"Codfish? Dry! Codfish? Dry!" is the name of the Atlético Barceloneta pool. It's the cry of fishermen selling their fish a century ago, when water polo first began in Barcelona. The cry still given before matches by a water polo team that has become the great Dream Team. of modern Catalan sport. This weekend, Barceloneta travels to Malta to play the final four of the Champions League, the most elusive trophy. The semi-final will be on Friday (7:30 p.m.) against Serbia's Novi Beograd, and the final will be on Sunday. The second semi-final pits Hungary's Ferencváros, the reigning champions, against France's CN Marseille. The sailors' team has won the last 20 editions of the Spanish league, but has only been crowned European champion once, in 2014, when they defeated Barcelona's Picornell at the Radnički Kragujevac swimming pools. From that team, only two survivors remain, Felipe Perrone and Alberto Munárriz.

The beaches of Rio de Janeiro were his childhood playground, his current office has sea views, his son was born at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, and when he has vacations, he boards a sailboat to relax with his wife somewhere with a sea. Felipe Perrone (Rio de Janeiro, 1986) is a man of the sea who one day, at just 15 years old, decided to leave the Atlantic Ocean for the Mediterranean, following in his brother Kiko's footsteps to return to his grandmother's homeland, Catalonia. He had a dream. "I've achieved much more than that teenager ever expected," says Perrone, 39, in a conversation with ARA in a room at the Club Natació Atlètic Barceloneta (CNAB). Evidently, it has sea views.