He was closing the most important stage of his life. He kept hundreds of matches, dozens of titles and countless emotions locked away in the memory drawer. With tears in his eyes, making an impossible effort to keep calm, Gerard Piqué said goodbye to professional football and Barça in November with a heartfelt speech on the Camp Nou lawn. Yesterday the ex-footballer, now a full-time businessman, returned to the Barcelona pitch for the first time in triumph. He left behind the vulnerable image that saw the parish culer in his farewell, unique in his career as a footballer, and recovered the bar that has always characterized him to welcome the final four of the Kings League, the successful idea shaped by the excentral with his company Kosmos that starts from football, but seeks, above all, entertainment with the support of well-known streamers, ex-football players and radical regulations.
“Good afternoon, Camp Nou”, Piqué opened the evening after arriving in Hollywood fashion by helicopter with the presidents of the classified clubs: Perxitaa (Los Troncos), TheGrefg (Sayans), Adri Contreras (El Barrio) and Juan Guarnizo (Aniquiladores ). The temple of Barça, place of worship of football in old Europe, made an exception to open the doors to a project that began as an experiment and whose first edition culminated in glory in front of 92,522 spectators and more than two million in the networks. The icing on the cake was the championship title for El Barrio, but the day was full of Super Bowl-style lights and colors.
The sport of the United States, turned into spectacle, has been a mirror for this proposal that has captured the restless minds of young people. Accustomed to the Camp Nou to a calm and gray-haired audience, now also surrendered to tourists, the Kings League caused the old stadium to become an anthill of teenagers eager to cheer and chant names, among which, that of Messi, under the gaze of Joan Laporta from a box that he shared with the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and other politicians such as the mayors of Barcelona Xavier Trias and Ernest Maragall. It was not the only reference to Barcelona’s past, as Neymar was also announced as president of a club in the edition of Brazil. Finally, there were the usual chants from the Barça fans.
The event was enlivened with music and by the presidents of the clubs, including the unclassified ones, such as Ibai, Agüero and Gerard Romero. The rappers Skone, Chuty, Gazir and Bnet and then the singers Lali and Tiago PZK put the notes of a show that, despite its great wrapping, had, in the end, the same protagonists of a traditional party: the footballers While the stands were enjoying themselves, the procession went inside for the players in the bowels of the stadium, most of them also footballers from regional teams in Catalonia. Playing in a full Camp Nou only appeared in his dreams. “It’s the best atmosphere in the world”, Piqué recalled his feelings in what was his garden, with measures adapted to football 7. The football that was seen there, logically of less carats than the usual Camp Nou did not disappoint in excitement and dynamism, at least in the semi-finals.
The duel between Los Troncos and Aniquiladores had moments of quality and goals, especially that of Dorkis with a shot on goal that forced penalties after equalizing at two. The shootout, in the style of the American MLS of the nineties, a hand-to-hand fate between goalkeeper and shooter, was decided in favor of Aniquiladores thanks to goalkeeper Dani Pérez. The battle for the other ticket, between Saiyans and El Barrio, got off to a halt until the rules dynamited the match: a two-on-two for two minutes saw it go from a scoreless tie on the boards to two in the rest. After the restart, El Barrio decided the duel with a goal in the last minute from Ros (4-3).
Fireworks preceded a more decaffeinated final between the seventh and eighth of the regular season. El Barrio put the victory on track at the start with the penalty goals of the president Adri Contreras, a license of the regulations, and another of Mantovani of the head. The saves of José Juan, Alcoià’s recent hero, and Mantovani’s final goal sealed the victory for the Blues (3-0). Coach Juan Arroita’s players celebrated the title as if it were a League or a Champions League, the stage was worth it. El Barrio lifted the trophy in the sky of Barcelona, ??a triumph for the club of Adri Contreras and for Piqué, his first great success after years of adding to his list of awards dressed in shorts.
