Barça, Messi and Darth Vader

Tomorrow's Barça is like the student who goes to an exam having studied. Better yet: they go to the exam having understood what the subject is about and they master it. That is why I await the match with all the excitement that gives me all the tranquility possible. Barça has started the season doing things very well and Madrid has not, and I refer to the standings: full of victories and an average of more than four goals per match. And it is not just from now. Barça has already been the League champion for two years.

But it is much more than a question of results: the quality of the game has nothing to do with it. The joy and honesty that the Barça game conveys, neither. The material it is made of, with many players from La Masia, increases pride. Meanwhile, what do we have on the other side? Noise. In the absence of football, an annoying cloud fueled by Florentino, Mourinho, and the club's TV, that channel which, when Barça's women's team thrashes Madrid's, does not show the result.

Madrid will arrive in Barcelona tomorrow marking the beat to the chords of the Imperial March from Star Wars. It is the role they have chosen in the cast of protagonists. Everything is suspicions, conspiracies, and fingers pointing the way to tension.

It is tiresome, but I am not complaining. In fact, it seems refreshing to me to see a Spanish institution considering itself a victim of a Catalan institution against which it loses more than it wins. It is like yesterday's thing about the award Messi received in Oviedo: you heard the honors and it seemed as if no club had made him a footballer or a person. They take advantage of his popularity and are incapable of saying that he was made at Barça.

Tomorrow's match only has one drawback: the impossible ticket prices for a member who is not a season ticket holder. In this, Barça has not done things well.