Playing football when death comes to the locker room

BarcelonaFootball is usually impassive when faced with emotions, but this Saturday was an exception. It showed its most friendly side. with the total understanding and solidarity of Osasuna, LaLiga and RFEF in the face of Barça's pain. No one had any doubt that the only logical decision was to suspend the match. However, the dizzying schedule means that on Tuesday, just 72 hours after the match, of having lost a teammate, Dr. Carles Miñarro, the team has another commitment. Benfica will visit Montjuïc (18.45 h, Movistar) to play the return leg of the Champions League round of 16. The wheel will turn again.

But it turned around even faster when Barça had to play a league match at Villarreal just two days after Tito Vilanova died of cancer in April 2014. Players such as Sergio Busquets cried during the minute's silence before the match. A UEFA Cup quarter-final was also played in Glasgow on the day of the 2004 11-M attack in Madrid, which left 193 dead and more than 2,000 injured.

The players, still deeply affected by Miñarro's death, trained on Sunday to begin preparing for Tuesday's match against Benfica. Before training they held a minute's silence for the doctor, who they called Doc in a loving way. "The phases of grief [denial, anger, sadness, negotiation and acceptance] last more or less depending on the person. A sudden loss awakens uncertainty, the feeling that anything can happen at any moment. In this sense, having a routine and knowing that you have the goal of competing can provide stability," Dorka Molnár, a sports psychologist at the Institut de Recerca de l'Esport at the UAB, explains to ARA.

Less than a month ago, Molnár treated a player and, by extension, a first division handball team in Hungary for the death of a teammate in a car accident. "Having spaces to talk about the issue with the leaders and coaches helped; a place where you can express yourself, where you can share your feelings. A kind of group therapy with people from the club reminds you that you are not alone," she says about her recent experience in a case similar to the one Barça is now suffering.

Disbelief and anger

"There are a lot of young people in the current Barça squad. Some of the players may be experiencing a near-death for the first time," Jaume Martí, a sports psychologist who runs Psicosport Barcelona, told this newspaper. Are 72 hours enough to face a match after a sudden death? "The length of the stages of mourning depends a lot on the person, but on Tuesday many of them will surely still be in the stages of disbelief and anger. They will feel the emptiness. The doctor will not be there. This can cause two things: lack of concentration or disbelief and anger becoming energy to dedicate to the victory," Martí stressed.

In addition, the psychologist says that, in cases of sudden death, people around them, "for a few days, tend to put things in perspective in life." And some questions arise. "You can think: 'The doctor has died. What is this compared to a match or a goal?'" But when you put a match into perspective, you play better because the anxiety and nerves are put aside," he explains.

The only precedent for a Barça match being postponed due to tragedy was the Liga classic at the Camp Nou against Real Madrid in April 1968. The day before the match, the Barça player Julio César Benítez died of sepsis – a generalised infection. The classic was postponed for 48 hours and ended up being played on 9 April. The day before, on the 8th, his team-mates had carried Benítez's coffin on their backs.

The sudden death of Dani Jarque

Barça's city rivals, Espanyol, also suffered the sudden loss of a member of their first team. Dani Jarque, recently appointed first captain of the blue and white team, died on August 8, 2009 of a heart attack in his hotel room in the Coverciano district of Florence, where Espanyol was concentrated in the middle of pre-season. "The impact was very big, terrible. I found the body. In those moments of shock, nothing helps," Moisés Hurtado, a teammate and friend of Jarque, explained to ARA. "We also had no psychological support at that time. Those were different times. But I remember that, because it was unexpected, it was even harder than when my father died, who was ill," he added.

Espanyol did not train again until August 13, five days after Jarque's death, and suspended two pre-season friendly matches. The next match was on the 23rd in a friendly against Girona. "Professional football has no mercy. We were only one week without training. I couldn't get out of bed. We had to get going quickly because the League was about to start," Hurtado recalls.