Leaving the bar without paying because of Barça

BarcelonaThe Barça fans at the back table of the bar where I watched Inter vs. Barça decided to leave without paying their bill when Barça's elimination was confirmed. It's not the most ethical way to handle anger, but it's a decision that shows that losing hurts Barça again. And this is excellent news. "It'll be hard to get up tomorrow," predicted a friend who dutifully paid the 32 euros he owed for their dinner, having just had the defeat in Milan coupled with the onset of the flu. "I'm worse off because of Barça's elimination than because of the flu," he wanted to clarify to the rest of the group, to make clear the extent of his emotional distress.

This acute disappointment, recovered by the Barça fans on Tuesday night, was the usual emotion experienced by Barça fans every time the team was eliminated from the Champions League between 2006 and 2019. Back then, Barça was trusted and taken for granted each year as one of the favorites to win the competition. If that wish wasn't granted, the pain could be compared to not finding any presents under the tree on Three Kings' Day morning. Until the 2-8 defeat to Bayern Munich in 2020, the pinnacle of Barça's sporting disgrace of the 21st century, left the club, the team, and the fans with post-traumatic stress that drained their emotions.

The anger first gave way to shame, then to a feeling dangerously close to indifference. European eliminations even doubled per season: rivals with real face and eyes played (in a humiliating sense) with Barça in the Champions League group stage, and then Eintracht Frankfurt thrashed the Catalans in the Europa League. If any Barça team left a bar without paying that night, it was more out of anger at seeing the Camp Nou become a visitor's stadium than because of the elimination.

Barça, on the other hand, were two minutes away from qualifying for a Champions League final on Tuesday with a starting lineup at the Giuseppe Meazza that included a goalkeeper who retired last summer (Szczęsny); a left-back who wasn't Cornellà's best player two years ago (Gerard Martín); a right-back who is also a center-back and who had one foot in Girona in the winter (Eric Garcia), and a center-forward who, before the tie against Inter, had only started in the Champions League this season against Young Boys (Ferran Torres). This list is only intended to invite two reflections: the enormous merit of Flick and his players, starting with the four mentioned, and the need to strengthen the second line of the squad to continue experiencing acute disappointments amid majestic joys.