Reflecting on last night’s game in the Nou Camp in the early light of today’s dawn I wondered what it was that had provoked a feeling of deep melancholy in me.
At its most basic, I saw my team in just over a week not just beaten but comprehensively so-twice and with the ultimate humiliation played out on home ground. But then Barca is not any team- for millions of fans around the world it has become an idea of football not just as a sport but as an idea of how do things with nobility and beauty, of creativity drawn from deep roots, and thus enduring.
I don’t know what hurt me most last week in Munich and last night at the Nou Camp- the idea of Barca losing, or Bayern Munich winning- but what I felt I witnessed was the equivalent of a Panzer division laying waste the Parque Guell.
Much has been deservedly been written, and will continue to be written, about the mastery, discipline, and energy of the German team- but this was football played by determined engineers, not poets in motion- precise in its conception, clinical in its execution.
Absent from the conquerors across the two-legs of this Champion’s League semi-final was anything that elevated their actions to a higher level than the mundane, that produced a moment of sublime artisanship, on or off the ball, that transformed the defining moment into something that brought a smile to one’s face, that endured as a moment to warmly relish with allies and rivals alike, that brought joy to the universal fan. Even the Dutch goalscorer lacked grace.
In fairness I blame my melancholy not just on the victors, but also on the vanquished. But for a few wonderful turns, and intricate passes, there was nothing in this Barca worthy of its legacy: it was as if the evolutionary process that had began with Cruyff, and developed under Guardiola, had run out of imaginative steam and collective spirit.
To blame its underperformance on the absence of one star player, and the injury and exhaustion of others, are all excuses unworthy of a club whose defining identity lies in its history, its collective ethos and commitment to a cause- that of making football an art form, a truly cultural and social, phenomenon. Barca could not score a goal, and the ninety-odd cules in the Nou Camp seemed to have lost faith even before the game had started.
This is not the end of an era for Barca but a time to take stock and rebuild around its essence-to recover the dynamism, passion and creativity of its dream years when glory was sought but not at any price. The beautiful game is not built on regiments- nor does it deserve an extended period of mourning.
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