The elimination of FC Barcelona at the hands of PSG does not leave behind an emotional wasteland or irreparable damage like other times (example: Lisbon catastrophe). In recent months, a team project has emerged that has been able to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League and compete on an equal footing with the opponents, a goal that had been set as an objective at the beginning of the season and it looked impossible during some of its stretches. The end of the European adventure therefore has a certain taste of the beginning and not spoiling this feeling must be the club’s obligation from now on. The ball Xavi had is on Laporta’s roof. The board must improve the future performances of the first team with a management that generates both financial and capacity doubts. The decisions taken during these three years have not been the best. Opacity and improvisation have gone from troubling tics to regular patterns of behavior.
New coach
Xavi Hernández will not continue next season. The club is already beginning to filter the name of Rafa Márquez as the main alternative, an option that generates little enthusiasm among the fans but whose advantages for Laporta are obvious: low cost and good harmony with Deco, the technical director who it must mark the line of highs and lows. The Mexican, coach of Barça B, is today represented by Enrique Nieto, who in turn has maintained a good relationship with representative Jorge Mendes for years. Laporta already said in the campaign that it is good to have contacts with the big agents and the Portuguese is. Many operations carried out so far bear his stamp, for example the unsolicited transfers of João Cancelo and João Félix but accepted by Xavi. Another agent who gravitates around Laporta (he enjoyed five seats in Montjuïc on Tuesday) is Pini Zahavi. The Israeli brought Lewandowski to Barcelona and has Hansi Flick in his portfolio. The German coach won the treble with Bayern and has more age (59) and more resume than Márquez (the Blaugrana side are second in their First Federation group), but he shares with the Mexican an enormous desire to come. The great trainers on the market are financially unaffordable. Xavi, for his part, has not changed his intention to leave. The season will end in a blank if a miracle does not happen in La Liga, the bench has worn him down a lot and he is not ready to go through the experience of last summer: he asked for Zubimendi and Bernardo Silva and they did not bring him of the two after having them paired personally. In the winter, Vitor Roque arrived through André Cury, an intermediary who has made a career of parasitizing Barça with the connivance of successive presidencies. Roque has not played a single minute in the round of 16 or in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. Operations such as those of Gündogan or Christensen, which arrived at zero cost signed by Mateu Alemany and Jordi Cruyff, contrast with this costly eccentricity. Mateu Alemany, by the way, was informed that he was being kicked out while he was witnessing a training session. Jordi Cruyff is not there either. Forms are not the strength of this board: Paco Seirul·lo, an institution, was also invited to leave. The other day he presented his book and no one from the club went.
Araújo, in the window
Barça’s financial situation has not improved. The levers cushioned the post-pandemic fall at the expense of laminating the entity’s patrimony, but they cannot be applied every summer. The initial public offering of Barça Media, which was sold as a guarantee of flotation, is today an anvil more tied to the nuts than what is left of the safe, and the allegedly multimillion-dollar spoils of the Superliga is in the withdrawal phase of cable, today turned into an inappropriate souvenir, a reminder of the failed coup against UEFA with an unnatural ally: Real Madrid. It is no coincidence that expelling the Barça central comes free.
Elimination in the Champions League meant the loss of 20 million profits, divided between the forfeited prize for not going through to the semi-finals and the estimated revenue from the match that will not be played in Montjuïc. There is only one glimpse of good news of an economic nature: the contract with Nike. The trip of one of the top executives of the American company on the Barça plane to Paris already foreshadowed a possible reconciliation. The contract expires in 2028, but if a renegotiation is confirmed it would equate to an improvement in income. In any case, the solution to the most urgent problems (fair play) will be to sell players. Araújo, without depreciation, has an offer from Bayern Munich that could reach 80 million. The discredit campaign for the best correcting center in the squad already started before his mistake against PSG, very similar to the one promoted by the club against De Jong two seasons ago. The Dutchman, whose performance has dipped since then, will be back in the shop window, as well as other players. The red line is the star footballers of the youth team, especially Lamine Yamal, Cubarsí and Gavi.
The dressing room and Gündogan
The mental stamina of the dressing room after the cruel way they went down against PSG is an unknown. The players have a classic in the corner that can be used to bring down the curtain on the season in case of defeat (and to open, with six games remaining, the usual avalanche of rumours) or to prolong the fight for the League still that with distant options to achieve it. In bad times it also becomes more difficult for statements like those of Gündogan, who publicly reprimanded Araújo’s action in the expulsion as an avoidable mistake, not to leave a wound. The German will have to take the initiative from inside so that the scar closes as soon as possible.
