Harold Ramis directed Groundhog Day, a cult film that received little attention in 1993, the year of its release. In Spain, where the creatives of the film industry maintain their fixation on alternative titles, it is known as Trapped in Time, which is the subject of a story that begins to plan about Barça. Like the protagonist of the story, Barça returns this year in the Champions League to the same scenario as the previous season, included in a group headed by Bayern again and what that means for the Barça fans: the most ominous threat in football .
In the film, Bill Murray plays the journalist who hears the alarm clock at the same time every morning to report the appearance of a groundhog after hibernation. The marmot returns to the burrow if, when it goes out into the open, it does not observe its shadow, a sign of a fierce winter. If the sun shines and its silhouette is drawn in the snow, the rodent leaves its shelter and greets the incipient spring. In less than two weeks, Barça will begin to get its head out and find out if it reveals a promising shadow or returns to captivity.
The group is similar to last year's in historical terms – Inter replaces Benfica, two teams that have crossed paths several times, and not always for the better, in Barça's history – and it presents enough difficulties to gauge the true state of the Xavi's team UEFA published the calendar yesterday, which will start with the visit of Viktoria Pilsen – the equivalent of Dynamo kyiv in the previous season – to the Camp Nou, now known as Spotify Camp Nou, a name that irritates the ears of purists but excites the club management.
It will be a match that will not allow concessions to Barça because Inter and Bayern will face each other on the same date. It will make the enormous difference between the optimism of victory or the anguish of the journey in the next five games, presided over by the memory of the injuries that Bayern have inflicted on him in recent years. The German team has become accustomed to certifying Barça's crises with the vocation of an executioner. In the last edition of the Champions League, they won (0-3) at the Camp Nou and repeated the same result in Munich, the scene of Barça's elimination, just beginning the Xavi era.
Barcelona fans definitively accepted the extreme seriousness of the crisis, both in the sporting and economic aspects, but they felt the fatal blow two years earlier, in the savage destruction of Lisbon in the quarterfinals, the 8-2 that ended without remedy with Messi's Barça and the splendor of an entire era. The return of the beast places Barça in a position that prevents any possibility of fabulating. Either he accredits the progress that is supposed to be made or he will be condemned to hell again. The crisis would become unsustainable if there were a new elimination in the first round of the Champions League.
Unlike last year, Barça will not be looking for a miracle in their confrontation with Bayern, who otherwise maintain their implacable hegemony in the Bundesliga. He does not feel, or so it seems, the absence of Lewandowski, a central character in the story that is coming. On the Polish striker, now at Barça, rest the new expectations of a team that is now in a position to face its rivals, including Bayern, in its recurring role: it will tell us if it allows Barça to enjoy a good spring or it will send you back to your dark burrow.
