Aaand Breath! Celebrating a Breathless Season With a Breath of Fresh Air

Image - FC Barcelona

I don’t quite remember how I felt watching Flick’s first game in charge of Barcelona, but I think I felt cautious. Yes, it had to be caution. It was caution. I was cautious of Valencia taking a surprise lead and Barcelona failing to pull them back. I was cautious of celebrating Lewandowski's first goal for fear that it would only last a short while. And I think every Culer felt this way too. We were coming off a season that had quickly derailed, pulling back every bit of hope we had built after the 2022/23 title-winning charge.

But oh my, what a serving Flick has given us, eh?

Make no mistake, this team is not technically the best team compared to previous Barca teams. That first Pep team was something transcendental, a perfect confluence of once-in-a-generation talent both on the playing field and in the dugout.

That team is what made those of us who had started watching football at that time realize that football could be experienced, not just as a game where people passed about and scored, but where people actually displayed geometric precision, etched themselves into your heart with every pass, dribble or skill move and made you feel things a grown man never experiences often.

So, while this team doesn’t have the exceptional talents of Pep’s team, it has still managed to bring about that same emotion, something that had been lacking in Barcelona for years – attitude, fun, enjoyment, belief, beauty, joy, sparkles, and gold dust. This team made football fun again, transforming what had previously been a chore for Culers into something to look forward to, a spectacle to anticipate weekly like the early seasons of Game of Thrones.

This team is a perfect blend of youth and experience. In previous teams, one often leaned on one side too much. On one end, the team would have too many players still in diapers thus lacking the experience. On the other end, there would be too many potential retirees on the team, meaning there was a lack of vigor. Too much swing, not enough balance.

Before Xavi came in, there seemed to be no joy in Barcelona’s fading old guards when playing football. Instead, there was muscle memory, lethargy, a ‘we do this because we have done it so many times and it worked’ kind of play. Not enough spontaneity, not enough cajoles to improvise, not enough ‘fuck it, I’ll just shoot from 20-yards out’ moments, except from Messi himself. Those players were often weighed down by previous heartbreaks, and it showed.

This team, under the helm of Flick, an antithesis of Pep but not any less effective in getting the best of his players, has brought back the joy of watching FC Barcelona play. He had brought the spontaneous beauty back to Sunny Catalonia. That air of dread, the weight of past demons, has been lifted, and in rushed fresh air. Can you feel it?

This season, watching Barcelona play felt like a walk amongst the meadows in a warm mid-morning sun. It felt as though life stopped, and all we had to do was smell the flowers, beautiful orchids basking in the sun.

For a moment, actually scratch that, it was for more than a moment, for a decade or so, the club seemed to have been losing its way. It staggered about, teetering on the edge of a complete loss of identity, almost falling into the Galactico gimmick that is a habit of the team across the country. If you watched Barcelona from 2018 to 2021, you would know just how distorted they were. It was like watching something else, something recognizable in form but unfamiliar in spirit. It felt like looking into the eyes of a loved one, recognizing their face, but being unfamiliar with their character.

When Xavi came, he brought back some of that lost beauty. His term as a coach may not have always been spectacular, but I argue that he was the right man for Barcelona at that time. As a recent departure from the club, he was the perfect man to bring some of the Barcelona identity back.

He never got it right always, Xavi, but Fermin, Cubarsi, Lamine Yamal, Gavi, and Balde all got their breakthrough under him. All these players have been the backbone of this title win.

In fact, the 2-0 victory against Espanyol was decided by La Masia. It was packaged, shipped and delivered by Barcelona graduates. Olmo assisted Yamal for his beautiful strike before Yamal slid in Fermin for the second.

Let’s talk about Fermin for a second, the persistent honey badger of a footballer, a relentless running machine, a player who plays football with his heart on his sleeves.

He is an unLaMasia-like, a footballer who plays football, not with grace or elan, but with relentless energy and bite, a perfect squad player who comes on as the wild card against a stubborn defense.

Oh, we can put two players on Lamine Yamal to minimize his effectiveness, opposition coaches think. Good, so what will you do about this Fermin who keep popping up into the space you have now created? There he goes, running into the space that has opened up to take that shot or play that pass.

He should have had his moment last week at Real Madrid, but I would argue the moment against Espanyol was bigger. Barcelona, leading 1-0, was somehow put on the ropes against a 10-man Espanyol with renewed bite. What better way to write your name in Blaugrana folklore than to drive the last nail in the coffin?

But is this isn’t about Fermin or Lamine Yamal, or Pedri, or any single player, but rather, the combined efforts of their exploits to ensure that they and Barcelona fans have much to cheer about in a season that started off full of uncertainty and dread.

Real Madrid had just gotten Mbappe, someone they tout as their ultimate galactico, the missing part to their, honestly, rather impressive albeit unbalanced assemblage of footballers. Before him, Bellingham had come off his best scoring season yet and had already solidified himself as a proven match-winner.

Then, Vini Jr had come off a season where he had taken on the mantle as Real’s main man and had thrived, in the absence of Benzema and alongside Jude.

It wasn’t looking good for anyone, and especially not good for eternal rivals, Barcelona.

So, what did Flick, and his Barcelona charges do? They just up and went on to beat this Real super team in four consecutive Clasicos. Not just that but dispatching them with goals and performances that made them look like nothing but a glorified Eibar.

The trophies that this team has won cement their status in history books, but this season has been more than the trophies. It has been about how well they played, about their ability to get butts of their seats, to get you to scream involuntarily because of a beautiful passage of play that made you feel things that you have not felt for long.

The beauty of this season is in more than just the trophies. It is in how drained you feel, how empty your balls are because you have ejaculated all the joy you had stored in them all across the season. No more blueballs of ‘what ifs’ and ‘what could have happened’ that had been haunting the Blaugrana fans for the past few years.

No, this season felt almost like a successful exorcism, a season where all past demons had been systematically dismantled, limb by limb. In the past years, when Barcelona conceded first, you may as well leave the stadium or turn your TV off because there was no way they were getting back. This season? This team chuckles in the face of a 2-0 deficit, doesn’t matter whether you are Madrid, or Milan. You scored 2? Oh that’s cute, watch us now score four unanswered goals in the next twenty minutes.

It seemed a season in which everything just kept building and building, the plot thickening with each match day until it all peaked with a satisfying crescendo against Espanyol. Or did it peak last week in El Clasico? I don’t know, you decide that one.

When the full-time whistle sounded, as Barca players and staff rushed onto the pitch to celebrate, Yamal dapped Flick and immediately walked down the tunnel. Meanwhile, Flick made his way to the pitch, not to join the celebration huddles, but to urge Barca players to take the celebrations to the dressing room. He didn’t want trouble with the pulsating Espanyol crowd.

Both Yamal and Flick encapsulated my emotions after full time too – celebratory, but also with a sense of relief, maybe even caution.

And for a season that has been as relentless as this one, a season full of breathless matches and close calls, breathing in and out to catch our breath before getting caught in the ropes of celebration is a perfect way of processing the feelings for now. Right?

Ha! Just kidding - let the party begin!!!

What started out with caution, ends with uncontainable joy spilling out of every possible orifice. And that’s what makes supporting Barcelona special – it is an emotional ride in defiance of logic and understanding. It is a spectacle to be experienced and felt. And this season has been nothing if not an emotional roller coaster in defiance of analysis or logic!

Visca Barca!