The football calendar is playful, with notice. The dates are known and they are written down before the start of the League, with a lying coldness, as if the devil did not load the games with all kinds of contexts, as if this Real Madrid-Barça, so early, so far from the end of the championship, would not have major consequences, a soft classic, without the fury or the quarrels of other occasions. And there is something of that: the heat is still stifling in Madrid and there is no recollection of such a relaxed atmosphere in the streets. Even the political tension seems to dissipate. Fewer flags hang from the windows and Real Madrid has not called for an outcry. He is calm, safe, confident. He doesn't feel threatened. Barca, yes. The calendar, so cold when it was known, has played a trick on him. Barça is weighed by context, a ton of context.
Barça plays against Madrid and against the frustration that the successive defeats with Inter have caused, although the last one was made up with a draw that was more virtual than real. In strict terms, Barça is on the verge of elimination from the European Cup and one step beyond. He feels that gravity is already pushing him towards the abyss of the Europa League, and that will bring consequences and more levers. Built in the summer to race as a Ferrari until next spring, it has gone off the rails at the first corner of the season.
The match arrives very badly placed, on the worst possible date, demanded by critics, the public and the internal tensions in the club, although Laporta prefers, with good judgment, to show his more restrained side, almost senatorial. Little to do with his fiery message at the assembly last weekend, full of optimism and good forecasts. He has to put out fires and is used to it, defending veterans, keeping silent, forced by the disappointing current circumstances.
The victory or the draw will not save Barça from its role in Europe, but it would alleviate the heavy atmosphere that is breathed at the moment. The defeat would push to desolation, to that emptiness that is installed when everything goes wrong and bad news arrives in a cascade, without giving a drop of respite. A transcendent game for one team, important, not relevant, for another. To day of today, the Madrid can bear the bad digestion of a defeat. Xavi knows it very well.
In April he strengthened his popular position in Barça's win at the Bernabeu, the 0-4 that did not change the course of the championship, nor did it generate benefits in Europe. A few days later, Eintracht beat him in both games and knocked him out of the Europa League. However, that victory over Madrid encouraged them to dream, to clear away the murria of Barcelona fans, embittered by the club's institutional, economic and sporting crisis.
Dreaming is better than penicillin in football and this time the dream has suddenly vanished. Barça has to walk with its feet on the ground, pressured in each game, the expectations that had been created have been banished. At the Bernabeu he faces his first step on the long road that awaits him until the end of next May. In his current state, under fierce scrutiny, he can't afford a slip.
It is not the route in the League that Barça is playing for. One, two, three points would indicate little in any October. It is a diabolical October, full of dissatisfaction for a club that intends to take off from its disturbing situation and fails. At the Bernabeu, Barça has a plank to hold on to. It is not the Queen Mary that comes to the rescue, but for now it works.
