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The current version of the Catalan club, just inspired by Hansi Flick, now faces two classics and two semifinals intense in Copa del Rey and Champions League
If you are from Barcelona Or simply a neutral who is enjoying his energy this season, is he starting to feel like in 2011 again? That 2010-2011 campaign was its third season under the orders of Pep Guardiolain which your team, led by Lionel MessiXavi and Andrés Iniestahe faced three classics in 19 days to decide if Barça was proclaimed champion of LaLigachampion of the Copa del Rey and winner of the final of the Champions League A Wembley.
Spoiler: two of three, it's not bad! But it was an extraordinary, controversial, exhausting party, full of tests and, ultimately, exciting.
The current version of the Catalan club, newly inspired by the coach Hansi Flicknow faces two classics and two intensely probative semifinals against the Inter from Milan In the next 17 days to decide if he will be champion of Spain, winner of the Copa del Rey and finalist of the Munich Champions League.
Compare the two templates, man per man, it would be a joke. The Guardiola group 14 years ago was plagued by great of all time, most of whom had already won the triplet and would demonstrate during that 19 -day hell that they were not only blessed with a sublime talent, but were also made of the 'correct matter'. Flick's talent group is now under the magnifying Robert Lewandowskithat the Saturday Copa final is probably lost. The group has also conceded six goals in two games and, both against Madrid and Inter, players face much more cunning, hard and tanned rivals in a thousand battles than them.
Is this group made of good pasta? We will see it. But although there is no doubt that trophies are the currency par excellence, the brilliant things that place you on Mount Rushmore of Soccer, I think it is debatable that the current Barcelona has already won something extremely valuable. Respect.
Let's recognize it: the Camp Nou club has become the laughing of recent years. Choose what you want. There is the shameful way that the club exhibited itself – and stained its reputation forever – to decide whether to say goodbye to Messithe best footballer in his history, and how to do it. You can discuss everything you want about the pros and cons, but the club did a bad work and was ridiculous.
Until the name of 'Camp Nou' calls attention to the stadium. Firm plans to renew that great amphitheater were announced for the first time in 2015. The works had to begin in 2017 and the process was going to cost 600 million euros. In the end, the works were delayed six years and did not start until 2023. If they play football again at their headquarters in September 2025, their last unofficial estimate will have been delayed almost a year with respect to the date on which they said for the first time that they would score goals in the new grass of the Camp Nou.
Then there is the constant fight for their finances. The extraordinary global debt of more than 1,000 million euros accumulated during the mandate of the previous directive, the constant inability of the club to comply with the rules of the 'financial play' established by LaLigapayments postponed to stars and an almost perpetual fight to register new important players who have signed but run the risk of not being able to use. There have been almost constant fights with the governing body of the league, which have implied one trial after another and that have forced the world to learn what the word 'lever' means … All this has done enormous damage to reputation and credibility. Even in English, 'Financial lever' is a phrase that most of us never imagine that we would have to look in the dictionary.
If we only want to focus on football, two results represent part of the desperate humiliation that has occurred since the last time the Barcelona won the Champions League 10 years ago.
Remember the Bayern Munich 8-2 Barcelona In 2020 or, instead, go to Anfield and think about how a team that still included Messi y Luis Suárez He won 3-0 al Liverpool In the semifinal of the Champions League From 2019 after the game at home, but went with the tail between the legs, after a 4-0 beating in Anfield. Only two results, yes, but a sample of what it has been to see when Barcelona seems ultravulnerable, inconsistent often not very impressive during his years of “I'm going fishing, I come back soon.”
That is why there is the argument that, even if there are no trophies for their work in LaLiga, the Cup or Europe so far this season, the recovery of respect must be somewhat durable, although the evidence of the next 17 days is too hard or leaves Barcelona only partially victorious.
Again and again, since the nice, pragmatic and direct Flick took over the team in May 2024, Barcelona has played the most exciting football on the entire planet, without exception. I think that the quality of emotion, entertainment, romanticism or emotion is no longer spoken or valued enough.
In the context of the constant controversy in sport – what a football figure or another has said, arbitration decisions and the VAR, the players who are perpetually over -use and the terrible annual calendar, not to mention other sagas such as the general and endless need to win or, otherwise, a coach is fired and a player is described as a failure- The style, audacity, ingenuity, entertainment, are unfathomably overlooked.
Now, the Barcelona It is not a Corinthian band of fans and cheerful animators: the club is still in a dangerous financial situation, and progress in Europe and trophies are vital only for that reason. In addition, he continues to pay huge salaries and is a gigantic financial entity. Life is serious for them. But if you decide to see it, either as an amateur or as a simple soccer lover, what you have guaranteed almost 100% is to see an adventurous, high -risk soccer and that exhibits some of the things you used to try when you played on the street or in the park, without major consequences than the knees skimmed or the teasing of your friends.
I don't know how much this dazzling will last: Is it a wonder of a season or a dynasty? But Flick's team is the youngest average of LaLigaand what his players have produced this season in the Champions League has inspired his German coach to use words such as “pride”, “joy” and “emotion”, eternal words that speak of human emotions instead of the shady, angry and stressful words that now use the central participants of our sport more frequently.
Sometimes they lose and, very occasionally, they fail to score, but there has really been no game this season in which some beauty, inventive or fun has lacked.
It is already the two classics of this season (11 goals and many more emotions) or the Catalan club in Europe, the evidence is clear. Barça, in the Champions Leagueit is out of the first three by possession, eighth in precision of passes, 15th in recovered and eighth balls in goals to zero … but it has goals and drama. No one has approached them, with 37 goals scored by the Flick team since the competition began. Ah, and you will have to wait a lot, a long time to have more fun than with Benfica 3-4 Barcelona, ​​the Dortmund 2-3 Barcelona or Barça 4-1 Bayern. (His 4-3 comeback against Celta de Vigo last weekend in LaLiga also entered that category of champagne. Mad matches).
That is the record that I am a bit cynical about whether a younger, smaller and more inexperience Inter bigger, more experienced and more aggressive. Does Barcelona play better? I'm 100% sure. Can that semifinal win? A new record would be needed this season already surprising.
Two more victories in the classic, in the final of the Copa del Rey on Saturday and then in which it should be the decisive match of LaLiga on May 11? It would be historical.
The triplet? Be the only club to get it three times? I am not sure, but it is very fun to see you try.
Is it the Barcelona more fun than any other soccer club right now? Of course: Atrále them while you can. Little by little our respect is being gained again; The trophies will end up arriving.
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