The other Chelsea-Barça: poisoned flowers for Lamine Yamal and 20 empty chairs due to UEFA's stubbornness

London"We must teach young people that this is a sport, and that we come to support the club of our hearts," José Manuel, one of the nearly 1,700 Barça fans who had watched the game twelve hours earlier, told me this Wednesday morning. how Barça came away badly from Stamford Bridge.

He himself, Marc, Edu, and Jordi had left Barcelona at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday to see the Champions League match. They had done so before—in Dortmund and at Old Trafford, for example—and will continue to do so whenever work schedules allow: "[The result] was a blow, but these things happen. We will travel more because the experience is good, even though some of our fans, who behave like hooligans, fell for provocations from a small group of Chelsea supporters and wrecked some seats; a shame because those people make you not want to come back with your daughter someday," he wrote to me in a message.

José Manuel is right. This reporter, who suffered the defeat surrounded by blues From the lower stands of a very old and uncomfortable stadium, he witnessed the constant verbal provocations and obscene gestures of a good number of the Londoners' fans. Hooligans, too, who made Lamine Yamal the prime target of their bad manners. But the Barça number 10 didn't notice a thing: neither that he was playing nor that they were sending him off with poisoned flowers.

In central London via Faro

Having landed in London, the visitors' pilgrimage to Stamford Bridge – in the west of the city – included a mandatory stop in the city center, at the Cumberland Hotel in Marble Arch. The hotel is a regular choice for Barça expeditions: it was already used to accommodate directors and other privileged individuals – not from the team – on the day of the Iniesta's goal. You had to go to collect the personalized tickets and to have a wristband with the club's colors put on you, a control mechanism, but also a symbol of the same secular faith, like the fish that the first Christians wore to recognize each other.

Around four in the afternoon, the room where the wristbands were being distributed was still buzzing with a trickle of fans forming a neat, short queue to earn their place in heaven, unaware that fate had hell in store for them. And there I found Patro, Mario, Alejandro, and Álvaro. Patro was a club member, and the rest were members of the La Masía supporters' club from Moguer (Huelva), who had left Faro (Portugal) mid-morning on Tuesday and landed at Gatwick, south London, shortly after noon. The eagerness for a big trip among the most dedicated fans was evident in the planning these faithful—three from Moguer and one from Ayamonte—had done from the very moment the draw paired Barça with Chelsea once again. Even before having tickets, on August 28th, they bought their plane tickets: round trip, 60 euros. Total cost of the experience: no more than 250 euros. They didn't even spend the night in a hotel, returning home this Wednesday at 6:30 a.m., perhaps with their tails between their legs, but with their faith intact. A faith that, as Álvaro said, takes on even more meaning as a matter of survival in an environment where he is "surrounded by Real Madrid fans."

I also spoke with supporters' club members who had come from Badajoz or Alicante, or with members who had arrived from Catalonia, all of them with the idea of a Barça Ithaca in their hearts, aware that beyond the results, what truly matters is the journey, the voyage of a lifetime.

A trip that, unfortunately, Twenty or so Barça fans were unable to doBecause British Airways flight BA0481, scheduled to depart from El Prat airport at 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday, was definitively canceled two hours later due to technical problems. While still holding out hope, and given the delay they were already experiencing, they contacted the Barcelona Supporters' Office (OAB) to ask if they could be spared the journey from Heathrow (west of the city) to the hotel (in the city center) and then on to the stadium (west). However, the OAB neither confirmed nor denied their request, stating that they would only be allowed at the Cumberland Stadium until 6:30 p.m. There was no miracle, and in the end, they were left behind. Some gave their ID details to relatives living in London to try and collect the tickets so that, at least, they could benefit. But bureaucracy and UEFA or club regulations don't take technical problems into account. The arbitrary reason they were given was that this would "disadvantage members who didn't get tickets in the draw." A justification without logic, because an unoccupied ticket is a voice that isn't shouting itself hoarse for the team. What will they do with the uncollected tickets? "Return them to Barcelona," they told me. "Will they refund the members?" I also asked the OAB members. "We'll look into it." An answer that means no.

It's not even a consolation that this group that couldn't fly was spared the pain of defeat. They missed the experience of the journey, the richness of what they would have gained by making the trip. But there will be other paths. Because whatever happens, the Barça Ithaca never deceives.