Pandemic in between, Txingurri Valverde returns to the Camp Nou, where time is running out, which is outrageous. The stadium is now named after the world's largest platform for music downloads and podcasts. The debts were tight, Barça is a gluttonous commercial expert and previous ethical and aesthetic misgivings have dissipated, so Valverde arrives at the Spotify Camp Nou, a stage with musical resonances more than appropriate for a man who enjoys the guitar (he is the guest guitarist on two Lou Reed tribute songs: Sword of Damocles and Rock and Roll, produced by Jonan Ordorika).
He had time to recover the guitar and let off steam with it, and also to get on the bike and pedal in difficult times to digest. She pressed the coronavirus and the wound of the dismissal was fresh. In January 2020, two months before the alarm decree that canceled social life on the streets, Barça played an unforgettable game. Rarely has there been more distance between the fullness of a performance and the misery of the result. Barça lost 3-2 against Atlético de Madrid, in the first edition of the Super Cup that was played in Saudi Arabia, under the witty auspices of Piqué and Rubiales, Geri and Rubi for posterity.
Valverde's destiny was marked. The geography of the tournament favored the unspoken goal of the Barça leaders, who sent a delegation to nearby Qatar to start negotiations with Xavi Hernández. The defeat did not prevent Xavi's refusal, nor the dismissal of Valverde, subjected to the wear and tear of both the team and the club, engaged in an exercise in self-destruction rarely seen in football.
Barça fired Valverde and few anticipated the drama that lay ahead. Leader at the time of the dismissal of their coach, after winning two consecutive Leagues, greeted with icy coldness, Barça entered the jungle: Barçagate, Covid-19, empty stadium, suspension of the championship, accusations of embezzlement between managers, tensions between managers and players, technical bankruptcy, Messi's burofax, resignation of President Bartomeu, Laporta's banner on the corner of the Bernabeu, five endless months of electoral process, changes of coach -Quique Setién, Koeman- and Laporta's victory in the elections of 2021.
All this and much more in a year, indicative of the seriousness of the club's problems and the decline of the team, which has not won the League again, nor come close to that possibility, since Valverde's dismissal, justified with the typical evil sotto voce: the team is not working, the physical response is weak, the players impose themselves, Messi does what he wants when he wants and how he wants, the veterans are only moved by greed...
That Barça lived outside of reality, absorbed in its previous greatness and inattentive to all the symptoms of a bestial crisis, exacerbated by the consequences of Neymar's departure to Paris Saint Germaín. Valverde directed that immense gruyere with discretion, excellent results in Spain – two Leagues, one Cup, leader at the time of the dismissal – and great disappointments in Europe. With the perspective that the last two years allow, Valverde was the most effective, reliable and loyal of the characters in the Barça tragedy, noisily displaced in the last two editions of the European Cup, on the verge of catastrophe in the current one, and without an echo in the two previous League championships, now converted this season into big game hunting.
Valverde left Barcelona, moved to Bilbao and they say he breathed. Two years of oxygenation, a hermetic silence and the return to Athletic, where he trains a young team, with promising football, with almost none of the unfortunate adhesions that consumed him at Barça.
