Love Barça

I have always felt a certain discomfort when my fellow members refer to Barça with the motto "més que un club" and not because it seems absurd to say that FCB is, in all probability, the most important multi-sport company in the world, nor because it is equally true that the history of Catalonia could not be globally understood without an extensive chapter dedicated to the club. Even if only for its impact on the economy of our city (almost 3% of its GDP depends directly or indirectly on the entity) and for constituting its primary commercial identity brand, Barça must be objectively analyzed as something more than a simple football team. However, the eternal adjectivization "of something more," this kind of messianic factor, has also led to a complacency by which, too often, members have ended up excusing the oceanic mediocrity of its managers and have also forgiven the team for not achieving its first and only obligation: that winning be part of normality.

Catalans have always had a strange relationship with our emotions, and that of loving (the country, its politicians, our institutions) we have always understood more as the art of forgiving sins and excusing the miseries of our overseers, rather than demanding the maximum freedom for what they supposedly love. This also makes us have a difficult coexistence with victory; there are too many years of dwelling on the ethics of 1714 and sadistically fornicating with defeat, too many decades in which our leaders have accustomed us to the litany of lowering the bar of our ambitions so as not to be accused of lacking sanity, lest if we overindulge in victorious hunger and joy, some Spanish official gets angrier than necessary. In the case of Barça, these are not tall tales from someone who often errs on the side of metaphysics; until the arrival of Cruyff and with Laporta, the history of the entity can be summarized as lifting Cup Winners' Cups and beating Real Madrid in the league as an excuse to save the season.

This ethic has been perfectly summarized in the figure of Josep Maria Bartomeu, to whom the members will have to thank for the merit of having been the worst president in the history of the club with a legacy difficult to worsen, an economy at rock bottom and an evident and totally logical image crisis, if we take into account that the club (fraudulently) hired companies whose noble objective was to go against the reputation of some of its best players. If this era has to serve for something, it is to remind the social mass that grayish leadership has direct effects on the pitch and on the mood of the members. In just under a decade, we have gone from the Barça of the sextet to a team that is only thirsty to win matches so that the best player in history recovers his spirits and does not leave for Manchester. Today's Barça, as seen in the Sevilla match, is a team of faith, of comeback and pit i collons: and I am not much for comebacks, I am more for crushing the opponent.

In a context of discredit and with a difficult economic situation to face, but also in a present where being president of Barça can lead you to have problems with the Spanish judiciary, we must thank Joan Laporta, Víctor Font and Toni Freixa for their courage to step forward and show their Barcelonism in this turbulent era. They are three brave men, with unique and in some aspects antagonistic projects, but which are not the result of improvisation. Their gallantry has also been demonstrated in a campaign where a fair play has prevailed that many politicians of the tribe should imitate, in which the priority has not been to discredit the opponent but to try to explain the best of each vision of Barça. Falling so low in the Bartomeu era has served us, at least, for the three candidates to give us a well-worked, hopeful and forward-looking campaign. I insist: doing it at this moment was not easy at all and the three must truly be thanked for their crit valent.

Falling so low in the Bartomeu era has served us, at least, for the three candidates to give us a well-worked, hopeful and forward-looking campaign

Barça's economic situation will improve again when the team wins and once again leads world football. This does not mean that the club does not have urgent management aspects that go beyond the pitch and the contingency of results: reducing spending, refinancing debt, increasing commercial profits, and improving the reputation of its brand in all the intangible aspects that can become tangible income. All of this is necessary butin the world of current football, increasing the cash can only be linked to scoring more goals than the opposing team(25% of the income depends on the victory, based on the League classification, and a progression from 9.5 to 19 million in the case of the Champions League). In this sense,the field will only become a clamor again and Barça will recover its composure if the team revives the sextet philosophywe must make winning normal again, the international calling card of the entity, and not the exception for which one must apologize.

It is interesting from this campaign that all candidates have highlighted that the club's government cannot remain anchored in past criteria, that it is utterly delusional that there are still entrenched and opaque groups such as the Assembly of Delegates and, in turn, it is also good news that the world of referendums and direct democracy (we have needed a pandemic for Barcelona fans to be able to do something as simple as voting by mail!!!) is part of the decision-making scope of some essential aspects of the club's management life. It is also magnificent news, and a few years ago it would have been unthinkable, that all electoral programs of the three candidates make non-anecdotal mentions of the entity's women's teams. From being invisible or a mere facade to look good, it has been shown that when the institution and the media highlight the sporting work of the club's women (because they are women, not "girls") the fans respond with great interest and attendance.

It has been shown that when the institution and the media highlight the sporting work of the club's women (because they are women, not "girls") the fans respond with great interest and attendance

After this abject time of supreme mediocrity,only strong leadership can reverse the low morale of Barcelona fansand in that, Barça is no exception to what the country's institutions and companies need (to ascertain the opposite, one only has to pay attention to Plaça Sant Jaume and to most of the parties in our moribund political life). As for this campaign that has just concluded, Toni Freixa has grown as a candidate as the weeks went by and his sharp verb has proven optimal for someone who wanted to dedicate himself to the trade of pundit, but his excessive dependence on boards of directors of ill repute disqualifies him from being a candidate with the enthusiasm to lead Barça. Víctor Font, on the contrary, has not been entirely smiled upon by a campaign where he boasted of having prepared a plan for seven years, of which, beyond the surface and having Xavi as a reference (without the player ever explicitly confirming it), he has only summarized the skeleton.

Overcoming the Bartomeu era will undoubtedly be good news. But all this is not enough. Long before we smelled the rot of Bartogate, in a premonitory article, Jaume Giró already warned that the biggest crisis Barça had was not only economic, nor institutional, nor sporting, but above all a serious reputational crisis. "Reputation has no shortcuts," said the editor of The New Barcelona Post, and added: "the fact that the best player of all time considers leaving Barça is proof that talent is not enough when there is no mission, a model and a purpose that gives it meaning." The key to all this, I said at the beginning, is whether loving Barça implies a conception of love as an act of tolerating imperfection and baseness or if, on the contrary, loving it is synonymous with ambition, with leading and finally with winning. This is the old exceptionality that the club had for a few glorious years and that now needs to be normalized.

In this sense, at home we are of the 2 to 6, of the Champions won without getting off the bus and of, when one has done the work, watering the parties with a lot of champagne and joy. My choice, as you can imagine, is very clear. We will do it again. Of course.