The calendar of the tribe, by Sergi Pàmies

We demand from Barça a continuity of play and results that no team in the League has. With this schedule and the demands imposed by the industry, it is impossible to find a progressive balance that lives up to unrealistic expectations. It’s been a few weeks since Barça has been playing well and allowing rivals to win, draw and create scoring chances in detail and in bulk. The bubble of excellence, which Hansi Flick established in the first months, cannot hide a probably unsolvable problem: saturation. The only player who reacts following a competitive superhero pattern is Lamine Yamal, who does not yet have Messi’s stripes to become a versatile and permanent solution. Let’s look at the calendar: it is the answer to many doubts and confusion.

In fact, Flick’s attitude of not looking for excuses is the most honest, but it will not save him from tripping over the evidence. Historically, Barça has gone through long periods of victimhood. They weren’t shitty months: they were shitty years. I learned the first notions of Barcelona fandom by assimilating the sacred oral tradition of the Camp Nou: if we lost, the fault was a) the rain, b) the referee, c) Madrid and d) a fateful combination of the three elements. They were credible causes, which we used as painkillers to construct a suffering sentimental narrative. The years of opulence (the nineties and the beginning of the 21st century) altered the emotional ecosystem of the club. New generations of culés allergic to tribune ñé-ñé-ñé were created, with emotional protocols more loyal than those of their ancestors.

Historically, Barça has gone through long periods of victimhood

Now we have to renew the elements that explain games like those played against Las Palmas, Celta and Betis, looking not only at the referees and our own mistakes, but also at the calendar and the demands we impose on ourselves. Getting angry if the team doesn’t play well and seeing that the changes are designed to take over the next game (Wednesday, Dortmund), it happens in all elite clubs. In another era, a draw in Seville would have been considered a bad but bearable result. Today, however, we treat a tie in the opposite field as a defeat that, if the team does not play well, we amplify with a vehemence that brings us closer to a truth that is more virtual than real. What sense does it make that, in practice, tying is the same as losing?

The sophistication of the analyzes adds adrenaline to the perception of the result. Statistics are a crucial element of the garrison of the matches. But knowing that Lewandowski’s goal comes after one minute and seventeen seconds and twenty-seven touches, what does it contribute to the bond between the fan and the team? It is, I admit, a curiosity, which we can then introduce to the multiple big data that feeds football information and commentary. But how many passes preceded Barça’s goals at the Bernabéu in 1974? And it is likely that George Best was, from a statistical point of view, a calamity. Against the contagion of overly dramatic (or euphoric) moods, let’s inoculate ourselves by looking at the calendars of recent years and understand that the current one is an aberration that must necessarily influence the performance of the players and, by extension, our way of understanding belonging to the tribe.

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