Lots of people and victory

Things that the Catalans can do while they wait for Sunday's game against Athletic: regret that Barça dispenses with Toni Ruiz after so many years of effective, discreet and non-sectarian service to the club.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
23 October 2022 Sunday 23:37
7 Reads
Lots of people and victory

Things that the Catalans can do while they wait for Sunday's game against Athletic: regret that Barça dispenses with Toni Ruiz after so many years of effective, discreet and non-sectarian service to the club. They are changes legitimized by the elections and endorsed by the personalisms of the current board. But those of us who have been lucky enough to treat Toni have the right to regret it, even if it is with the useless nostalgia of Sunday afternoons.

Celebrate that Gary Lineker travels to Barcelona today to, as a journalist, receive the honors (Vázquez Montalbán International Prize for Sports Journalism) that, due to paranormal circumstances, he did not receive as a footballer. Lineker dignifies the trade of commentator-analyst not through testimonial prestige but by assuming the trade of communication with a contagious and modern commitment.

More things: verify the melancholic elegance of Ernesto Valverde, of whom legend has it that he was exemplarily educated when the board made him dizzy with office feints and conspiratorial pirouettes. Seeing the panorama, Valverde went ahead and asked them if they were going to fire him, knowing that the board, cowed, would answer yes.

Ruiz, Lineker and Valverde represent a memory that is easy to distort in the name of ephemeral interests. They are examples of fidelity that do not always have continuity or success. Ruiz, from the institution, inherited the secrets of the public relations trade through Ricard Maxenchs. Lineker lost the opportunity to go further when he ran into a Johan Cruyff who, as he did not conceive of him as a center forward, gave him the opportunity, against nature, to reincarnate in what he was not. It turned out that Lineker was more of a journalist than a winger. He knew how to preserve the culé experience without rancor, which is what is left over in other, more petty, instances of the club. And Valverde tried to correspond to a cyclothymic bombast of depression and euphoria that almost consumed him.

The match? An exciting and happily victorious half hour and a great entrance considering the asylum calendar. On the right wing, Dembélé and Sergi Roberto did what we like so much: deny predictions and confirm that football lives from the abyss between predictions and reality. I love when the immediate past transforms the present into an unpredictable artifact. And when Dembélé alters the moods of those who, bewildered, will bet on him today knowing that the day after tomorrow he will deny them with another indecipherable match.

More things to do on a Sunday night after winning three points: read Enrique Ballester's book El Fútbol no te da de comer (Ed. Libros del K.O). Prediction: one day Ballester will win the Vázquez Montalbán International Award. In one of his columns, Ballester distinguishes between beautiful players and good players and speculates on the possibility (miraculous for a Castellón fan) that there could be good and beautiful players. At Barça, in addition to the good and beautiful labels, we must add the expensive condition.