Like the clown without an audience who removes his makeup in a sordid dressing room, the decline of FC Barcelona continues its course. The institutional speeches, delivered by Xavi Hernández from the bench and by Joan Laporta from the box, no longer deceive. From the invocation of Cruyffism to football nothingness. From the triumphalism of the banner to the reality of Riyadh, the capital of the country that the alleged values club contributes to whitewashing, walking among sheikhs, praising its democratic openness. Lying.
The Blaugrana club is still sick and it is Real Madrid who is in charge, the sole ruler of a Super Cup final that ended 4-1 as it could have ended like the unfortunate one in Lisbon. The entity is not moving forward, with economic debts and moral and football debts that are increasingly unsustainable.
Yesterday, beyond the usual but tacit anger of social networks, a significant change was palpable: rational Barcelona fans (there are some) were wondering if the time had not come to replace Xavi as coach. Ernesto Valverde must be laughing. He was fired in the same competition after losing a great game against Atlético, being the leader in the League and having won two (and a Cup). That's where the sins of this club begin. Believing yourself better than you are, clinging to your best times, as if by wearing the shirt your rivals would fall.
It is no longer like that. It's been too long. Football is present and future, but never past. This is not about reconstruction. It's almost a refoundation. Change the coach? But there is no money to register players. Raise Rafa Márquez from the reserve team? With what guarantees of success? With what arguments? Because he has many godfathers in there?
Barça entered the game with plenty. Again. He does not chasten. The effect of that hopeful rant from Xavi at the end of the pre-Christmas match against Almería has vanished. Soon. In January.
The game was very long for Barça and short for Madrid, a sign that the first team suffered and the second had a good time. Cruyff applied in reverse. The white party was such that even Bellingham and Vinícius, scorer of three goals for greater Blaugrana torture, chained a pair of heels facing the gallery of those who exude humiliation. You know what? The only one who reproached him was Ancelotti, his coach.
If the bet is midfield and possessing the ball, it must be protected with cannibalistic zeal. But the pressure to get her back from Barça was flaccid, she had the same tension of that skin that begins to hang, a cruel symptom that the passage of time can no longer be reversed. There is a point of misplaced nostalgia in the invocation of Cruyffism, a movement rightly mythologized but which, as Guardiola and Luis Enrique knew how to do, required a reinterpretation in line with the evolution of the times. No revisionism is detected in Xavi's Barça. Theirs is a team that works on impulse, but does not give the sensation of solidity, neither tactically nor emotionally.
The image that the box gave back was eloquent. Laporta, surrounded these days by unconditional fans brought from home, sharing armchairs with Florentino Pérez, the great traveling companion in the Super League. The ally when it came to rejecting the agreement with CVC that guaranteed Messi's continuity. Florentino is happy with this painless competition. Oh yes, the banner.
Barça, a club without money, has spent 30 million euros (and 31 in variables) to sign Vítor Roque. He is compared to Romário and Ronaldo to sell the motorcycle, but on the grass they won't even let him start. No matter where you look at it, there is no way to catch this Barça.
