition must be something unprecedented, not only in the Spanish League, but also in world football.
The game, to a certain extent, was marked by Barça’s payments to the former vice-president of the referees. Due to the events of the week, with the complaint from the Prosecutor’s Office, and due to the fact that the young team of Athletic had decided to promote a measure on the subject. It was a matter of throwing some blue and red banknotes with the dollar symbol, the word mafia and the Barça crest onto the grass at minute 30. From this sector of the field, the cry “It’s a mafia, Barça is a mafia” was already shouted during the warm-up. But in practice the gesture of the tickets did not have a very visible reflection beyond one of the goals. Much more notorious was “A Segona”, and also another more ingenious tune, ironically. “Posa Negreira; Xavi, put on Negreira”.
A musical thread to make a club like Barça red, muddy. However, the Blaugrana footballers did not seem to lose focus. They continued in the usual way. Without much brilliance with the ball but with work and pushing the games forward.
To stir the cocktail even more, one of Gil Manzano’s assistants raised the flag on Raphinha’s goal and it was necessary to go to the VAR for it to be validated. A success of the technology that caused a monumental anger from San Mamés, who dedicated a general whistle to Raphinha because he understood that he celebrated the goal too effusively. The anger multiplied with many more decibels when Gil Manzano annulled the equalizing goal, by Iñaki Williams, through previous hands of Muniain. Even the measured Ernesto Valverde was outraged and the cries of “A Segona” returned, together with a wave of handkerchiefs.
It could be said without fear of being very wrong that Barcelona did not experience such an atmosphere in Bilbao, with continuous protests from the public, since the turbulent times of Schuster and Maradona, when Goikoetxea was a leg hunter; Javier Clemente, dialectical pyromaniac, and that was, in the famous words of the German midfielder, like traveling “to Korea”.
It was the eighties and Enríquez Negreira was then an active referee. He could not, as a Catalan, manage Barcelona’s matches. other times Now he no longer referees. But it is more present than ever.