The popular slogan says that being a member of Barça is the best thing there is. It is not the only case of hypertrophied self-esteem in the world of football. The feeling of belonging usually results in an overacting that does not always correspond to a tangible reality. Tribal pride unites and exorcises possible attacks from the external enemy. The problem is when the enemy is within and multiplies like a ravenous alien. Fortunately, it rained generously in Barcelona on Saturday and Barça won with comfort amplified by refereeing decisions that hurt Betis.
The rain, the victory and the increasingly longed-for possibility of winning the League are compatible joys that helped to heal the wound of Vallecas’ unworthy match. They also confirmed that this season’s schedule distorts the natural cadence of the competition. For some time now, football has reproduced the vices of basketball and accumulates days in bulk, which make it difficult to have an organic perception of the fan experience. In other words: too many things happen. Instead of savoring the life of the team following the natural course of the days, we transform the militant experience into a compulsive concentration of ephemeral emotions.
“It’s what it is”, Ronald Koeman would say, and that’s why some of us have to learn to assimilate the new rhythms of the competition without immediate memory. On Saturday, it was time to celebrate the goals and the attitude of the team and form an own opinion about all the important things that, in a few days, have happened at the club. The latest: the debut of Lamile Yamal, which contradicts the hierarchies of grassroots football and propels the inflation of future myths announced with great fanfare and which are not always confirmed.
But the most transcendent news of the week has to do with the construction of the Camp Nou, the transfer to Montjuïc and the official explanation of the financial operation – an explosive cocktail of mortgages, credits and euphemisms that make up the essence with triumphalism irrefutable panic – which forces Barça to play with the fire of questionable income forecasts and with the reckless mirage of imaginative solutions. Elena Fort’s intervention on Montjuïc is not deceiving: the figures and protocols that the club must impose to fill the stadium seek an immediate performance, which will exploit the tour operator’s enthusiasm and freeze the character of a fan that alternates between ‘absenteeism, re-consecrated suspicion and the intuition that the best way to help the club is to look the other way and pretend that everything is an honorable form of sacrifice.
When you try to improve the quality of the information and talk to people who are academically prepared so as not to be intoxicated by propaganda, you realize that Barcelona’s affections prevail and that everything leads to the same uncomfortable truth: aside from the board’s plan that presided over by Joan Laporta and the juggling acts of improvisations, cuts, inconsistencies and desperate creativity, is there anyone who can propose a more reliable, responsible and convincing alternative?