San Mamés, the old and the new, was never a simple square. Pretty, yes. But also intense and passionate. A field of those who squeeze. Accompanied, of course, by a well-earned patina of nobility and ancestry, of recognition of the adversary. But with the courtyard as it is, Barça stood in the Cathedral with the embarrassment of the Negreira case on their backs. A cross that promises to carry like a Calvary through all the fields of the firmament from now on. A martyrdom that the team has to endure in the form of songs that they had never heard before. “To Segunda, oé, to Segunda, oé”, they unanimously chanted Barcelona from the crowded stands of the stadium.
For different reasons, the Blaugrana team has been able to receive shouts against them from various coats throughout their lives, but “a Segunda” was not part of the repertoire. Because it is usually sung as a mockery of a group that is poorly classified. That they dedicate that to the leader of the competition must be something unprecedented not in the Spanish League, but in world football.
The game was marked to a certain extent by Barça’s payments to the former vice president of the referees. Due to the events of the week, a complaint by the Prosecutor’s Office, and due to the fact that the young supporters of Athletic had decided to promote a measure on the matter. It was about throwing some blue and scarlet bills onto the pitch on the pitch with the dollar symbol, the word mafia and the Barça shield. From that sector of the field, the cry “it’s a mafia, Barça is a mafia” was vociferated during the warm-up. But in practice the gesture of the tickets did not have a visible reflection beyond one of the goals. Much more notorious was the “a Segunda”, and also another more ingenious tune, due to its irony. “Take out Negreira, Xavi take out Negreira.”
A musical thread to bring out the colors of a club like Barça, stuck in the tar. However, the Blaugrana footballers did not seem to lose focus. They continued in the usual way. Without much brilliance with the ball but with work and pulling the games forward
To further shake the shaker, one of Gil Manzano’s assistants raised the flag at Raphinha’s goal and they had to go to VAR to validate it. A success of the technology that provoked a monumental anger from San Mamés, who dedicated a general whistle to Raphinha when they understood that he celebrated the goal too effusively. The anger was multiplied by many more decibels when Gil Manzano annulled Iñaki Williams’ equalizing goal at the hands of Muniain. Even the restrained Ernesto Valverde was outraged and the shouts of “Second Division” returned, together with a flurry of handkerchiefs.
It could be said without fear of being too wrong that Barcelona did not experience such an environment in Bilbao, with continuous protests from the respectable, since the convulsive times of Schuster and Maradona, when Goikoetxea was a leg hunter, Javier Clemente, a dialectical arsonist and that it was, in the famous words of the German midfielder, like traveling “to Korea”.
It was the 1980s and Enríquez Negreira was then an active collegiate. He could not, as a Catalan, direct the Barcelona matches. Other times. He now he no longer referees. But he is more present than ever.
