Barça has celebrated 125 years at the Liceu, ten minutes from where you were born. The gala was attended by an unrepeatable amalgamation of athletes, politicians, businessmen and what Guti called “forces of work and culture.” Know that you have missed the best years of the club’s life and that, perhaps to compensate, you are invoked as the father of that phrase according to which Barça acts as the symbolic and unarmed army of Catalonia.
In these years we have had the best player in the history of the club (and of football) and, following that self-destructive trend that you were able to analyze so well, we sent him away trusting that, over time, the wound would heal. We have won many titles and at the gala we even allowed ourselves the luxury of presenting a devilish mascot called Cat (polysemy loses us). We have also lost titles, and we have fallen into black holes that President Joan Laporta tries to compensate with a hypertrophied, verbose, personalist and populist leadership. He is the same president who established the International Journalism Award that bears your name and that is supervised by some of your friends and, from a distance, Anna and Daniel.
Cruyff died prematurely and your beloved Guardiola went into exile in Manchester
Things you don’t know: now there is an invention called VAR, which delegates to a spectral authority disputes that were previously – Guruceta, Melero – humanly monstrous. It has also been discovered that Barça paid the vice president of the referees a fortune, not so much to bribe anyone as to influence and proselytize an underground justice that, I sense, you would not have liked. Like you, Cruyff died prematurely and your beloved Guardiola was exiled to Manchester, where he has achieved incredible feats. Today he suffers a bad moment that forces him to scratch his face and bald head (almost all his hair fell out training for Barça).
We have a German coach who doesn’t look as German as other Germans. He loves Catalan cuisine, he is a regular at some restaurants that you would have endorsed, but also others that you wouldn’t. Serrat and Raimon have retired from the stage, although not from composing. After a long period of turbulence, we have a self-exiled president of the pro-independence Generalitat in Brussels and, in Plaza Sant Jaume, a socialist and Espanyol president. Shortly before Barça celebrated its centenary, you wrote one of your thousands of memorable articles about Doctor Frankenstein’s Barça. You regretted that the club had dismantled the promise of the Quinta de lo Pelat and that, suffocated by Van Gaal’s philosophy, it had given up on a renewing idea for the team.
Hansi Flick and Joan Laporta, at the Liceu, last Friday
Today, for reasons that I do not have enough space to explain to you, we once again have, in addition to a great women’s team, a squad with many youth players. They are an antidote to tribune poison. I know that, when you traveled around the world, you called home and, without losing patience, asked Daniel how Barça had turned out. Know that Daniel is well, that he has written a profound and extraordinary book about his bond with your grandson Marc, a prince braver than that Prince Valiant who illustrated your sentimental education. Oh, by the way: on Saturday Barça lost. At home. Against Las Palmas. You see, Manolo: there are things that never change.
#Dear #Manolo.. #Sergi #Pàmies
