It wasn’t that long ago that this team played in the mud, washed their shirts at home and competed on a training ground in the sports city. Now they have their own stadium – which they fill every day –, fly in a customized plane to places such as Stamford Bridge or the Allianz Arena and walk the red carpets of the Ballon d’Or or the Laureus awards. And all this has happened in a very short time. So little that some of the footballers who wear the Blaugrana shirt today are still the same ones who trained at ten o’clock at night in the worst fields. That is why this has been a particularly hard week for the team. This is the only way to explain the rage with which they celebrated their passage to the Champions League final on the Stamford Bridge lawn. This deafening and liberating scream from Jonatan Giráldez, the bench exploding with Aitana’s goal and going crazy with Rolfö’s, Alexia’s emotional embrace with her mother, who doesn’t miss a single designated night.
It has not been fair with this team. The defeat in the first leg was a jug of cold water that no one expected, especially because of the way it happened. They lacked identity – among many other things – but they did not deserve the doubts they aroused. Surely this is something linked to the feeling of Barcelona, ??this endemic pessimism that comes almost instinctively to the culer fan, even when it comes to the best generation of footballers the club has ever had. The one that has won two Champions Leagues in three years, the one that has won the last three Ballon d’Or awards, the one that is admired around the world. As football’s greatest legends have done throughout history, this team has managed to make the most difficult look easy. Winning without messing up, accumulating individual and collective titles, reaching all the finals… People have gotten used to seeing them at the top of everything and normalizing the extraordinary comes at a very high price. And even more so with a dressing room as ambitious as this one, which has never hidden its hunger to win absolutely everything. But one should not confuse requirement with obligation. You need to highlight everything they have achieved and what it costs to stay up there. The dressing room arrived in pain at the Stamford Bridge game, and after achieving a comeback as complex as it was liberating, they sent a warning to navigators: “We don’t want it to seem like this is the bread of the day. If you don’t reach a final, it’s not a failure”, warned Cata Coll. “The evaluations with the result are not always fair”, claimed Jonatan Giráldez. It hasn’t been an easy few months for the Barcelona coach either, accused of not being one hundred percent focused on Barça after announcing his departure to the United States. His euphoria in London before getting on a plane and heading to Paris to watch PSG-Lyon and start preparing for the San Mamés final is understandable. He missed the party on the return plane with the players and the rest of the coaching staff. “Some beer on the plane will fall”, could be heard in the corridors of Stamford Bridge. Although it was a measured party. On Wednesday they play against Madrid CFF with the focus on the League title which can be mathematical this weekend. And in fact, in less than a month, Barça can lift La Liga, the Copa de la Reina (May 18) and the Champions League (May 25). The latter, the most special title. Bilbao could turn out to be the largest movement of fans in the history of the club – male and female -, another example of everything that this team, which is already a legend, is capable of moving.
