Going for the first title, by Josep Martí Blanch

That’s beating Madrid at the Bernabéu. There are glasses in the Barça museum that no one has any memory of. Minor competitions that demanded merit and required effort, yes; but with a very minor impact on the collective memory of the culé fans. Defeating the whites in their sanctuary is a different thing. Regardless of the course of the season, plundering the Real Madrid field always has the effect of a half-digested marijuana cake. The optimists, pessimists and ashes of the Barça border coincide for once and for a while in uncontrollable happy laughter. And those are moments that must last. Passing your hand over the face of Florentino Pérez’s team tonight would be equivalent to a before and after. Before: the drive and quality of an insultingly young team led by a coach as intelligent as he is practical has renewed the enthusiasm of his fans based on play and results. Afterwards: the confirmation that nothing scares us and that given the facilities that make the life of the rich comfortable, the poor – us – will always be able to stand up to the hunger that pushes us to bite and run more than the opposite.

Barça goes to the closed concert hall where Madrid plays its games (it seems that Florentino can no longer handle everything) with the advantage of knowing that no one is going to ruin a bad result, as long as a defeat is not accompanied by an attitude indolent that at this point we can rule out one hundred percent. Wednesday’s match against Bayern was a giant step for Barcelona fans to embrace unreserved faith in the team. Today may be one more step in that direction. Knocking out the meringues at home would fill Raphael’s song with football meaning: “it could be my big night. And when I wake up, my life will know something it doesn’t know.” And not because this has not happened before many and many times, but because now, at this exact moment, it would have the value of novelty and would certify that what Hansi Flick is up to can be something as great as it is fun.

Passing your hand over the face of Florentino’s team tonight would be equivalent to a before and after

Call your friends into your living room or visit them at theirs. Open beers and bags of hooks. Order pizzas and remember to tip generously to those new slaves of the 21st century who are the delivery people. Make yourself comfortable as on great occasions because this one truly is. Not because of what’s at stake. But yes because the team has been the one that has been pulling the fans and it is beginning to be time for us to pay them in the same currency: pulling them even if it is in front of the television. If we win we will remember this Saturday. What if we lose? Well, we will win in the next game. That is our advantage. We can fall and they, on the other hand, cannot allow it.

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