He supports the popular slogan that being from Barça is the best there is. It is not the only case of hypertrophied self-esteem in the world of football. The feeling of belonging usually leads to an overacting that does not always correspond to a tangible reality. Tribal pride unites and exorcises possible attacks from the external enemy. The problem is when the enemy is inside and multiplies like a voracious alien. Luckily, on Saturday it rained generously in Barcelona and Barça won comfortably, amplified by some arbitration decisions that hurt Betis.
The rain, the victory and the increasingly longed-for possibility of winning the League are compatible joys that helped to heal the wound of the unworthy Vallecas match. They also confirmed that this season's calendar distorts the natural cadence of the competition. Soccer has been reproducing the vices of basketball for too long and accumulates days in bulk, which prevent an organic perception of the fan experience. In other words: too much happens. Instead of savoring the life of the team following the natural course of the days, we transform militancy into a compulsive concentration of ephemeral emotions.
"It is what it is", Ronald Koeman would say, and for this reason some of us must learn to assimilate the new rhythms of the competition regardless of immediate memory. On Saturday it was time to celebrate the goals and the attitude of the team, and build their own opinion on all the important things that, in a few days, have happened at the club. The latest: the debut of Lamile Yamal, who contradicts grassroots hierarchies and fuels the inflation of future myths heralded with great fanfare and not always confirmed.
But the most transcendental news of the week have to do with the works on the Camp Nou, the transfer to Montjuïc and the official explanation of the financial operation –an explosive cocktail of mortgages, credits and euphemisms that triumphantly make up the irrefutable essence of panic– that forces Barça to play with the fire of debatable income forecasts and with the reckless mirage of imaginative solutions. Elena Fort's intervention on Montjuïc does not deceive: the figures and protocols that the club is forced to impose to fill the stadium seek immediate performance, which will exploit the enthusiasm of the tour operator and freeze the character of a hobby that alternates between absenteeism, bloody suspicion and intuition that the best way to help the club is to look the other way and pretend that everything is an honorable form of sacrifice.
When you try to improve the quality of the information and talk to academically prepared culés so as not to let yourself be intoxicated by the propaganda, you realize that Barcelona's affections prevail and that everything ends in the same and uncomfortable truth: apart from the plan of the board that he presides over Joan Laporta and the juggling of improvisations, cuts, inconsistencies and desperate creativity, is there anyone who proposes a more reliable, responsible and convincing alternative?
