It was at the wedding of a rather distinguished family where Florentino Pérez and PP ministers were sitting at one of the tables. At some point during the celebration, the son of a minister ended up talking to Florentino, who, without being asked, gave the young man his phone number: "Call me whenever you want to go to the Bernabéu".

In order to become Barça president again, Joan Laporta ran a carefully studied campaign with his charisma and oratory skills at the centre of the strategy. The Barcelona lawyer, more mature and prudent than during his first stage in the box of the Camp Nou, granted almost fifty interviews between traditional media (Catalan, Spanish and foreign) and new ways of diffusion (YouTube, Twitch, etc.) to win the support of the partners in the elections and to construct a state of favorable opinion in all the blaugrana forums. In the thematic events of his candidacy, he took the lead and divided the turns of speech between future managers and executives of each specific area. The aspiring Laporta was everywhere and tried to respond to everything that was asked of him, always taking care not to go over the top. In contrast, Laporta the president has not made any public statements for more than five weeks, apart from brief appearances at La Cartuja to celebrate the Copa del Rey. Nor has his voice been heard to offer an official Barça position on the Super League, a competition that still generates sympathy in the Barça offices despite the disbanding of participants in recent days.

This is the week of books, but football has been all over the front pages. This is what reality is like. Books get one day a year, and (men's) football, the whole season. We don't need to be surprised about this. Reading doesn't make us wiser, better or freer. There is a considerable list of imbeciles who have a vast library. What we need to worry about are the economic and social priorities. What's regrettable is that so many people don't publicly throw their hands up in the air about football wiping out everything else and becoming a matter of state. What has been said these days is as delirious as ever. Not that it's surprising because we're already surprised. But we have not yet come out of a pandemic that has left millions of deaths and thousands of consequences and football goes over everything like the economic steamroller that it is. With those values that football clubs pretend to have, when in reality they are essentially bastions of machismo and homophobia, of competitiveness as a stimulus to sacrifice and of demanding. It is not a question of criticising a sport or how everyone chooses to evade the everyday. Escape routes are inscrutable. It is about reflecting and thinking about why they have this preference and who sustains it. Who dominates football, with what objectives and that if Florentino Pérez considers that he has to save football so that in 2024 it will not be dead, maybe it is not such a bad idea to let it die. We remember that his Castor project not only caused earthquakes in Terres del Ebre but we are paying for them. I have always distrusted saviours. But let's get back to books, it's Sant Jordi's week. Once a year. Despite the fact that this is once again a substitute for the festival that used to brighten up our day and our streets. One day this mediocrity will go away.

Atlético Madrid have become the first of the three La Liga clubs to leave the Super League. In a statement, the Madrid side have argued that with the change of circumstances in the project they consider it best to dissociate themselves from it. Atlético has been the first to follow the path taken yesterday by the six English clubs, joined today by the three Italian clubs: Inter, Milan and Juventus.

The day Josep Maria Bartomeu announced his resignation, and in the middle of a speech lasting almost half an hour, he reported that the board had decided on his last day in office "to accept the conditions to participate in the European Super League". A sentence that was totally overshadowed because the interest that day was elsewhere. Half a year later, and now under the leadership of Joan Laporta, Barça, as one of the founding clubs, formally announced the creation of this competition that will revolutionise European football and, as a consequence, shake up world football.

Football offices are ablaze after the announcement that 12 top clubs in Europe - six from the Premier League, three from La Liga and two from Serie A - made in the early hours of Monday morning. Real Madrid, Barça, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, Milan, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea are ready to control the business in Europe in defiance of UEFA and state federations by organising a closed Super League that would fill the niche market of the current Champions League. The initiative had been quietly brewing for years between corridors, boxes and airport terminals. And, although the traditional powers were forewarned, the general reaction to the official kick-off of the competition has been burying heads in hands and coarse words. There are too many millions, interests and egos at stake.

The football world has experienced this Monday an earthquake as it had not seen for many years after the announcement by twelve European clubs of the creation of a European Super League that would replace the current Champions League and would be controlled by clubs and not by federations. In this select club there would be six teams from the English Premier League (Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool), three from the Spanish league (Barça, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid) and three from the Italian league (Juventus, Milan and Inter). These teams aspire to get three more to join the proposal (Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and PSG), to form a matrix of 15 founding clubs that would be the owners of the competition and could not be expelled (if not for economic reasons). The Super League would be played between these 15 teams plus 5 more teams that would move up each year from their respective leagues, where in theory the founding clubs would continue to play.