"Collboni, put the lawn"

The TV3 reporter was interviewing the excited players of Unió Esportiva Sant Andreu on the pitch where they had just achieved promotion, and a fan showed their mobile phone to the camera. The screen read: “Collboni, put in the grass”. It referred to the natural grass essential for playing in the new category and was addressed to the mayor, as the stadium, Narcís Sala, is municipal.

At UESA, they believe the City Council is dragging its feet, seeing if they will take them to play at Can Dragó, where Europa has already played this year (who couldn't have natural grass at Nou Sardenya because there is a car park under the pitch). And they don't understand how a city that spends on bringing the Tour, the Vuelta, and the America's Cup can't put much less money into installing the regulation grass for the team representing a district of the city, where, incidentally, the PSC won the elections.

At the same time, UESA knows that with natural grass, they will have to take the lower teams to train elsewhere, and that if the team continues to climb, one day the problem will no longer be the grass but the capacity of the stands of a stadium that can barely grow.

But the sentiment in Sant Andreu is unanimous: they don't want to leave home. What the quadribarrat club has experienced in recent years (like Europa in Gràcia) is a phenomenon of extraordinary popular pride. The pre-match atmosphere on La Rambla is spectacular, as are the Desperdicis in the cheering section. It is where lifelong Sant Andreu residents and new Catalans meet. And with the senyera on their shirts. It is football on a human scale, with players you can greet at the end of the match – nothing to do with the blaugrana gigantism – and which fills a 6,500-capacity stadium every game.

The City Council must provide the grass. Anything else would be incomprehensible.