The 3-1 loss might have drawn conflicting conclusions but instead brought a consensus: Barcelona aren’t all that goodWhen at last it was all over, Joan Laporta stood up, shook hands with Florentino Pérez and slipped out. For the second time in five days Barcelona’s president had sat front row centre watching things fall apart. He had listened to the Real Madrid supporters he had been so looking forward to seeing again launch into olés, laugh their way through ironic pleas for his coach to stay and invite him to enjoy Thursday nights in the Europa League, and now it was time to leave. He went down the stairs, past the statue of Sotero Aranguren and Alberto Machimbarrena cast in bronze...
A new documentary film explores the story of a move that led to a pig’s head being thrown at the Portuguese superstarResearch conducted by Edward Geiselman, a former Professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, corroborated the theory that somebody who is lying will often break eye contact and glance away at a crucial moment during interrogation. Although it’s easy to read far too much into somebody’s tics or mannerisms, it is quite telling that in the recently released Netflix documentary The Figo Affair, on two separate occasions when the eponymous subject is asked directly about his seismic transfer from Barcelona to Real Madrid, he gives one-line replies during which his normally inscrutable stare is broken by...
Barça have opted to buy big instead of backing a young squad and a manager steeped in the club’s values and traditionsThe greatest trick Pep Guardiola ever pulled was to convince the world that club DNA exists. Football changed when Guardiola was appointed Barcelona manager in 2008. It’s not just that the world’s eyes were opened to the full potential of possession football or that goals a game shot up in the knockout stages of the Champions League – although both did happen – but that a model was presented of how things could be.Here was a coach with no first-team experience who immediately offloaded two big-name foreign stars in Ronaldinho and Deco and, in his first season, won the...
Barça are spending money recklessly to maintain a myth, but in the modern superclub era it is unlikely to cost them dearlyRobert Lewandowski has signed a four-year deal with Barcelona, which means he probably has a good 18 months before they ask him to take a wage cut. Give or take. Naturally a good deal depends on how much deeper into their financial quarry Barcelona have managed to dig themselves in the meantime. Perhaps, alternatively, Lewandowski will be asked to defer a portion of his salary, or maybe amortise it into 420 easy monthly instalments, or accept payment in the form of $BAR fan tokens.This is the perk of being the world’s biggest and most incoherent club: there is always...
His winner against Sevilla led to more Messi comparisons, but it is another Barça idol that the teenager more closely resemblesFirst Pedri González put Ivan Rakitic on the floor, next he put Diego Carlos on the floor and then, allowing time to speed up again, he put Yassine Bono on the floor and 76,112 people on their feet. And that’s just those who were in the ground chanting his name, bowing before him. Because if Sevilla fell for the quiet lad who comes to the Camp Nou with his kit in a carrier bag on Sunday night, so did everyone else. “Pedri, Pedri, Pedri,” went the cover of Sport, like a kid calling on the Candyman and soon there he...