Long-term view: The decline of Barcelona

Daniel Storey

The mantra ‘too big to fail’ has been familiarised in the 21st century. In its previous guise, it was one of those nice ‘hey man it’s just logic, don’t shoot the messenger’ type euphemisms, masking the truth of ‘because the incest between politics and finance means that the last thing that particular politician did before finding Goldman too big to fail was work for them’.

Now it applies to America as a whole. America is failing because they’re reaching deep into their anus to find the next generation of political leaders. But they also have the most rich people in the world, the largest companies in the world, the best tech and the strongest military. The soul of America runs a lot of failure but its loins remain girded by all the money, so how that failure will actually go forth and manifest itself is anyone’s guess. Unequally, would be my best one.

And so the Camp Nou. We’ve surely  seen the last of Barcelona as ‘the ultimate’, and it truly was the ultimate. Make your perfect team: Quality keeper? Check. Warrior-like defensive linchpin? Check, but can we also have one who can elegantly spray the ball around, marry Shakira, win the World Cup and have incredible hair?  Yes. That’s before you even arrive at all the players who made Barca not just great but ecstatic, the football equivalent of what it would be like to momentarily view the Earth from space.  5-0 vs Madrid; Mourinho’s first Clasico; the yearly dismantlings of Arsenal; Messi spinning Boateng around; the laser-like intensity at Wembley vs. United.

And yet it must end, because time passes and and nerves are blunted by repetition.  I have no idea what the precise amount of winning is that makes the coals go cold – I guess it’s person-specific. But by any measure Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Lionel Messi and Andres Iniesta have ‘done’ football. Those four are automatic when you picture the great spine of Barcelona.

The laser-like intensity has been replaced, it would seem, by an inability to focus that hands their opponents massive aggregate advantages, and then, like a bored stoner who’s got way too good at FIFA scoring a few own goals first just for the challenge, seeing if they can overturn it.  This is what you do when the urgency to reach the end-game has lost its razor edge.

One wonders to what degree personal events have messed with them.  I’ve lost track of exactly how many of Barcelona’s starting XI are convicted criminals and how many are just awaiting trial for tax-related allegations, but it must all cast a different inflection over everything than the previous idyllic La Masia sunshine. Messi and Javier Mascherano having terse on-pitch chats, behind their hands, about whether this or that lawyer is one you could trust. Neymar with actual and not hipster glasses on, going through paperwork. Not to get the violins out too much for how enthusiastically some Barca players kept their gargantuan salaries from being shared with the adoring socios, but still.

Victor Valdes gone, Carles Puyol gone, Xavi gone, Pique fading, Iniesta fading… who is left to fill that empty teamsheet your subconscious mind used to conjure automatically?

To some degree Barcelona do remain too big to fail entirely, and over the next couple of years there will still be games where they seem like nothing but magic. But, more immediately, they’re getting battered in the Champions League in a style that speaks of a malaise.  This weekend’s domestic trip to the Bernabeu is basically the La Liga title in 90 minutes. After that, potentially with a six-point cushion and a game in hand, Madrid’s highest-ranked away opponent is Malaga in 15th. The Champions League semi-finals will have at least two entrants from Spain, but likely none from Catalonia

I know what assuming makes me, so I’m happy to temper the above by saying that I have no idea if the malaise running through Barca has yet to turn from drip to flow. No idea too whether football is such a wonderfully unlikely sport that you can go 4-0 down in one round and 3-0 in the next and yet still arrive at a Champions League semi at the end of it.  But the malaise is there.

The hippies and Buddhists know what to do here. Don’t hold on too tightly to the light as it flickers and wanes, instead refocus on how lucky we were to live through the human race performing at the apex of something. And with Barcelona we did, pretty much every Wednesday and Saturday for the past decade.

Toby Sprigings