Ansu is sad. What’s wrong with Ansu? It’s a matter that worries Barcelona fans, and a lot. He dreamed of a flag player, a differential forward who went to the team like a ring on his finger. The player class that eases any pain. He was a child, but he played with the confidence of an adult. Half a dozen matches were enough to proclaim himself a figure, without the slightest reproach. The agreement was general: Ansu Fati is one in a million. When he played well, he almost always scored goals. When he played a little worse, he also faced. He had the goal on his body, but the magic evaporated. A knee injury, several operations, an eternity to return, the doubts, the criticism, the pressure, the fear of the irreversible, the debate around an eventual transfer. While Barça is playing in the League and almost enjoying the title, Ansu Fati is contesting another championship: against the memory of the fabulous youngster who made everyone fall in love, against the bitter memory of his injury and subsequent operations and against the impiety of the unbelievers. Perhaps because of all this burden, his goal in Elche, one of the four that Barça scored against the bottom of the League, acquires a special resonance.
Will we see Ansu Fati in his old version or will we get used to a pale version? It is a question that is not only asked by Barça fans. Any football fan detected in the first Ansu the aroma of special players. He emitted a special light, something that transcended his innate status as a goalscorer. In that decadent Barça he left, he transmitted something more than a breath of hope. His precocious naturalness guaranteed Barça the type of player that would ease the grief during Messi’s final years. Made at home, moreover, Ansu Fati claimed the fantasy of a return of the team to its origins, the Masia, the style and all that.
We don’t know what will happen with Ansu Fati’s career at Barça or in any other latitude. There is a period that will require mental strength as much or greater than physical strength. Not so long ago he was the most impactful Spanish player in the world of football. He’s rarely in the headlines now. And when he enters the team, he does not enter as any player, nor as a footballer in a recovery period after four operations. The fans, the journalism, everyone loves the previous Ansu Fati and wants him already, without delay, a cruelty very typical of the sport that acquires an unhealthy magnitude in football.
A gigantic storm has been unleashed around Ansu. At 20 years old he has to fight with a pressure that destroys anyone. It is the reason that explains the importance of his goal, one more for any Barça player, a very special one for a striker who needs to look like the striker who was finessing the goal with no apparent effort. Any detail that reminds him, that reminds us, will help heal his fears, frustrations and anxieties.
It is already known that the goal is a highly effective medicine in football. If the goal accurately reproduces the best of a footballer, its value multiplies. The best thing about Ansu Fati in Elche was not his goal, but what he reported in his long escape, the excellent driving and the naturalness of his finish. It was Ansu Fati in his pure form, a goal that resembled what we all remember from his brilliant breakthrough in football. A healing goal. Hopefully.
