The manna of the Champions League

UEFA sees wealth as a punishment, if we understand that as the doubts about how to spend or invest it, the need or obligation to increase it, the fear of diminishing or losing it, the temptation to squander it. Wealth creates enemies, arouses envy, and breeds hatred. But, of course, poverty is worse. In the worst cases, wealth can lead to insomnia. Poverty, to suicide.

Ceferin , then, isn't going to commit suicide. At least for that reason. UEFA is swimming in gold and, lavishly, showering it from the horn of plenty on the clubs in its fold. This season, the sum allocated to the 36 Champions League teams will increase by 21%. There will be 2.47 billion euros to be distributed among the elite peloteros, both the old and the new, for a host of reasons: participation, results, rounds of progress, value pillar...

All this manna helps to calm the raging waters of those discontented by nature or conviction. It helps to dissuade the most unruly, ambitious, or unsupportive from abandoning once and for all the ill-fated idea of ​​the Super League, if some are still secretly toying with it. It helps to reduce to inaction the current or class troublemakers, the new opportunists or the old patricians. UEFA persuades, flatters, buys, bribes, and, ultimately, tames the beasts with the lilting, intoxicating music of constant, resounding flows.

A torpedo straight to Florentino 's waterline, depriving him of any economic victim-centered arguments. Aside from Barça, a supporting actor mired in other stories and burdened by other concerns, Madrid is left alone in its fight against the establishment. The other teams are far more numb than repentant. If their spirits ever harbored pro-independence tendencies again, they would forget them.

The river of money, like the mythological Lethe, makes those who drink from its waters lose their memory.