Year 2024. Matchday 38 of LaLiga football. Real Madrid and Atlético, also from Madrid, face each other in the last match of the championship. Both teams are tied on points. Whoever wins will take the title, decaffeinated, since it is the first to be played without Barça, which was forced to drop in category as a result of the Negreira case.
Florentino Pérez is calm. He knows that if the rival are not the culés, it will not be possible to repeat that of the two leagues lost in Tenerife in the last breath. In addition, today they are playing it at the Bernabéu and not at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López, Buyo is no longer the merengue goalkeeper and there is VAR. Everything controlled.
At that precise moment, on the other side of the world, the newly created Euro-Asia-Oceania Cup is taking place, a new project by Gerard Piqué's Kosmos company. Barça, led by Leo Messi, who returned to the club in the summer after his tour in Paris, is the great favourite. He faces the Asian champion in the final. Millions of people will watch the game on television (it is broadcast on all continents) and many more millions through various streaming channels on social networks. Ibai Llanos is one of the star commentators.
FC Barcelona is about to finish its best season in terms of economic income. They have won the Euro-America Cup and the Euro-Africa Cup and, now, they are aiming for the treble. These are competitions (yet) not recognized by FIFA or UEFA, but they don't need to. They have generated large audiences and succulent benefits. What was going to be an annus horribilis for Barça has ended up being a special season, which will mark a before and after in the history of football.
Following the Laportista argument, Barça had been punished by those who wanted to stop their efforts to create the European Super League, by those who did not look favorably on a Turkish company taking over the construction of the new Camp Nou, by those who wanted ceased to be a soci club and for those who simply wanted to see it sunk in the cave (not only in the media) after the economic crisis that had been dragging on since the Covid pandemic. But, against the odds, the opposite happened.
In the 2023-2024 season, when Barça, exiled to Montjuïc, was forced to play in the Second Division, they discovered that they did not need to be part of the Spanish League. Nor was it necessary to create a European Super League.
As a result of the Negreira case, Barça opted to create two first-team squads. One, with some established players and other juniors, who played in the LaLiga Smartbank, while the other, led by Messi, dedicated himself solely and exclusively to giving bowling all over the world throughout the year in exchange for succulent sums of money, to part of television and advertising rights contracts. That is, what they normally did on preseason tours, but this time, all year long.
In parallel, the income of the LaLiga clubs and television audiences plummeted because the Barça enemy had disappeared. The classic was no longer played and Barça played the Cup matches with its second first team, without Messi, Gavi, Pedri, Ter Stegen, Lewandowski, Dembélé or any other star, since they were all constantly on tour, as if they were the Harlem Globetrotters. The First Division clubs, especially the more modest ones, who always had a good entry into their stadiums with the visit of Barça, saw how this money they always had vanished with the culés expelled from LaLiga. Spanish football entered a crisis.
All this was explained by the Blaugrana president, Joan Laporta, in Sydney, in an interview with La Vanguardia's El Burladero del Lector shortly before the final of the Euro-Asia-Oceania Cup.
- Good afternoon, President Laporta, thank you for attending us. What are you carrying on your shoulder?
- A them.
- Oh! And what's his name?
- That we are not so bad.
- As?
- It's called, "That we're not so bad."
- In Spanish?
- Yes, he is from Puerto Rico... Although I call him, privately, "Que no estem tan fotuts".
- I see that it is blue and scarlet.
- Yes, of course, he is from Barça.
- And how did you get them to let you into Australia? Here they are very fussy with the animals that come from outside.
- I told you it belonged to James Cook.
- Do not tell me! And have they believed it?
- He puts it in his avian passport. Look, here: "This parrot belonged to James Cook on his voyage up the east coast of Australia."
- Yes, this parrot lives for years, right?
- He is a super parrot, yes, like Messi he is a super crack.
- Does that say it now, that Leo has returned to Barça?
- I've always said it. Messi is one of the greats of the club, like Cruyff.
- And tell me, did James Cook also call his parrot that, "That we're not so bad"?
- No, he called it "Endeavour", like his ship, but in Puerto Rico he learned Spanish and there they put the name "Rico" until it came into my hands. I was tempted to put him "Leo", but, in the end, I decided to call him "Que no estem tan fotuts".
- Curious... Tell us, Mr. Laporta, is it true that when Barça was forced to be demoted due to the Negreira case, Piqué offered them to leave LaLiga entirely to play in the Kings League and you answered: "No, that would be like trade a Rolex for a Casio".
- No, it's not true, damn it! It's a hoax... Also, which would be a Rolex and which would be a Casio in this case?...
- Floren... tino... Floren... tino... Floren... tino...
- What does the parrot say?
- Floren... tino... Floren... tino... Floren... tino...
- Ignore him, he always gets like that when someone alludes to the Negreira case.
- You... were... You... were... You... were... Floren... tino... Floren...tino... Floren...tino... Te ... you... you... you... you... you...
- You have it well taught, eh!
- He has learned it alone, like all good culé.
- Tell us, how did you come up with this idea of creating two first-team squads and having the cracks play these new international competitions created by Piqué?
- Well, the truth is that it occurred to me when, on April 22, 2023, I read an article in El Burladero del Lector from La Vanguardia where they supposedly interviewed me and I supposedly talked about it, but not then, but now.
- That sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? It's like very dystopian.
- Yes, but the fact is that here we are and we are no longer going to play the Thebes and Florentino League again, at least with the first team of the first two teams that we have created.
- And how are you doing in Montjuïc?
- Very well, when there is a game, we always invite an archer, who stands in the middle of the field and shoots an arrow to light the cauldron. It is spectacular!
- How in the Olympic Games?
- Yes, the member (and, above all, the tourist) loves it. We are thinking of building a cauldron at the Camp Nou.
- And how are they going to do it?
- Turkish style, of course. Also, the Turks were great archers. Mind you, Turkish archery is an archery tradition that developed in the Ottoman Empire, although its origins were in the Eurasian steppe, already in the second millennium BC.
- In the end it seems that they made the right choice choosing the Turkish company... As they say, "they took a good Turkish one"... Do you think that Florentino Pérez would have liked his company ACS to have won the bid for the remodeling of the Camp Nou and that's why he got so angry?
- That you will have to ask him. To the parrot!
- Whom? to the parrot?
- No, him. To the parrot!
- To the parrot? Aren't we so bad?
- No, I'm telling you, him. TO...
- Floren... tino... Floren... tino... Floren... tino...
- Was it a cheap shot that Real Madrid appeared as a private prosecution in the Negreira case?
- As I already said, Real Madrid has always been considered the club of the current regime. That they said they felt wronged seemed to me and seems to me very cynical.
- Floren...tino... Floren...tino... Floren...tino... Franco... Franco... Franco... you... bas... you... bas ...You...did...Franco...Franco...Franco...
- The parrot does not miss a single one, eh!
- No, my parrot is always on the parrot.
