A few hours before the function in Almeria, the tom-tom starts to sound. The Barcelona drums are beating again. Once again the acoustics are of uncertainty, of possible rapture, of maximum suspense. When it’s not for a defeat, it’s for a few words. When not, because the game convinces. This time it is Xavi’s realism that has not pleased the club’s leadership. The current version of Koeman’s “that’s what there is” (and what there will be) that the Terrassa coach verbalized on Wednesday has caused the organization’s top brass, read Joan Laporta, to frown. It is already known that if there is one thing the president lavishes, it is always optimism, enthusiasm and a triumphalist speech that in the context of these last months has not been married to what has been seen on the field of play.
But in this cabin of the Marx brothers that is Barça everything is possible and everything is changeable. I’m leaving now. I’m staying now. Don’t go now. Now maybe I’m the one saying goodbye to you. One day I proclaim eternal fidelity to you and the next day I’m looking for the divorce papers. More than a stable and long-term marriage, they seem like bar love affairs, of those that the group Ella Baila Sola sang in the nineties. A great song with lyrics that could sum up Barça’s situation. Where people live more than ever in the day, according to the wind blowing, according to the president’s rise and according to the price of the stock market, whatever his first-class courtiers whisper to him.
It is clear that the coach’s changing speech has also contributed to the general confusion. From marrying the euphoria of the president from top to bottom to seeing the immediate future with another prism, putting on the bandage even before the wound. A story that is much more consistent with the economic and sporting situation of the entity, but which arrives late, if throughout the campaign you have defended the opposite. The same as the self-criticism he criticized before the game against Real Sociedad after many days blaming even the cobblestones.
When it comes to taking stock of the season (there are still two games to go) some are pulling the strings on one side and others on the other. Because trust is more than ever a disposable product. Games as bad as Almeria’s, despite the result, don’t help either.
