Running the Barça results: "Who knows if in two days I'll have to measure 70 kilometers!"
Bernat González has started a curious initiative that links his beloved club with the mountains
Torelló"Now I talk about Barça in kilometers, not results," emphasizes Bernat González (Torelló, 2002). It's been almost three months since he began the "challenge" of running Barça's match results. Monday's 2-1 win in Girona is 21 kilometers. The 3-0 victories against Mallorca and Oviedo, 30. The 1-3 win against Elche, 13. The 0-2 defeats against Villarreal and Espanyol, two. So far, the record is 35 kilometers for the 3-5 Betis-Barça match on December 6th, the first day of this adventure. "It was a real bummer because they scored two goals against us right at the end. Plus, the third was a penalty by Koundé that wasn't dangerous at all. The distance went from 25 to 35 kilometers because Mr. Koundé made a completely unnecessary tackle in stoppage time. A lot of people didn't mind, but it really bothered me. Just like Bernal's goal... cool because he deserved it, but it wasn't necessary, honestly," he says with a smile.
"One day I saw a guy who does it with Deportivo La Coruña, and my friends and I were talking about whether it would be feasible to do it with Barça. Because normally Depor wins 1-0 or 2-0 at home and doesn't concede many goals away, but this Barça scores a lot of goals and also concedes a lot of goals." "In this case, the away team's goals are somewhat the same because the total distance doesn't change much. The problem is with the home team's goals," he points out. He took the plunge and has already completed nine outings and 185 kilometers through the mountains surrounding Torelló, his hometown, or the area around Barcelona, where he lives during the week for work. He's a news journalist at RAC1. The challenge is revealing places and paths he's never explored before. He shares all his routes on the Strava platform.
"The initial idea was to run absolutely every match in every competition, but then I scaled it back a bit because I don't have that much time," he admits. "I prefer to do it right rather than get frustrated because I can't keep up. I do all this because I like to run and I don't want to burn out," he says. The league matches are mandatory, and then he'll run them depending on the season: the Copa del Rey final if Barça manages to overcome the 4-0 deficit against Atlético de Madrid, the Champions League starting from a hypothetical semifinal, perhaps. He already ran the 32 kilometers for the 3-2 victory against Real Madrid in the Supercopa final.
He was awaiting the matches against Oviedo and Mallorca with "fear," considering them "dangerous," and is happy to have gotten away "easily," with two 3-0 wins. Now he faces Sunday's match against Levante at the Camp Nou with trepidation: "You live day to day and suddenly you think, 'Damn, who knows if I'll have to run 70 kilometers in two days!'" He says that if the score were 5-0 or 6-0, and the match ended in a 50 or 60-kilometer run, he already has a rough idea of what he would do: "I'd go to the football pitch and run laps because that would be the most efficient and fastest option. It would also be more boring, but I'd put on the radio and run laps and eventually finish, I suppose." For now, his distance record is 63 kilometers in the long course of the Por Els Camins dels Matxos race in Torelló. After playing football his whole life, since he was five or six years old, he has become a mountain enthusiast, like so many others.
The memory of Grandpa José, always very present
His friends, in the group's WhatsApp chat, no longer talk about Barça's goals in terms of the score, but rather the kilometers covered: "One more goal, ten more kilometers." The challenge is finishing the season: "What bothers me most is getting bored and especially the injuries. Because I'm used to running, but not that much. The fatigue doesn't bother me because you gradually build up your fitness. The challenge is actually doing it. Being able to set your mind to it and actually do it." He also admits, laughing, that by matchday 32 he might be thinking, "Why did I even start here?", but the challenge combines two of his great passions: running and Barça.
He's been a Barça fan since he was little, a family tradition. He remembers the Ronaldinho jersey his grandfather José gave him before he was even aware of his age. Or the photo taken of him on Joan Laporta's lap during the president's visit to the town. He remembers going with his grandfather to see Barça matches with the Torelló Barça Supporters Club: "Getting on the bus, paying the euro for the betting slip, arriving at the stadium. The whole ritual. We did it for many years. He's been dead for a few years now, but I remember Camp Nou with my grandfather. When I think of my grandfather, when I think of Barça, my grandfather comes to mind."