Barcelona embraces the ball out of conviction and also out of necessity on its 125th anniversary (1899-2024). The celebration revolves around the game and the footballers in an institution that has had coaches as protagonists since it was founded by Gamper. It is impossible to forget the image of Cruyff sitting on the leather, just as revolutionary on the field as on the bench, the starting point of the team’s success after the club was the support of a vital entity in Catalonia. Cruyff left a score to remember as a striker – the 0-5 at the Bernabéu -, a unique team as a coach – the Dream Team— and a universal disciple as a teacher: Guardiola.
No photograph better symbolizes the Barça idea than that of the 2010 Ballon d’Or sung by Guardiola himself when the podium was taken by Messi, Iniesta and Xavi. That team reached the top of the world and allowed the entity to boast of La Masia as the repository of the essence of the game and guarantee of the continuity of Barça’s style. It is enough to see Lamine Yamal to understand that this is not propaganda, a coincidence or a spontaneous generation, but that the commitment to the youth team has been firm since the arrival of Cruyff. The Barça story acquires all its meaning around the figure of the Dutchman and his way of understanding football expands with Guardiola and several of the coaches trained at Barcelona.
There is a before and after Cruyff in the Barcelona chain that began with the influence of passing-gameof the Scots, when sport was precisely one of the greatest expressions of modern European industrial society, and which was later continued with the admiration for the Hungarian school of the fifties and the Dutch school of the seventies, the same one led by Cruyff. The elasticity of Samitier, that striker known as “l’home llagosta” (the lobster man) for his acrobatic game, gave way to the technique and delicious stillness of Kubala, to later discover the speed and harmony of Cruyff. Messi would later sublimate the association between street football and the Masia academy and would also culminate Maradona’s interrupted tango. Music and literature always accompanied Barcelona.
Accelerating and braking after having learned to fly was as necessary as knowing how to touch and pass with your feet on the ground without forgetting that transgressing with the Brazilian samba of Ronaldinho, Romario or Rivaldo did not necessarily mean torpedoing Barça’s football process. The link now continues with Lamine Yamal after the break with Ansu Fati and extends to women’s football with Alexia and Aitana. Along with the poster of Messi, Iniesta and
This explains why the anniversary motto is “Volem the pilot” (We want the ball) and it is understood the election as commissioner of David Carabén, the son of Armand Carabén, who was the key manager for the signing of Cruyff in 1973 and for Laporta’s presidential run. The president’s pillars in the 2003 campaign were Cruyff, La Masia, Catalonia and Unicef. Today, back in office, Laporta clings more than ever to the ball and to the Masia. Nobody disputes his Cruyffism and his Catalanism and independence are taken for granted after founding before the emergence of the processes the Catalan Democràcia party in 2010.
Laporta no longer needs to remember or show his political profile and the symbolic charge is not underlined or exhibited as in previous Barça anniversaries. The Les Corts stadium was closed in 1925 for blowing the Royal March. Invoking Barcelona in the stadium during the forties and fifties also meant reclaiming life and freedom: “You could say Visit Barça! and it was not a crime, although in reality you knew you were saying something else,” recalled historian Josep Termes. The 75th anniversary marked an explosion of Catalanism and Barcelonaism, an affirmation of integration and social cohesion and also one of the greatest democratic demands when the end of Franco was announced and Manolo Vázquez Montalbán had already begun to write the chronicle about the nature of Barça — ”The unarmed army of Catalonia”—. And during the centenary, Barça began to “rethink”—Puyal’s word—as an announcement of the new times that have arrived for the club and the country when the entity turns 125 years old.
La Caixa is no longer La Caixa; Convergència disappeared after unsuccessfully trying to move Núñez’s chair at the Camp Nou; Junts and ERC are going through delicate moments and the Generalitat is chaired by a socialist who is an Espanyol activist like Salvador Illa; The RACC has to reinvent itself due to competition; It is not necessary to make a pilgrimage to Montserrat as an act of culé faith; and Barça is no longer referred to as a “state structure” in the imaginary Catalonia. The political, social and cultural references have varied and the context is also different for Barça.
The Barça motto of “more than a club” is threatened and the risk increases even more because more than social causes such as the one championed by Unicef, today commercial agreements are required to combat the critical economic situation of the entity, which is not only mortgaged, but there are serious doubts about the governance of Laporta. The president is beginning to be singled out by an opposition that is as incipient as it is atomized after the time off that the majority of fans have taken with the move to Montjuïc waiting to return next year to the new Camp Nou. The option of becoming a partial or total public limited company is being raised again after Florentino Pérez announced a referendum to change Madrid’s ownership model.
Showing the ball today has more impact and is more necessary for the survival of the club than waving the flag that in past times allowed it to resist until reaching Wembley 1992. Barcelona only won one European Cup in its first 100 years, while it has conquered four in the last 25. The leap in quality of the football team has been as noticeable as that of the professional sections that play at the Palau. Although the commitment to amateur teams has decreased – the ice hockey team has disappeared – the multi-sport nature of the institution has become one of its best assets along with the style for activating the Barça brand.
“The current celebration is for the first time that of a global club,” argues accredited historian Carles Santacana. “A new phase in which the difficulty is connecting memory, which is local, with a universal scenario. The question is whether the revivalof the club’s historical identity can be linked to the brand that all top-level clubs currently need. The challenge is that the 125th anniversary serves both the local level and the international projection.” A scenario that pays off the bet on Lamine Yamal, a 17-year-old youth born in Catalonia, with a Moroccan father and a mother from Equatorial Guinea, a footballer trained at La Masia, recently named Golden Boy, winner of the award for the best young player in the world – Trophy Kopa 2024—and eighth place in the Ballon d’Or.
Lamine Yamal and La Masia allow Barça to maintain its uniqueness globally when the 125th anniversary is celebrated with the slogan “Volem the pilot”. It is no coincidence that it is an idea of the excellent and ingenious culé artist David Carabén: musician -Mishima-, journalist -his series on Barça TV were especially celebrated- and member of a family that went out of its way for the currency “more than a club” and was decisive for the arrival of Cruyff.
