Barça’s sound protocol in Montjuïc includes a novelty: the celebration of goals through public address systems. After a goal is scored, a song plays and the announcer calls out the player’s name with an interrogative emphasis for the audience to respond by shouting the last name. Example: Ferran Torres’ goal, the speaker’s song-question (“Ferran!”) and the audience’s response (“Torres!”).
This childish ritual has been practiced in many stadiums (the Bernabeu) for years, and it comes from the influence of American sports shows, designed to keep the audience constantly occupied and save them from any spontaneous initiative. Against Cádiz, the song Serà because I love you played, the Owls’ version of the original by the Genoese group Ricchi e Poveri, Sarà perché ti amo.
It’s a song from 1981 that has been resurrected many times and is now experiencing a moment of great popularity (if you want to know more about Italian popular music, listen to David Guzmán’s Viva l’Italia on Catalunya Ràdio).
As for the atmosphere of the stadiums, the change is obvious. The noise is brought up to saturation in order to place advertising messages (from sponsors or the club itself) and the spectator is intimidated with a disco logic – if they can’t talk, they will consume more. The conversation time before the matches, so formative for many generations of culers, is today a fossil. The stridency is imposed to the point that, in the broadcasts, the previous comments suffer constant interference that sabotages the communication. It’s useless to complain: it’s a sign of the times that has commercial alibis and connects with the liturgical habits of the hobby -sorry: of the clientele-. The cry (like “¡Hola don Pepito!, ¡hola don José!”) and the song are the link in a chain that distances us from the individual experience to impose the spirit of the Mexican wave or prefabricated animations.
I don’t know if the Owls’ song will always be played or if it will be part of a wider repertoire. But the dissidents of these new protocols, in addition to considering them relics, can already be told that if they do not accept these changes, it must mean that they do not love Barça.
