The men’s section of Barça has this year managed to get its head among the eight best teams in Europe, but it remains to be seen what kind of journey a club that is on the loose in the League and which, aware of its shortcomings, looks with reverent awe at its Champions rivals. Only the very young players that Xavi Hernández has bet on – with courage and determination – generate excitement in a club held back by an abysmal debt and a management that, with a benevolent spirit, we would describe as exasperating.
The diagnosis is very different if the focus is placed on the women’s team, considered a real world team, virtual champion of the League (today they play the classic against a Real Madrid that arrived late and badly in women’s football) and one of the favorites to win the Champions League. The team led by Jonatan Giráldez, in addition – and this is the most relevant – has generated around them an exciting dynamic of identification not only with the club, but also with the demand for a more egalitarian society and less stale football.
All this has been verified the few times that the team of Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatíha has been able to play at the Camp Nou or the Olympic Stadium, with record attendances that have surprised the world and stands full of girls and boys . In the beautiful but tiny Johan Cruyff, this very special atmosphere can be seen in every game.
Ultimately, Joan Laporta’s board inherited a team that would be the dream of any president: a super squad admired around the world, while Florentino Pérez’s Madrid is paying dearly for the lack of ability of its managers to detect the impact global that women’s football already had in the previous decade. The Golden Balls won by Alexia and Aitana have ratified the stellar projection of this Barça in a sport that is driving a real social revolution.
But, despite all this, there is a widespread feeling that the club is lowering the ambition of its bet on women. It’s hard to believe, but the facts confirm it. Barça let slip away without a replacement at his level, the architect of the squad, Markel Zubizarreta (now in the national team) and will also lose, with a resignation that scares, Jonatan Giráldez, without today knowing his replacement or substitute
Not even the continuity of a symbol like Alexia, who is being spared a contract upgrade that, even if accepted, would continue to place her below the lowest paid male player, and that despite the fact that he sells more shirts with his name on them than any footballer, with the apparent exception of Lewandoski, Pedri and Gavi.
Nor do they invite optimism messages sent from the board – the same one that invited Messi to leave – in the sense that they will not compete with the English clubs that do bet heavily on their players, either thanks to the income which they generate by themselves as if leveling budgets with male templates (in short, moving towards equality in the same sense as the rest of society). Maybe it’s that this Barça is not so different from Madrid that they had to buy a first class club to stop making a fool of themselves?
The problem transcends the sporting field: Barça’s award-winning footballers have become renewed symbols of a city that is not without them. Reviewing history shows that, since the industrial revolution, football has helped foster a sense of belonging to a community (sometimes, of course, to undesirable limits). Well, the passion aroused by the Blaugrana is an updated example of this. It is not easy to find benchmarks like this in a metropolis where young people feel pushed out by their unsustainable rents. This is no longer the exciting city that was on the map in 1992 driven by a hundred thousand Olympic volunteers, but a city that, like almost all, tends towards disenchantment. If Barça loses this match, so will Barcelona.
