The game ended and the journalist on duty went for João Félix Sequeira, who had scored a beautiful goal, like a billiard cue, and had a more than creditable game, at least since his team appeared on the field of play and It put an end to a dantesque spectacle in which Iñaki Peña looked like Iron Man, or Thor, and the Porto footballers were aliens in a herd that slipped through a demonic portal opened in the sky of Barcelona. “The match was a final and we won it,” he said, happy after having made history for the first time with his new club. And the fact is that, two years later, Barça will once again play in the round of 16 of the Champions League: let them get a greyhound.
It may seem like a joke, but it is not. Making history has become an expensive vice for the times in which this economically battered Barça, timid in sporting matters and strangely happy socially, live. How long is Laporta going to continue lamenting the inheritance he received? ask the most unruly. There is no exact answer, much less absolute. It will depend on how much irresponsibility we are willing to blame on predecessors that Logan Roy’s children must have felt as soon as they saw the level of income. In the specific case of the fans who come to the stadium it seems infinite, based on the passion and dedication they are showing with a team that does not stop or start, the worst scenario for a fan.
It can be seen with the naked eye in the stands of the Lluís Companys, a temporary shelter for the Barça hosts while a legion of workers builds the new wishing house under the confusing seal of the Turkish construction company Limak. The panorama has changed with respect to the old coliseum. And a lot. The young people with baggy sweatshirts, abundant bangs, bracesand colored sneakers appear to be a healthy majority compared to the most classic fan, that member and subscriber of a certain age who boasted of his friendship with Rudy Ventura, or of always reading Migueli, and who did not think of taking a seat without having ready the lighter, the sandwich or the cloth handkerchief, that famous mocadorthat marked an era and handed down multiple sentences in the worst years of the institution.
No matter how poor the local team’s game is, the new stands of the Not yet Camp Nou She seems determined to accompany him to the end with passions and noise, very much in the style of the Greek fields, or the Turkish ones, which may also be understood there, Limak’s choice: one never knows where the influences come from, but they come. And this is how no one closes their eyes anymore trying to find the rhythm of the chained passes, a classic in Cruyff’s time. It is not even explained to the person next to him that Guardiola played the ball in C sharp, De la Peña in E flat and Iniesta in D. Now they sing and encourage incessantly because, among other things, times are not for luxury and going to the Palau de la Música always required more expense than going up with friends to the Gràcia festivities. It is a more popular Barça, in short, with a coach who has become – and by his own will, too – the sad exception that confirms the rule.
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