Emotional transfusions

The Copa del Rey final followed the precepts of the best dramatic narrative, causing no irreparable harm to anyone. That's the greatness of football : its epic nature forces you to participate in the emotions, offering an outcome that has no consequences beyond satisfaction, disappointment, or, as in Seville , a restorative renewal of Barça pride. Pride is a word Hansi Flick often uses, and at a club with a discourse as sophisticated as Barça's , it simplifies the relationship we have with the colors and the crest. Pride hasn't always had a good press. André Gide established a direct relationship between the intensity of pride and the depth of contempt. It's a symmetry that the rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona fuels. In fact, on the Richter scale of satisfaction, winning a final with extra time and in the last minute is, in itself, the height of seismological ecstasy, only surpassed if the opponent is Madrid and, even better, if it is the Madrid of Florentino Pérez and the chiringuitesca era .

For some time now, this reciprocity between pride and contempt has sought to impose itself, with a poisonous and grotesque effort, as the defining characteristic of both clubs. In recent years, we've even witnessed a perverse exchange of cultural transfusions. Barça is credited with having learned to manage the epic nature of matches with a Madrid-like determination, while Madrid insists on adopting the victimhood, the whiny tics, and the narrative of persecution that have so defined the Barça soul.

Read also Today's Real Madrid fans insist on adopting the ancestral victimhood of the Catalans.

That's why it's so exciting to see a team happy to win and knowing how to win, represented by mostly young players and coached by a professional who continues to embrace a stimulating mix of attention to the human factor, commitment, respect, and devotion to an attacking approach that's a close cousin to the Barça creed. It's true that Flick won't exorcise our demons . For example: I watched the final with three fans from my age group. After hugging each other to celebrate Koundé's goal, one of them couldn't help but blurt out: "This win will really hurt us going into the game against Inter." "Fuck off!" we told him, without admitting that we'd thought it too.

On Saturday, Barça vindicated sustained effort and commitment as the primordial elements of the best football. An effort that doesn't always end with a fair or desired outcome. Could we have lost? Yes, but the team knew how to believe, not give up, and act without the not-so-distant excuse of indolence or preemptive fatalism. This memory of Seville will, in time, have the status of a symbolic precedent. On the other side, there are details that confirm the idea of ​​pride and contempt as communicating vessels. Rüdiger's expression represents an unpunished cross-wire of the Mourinho school . A school that those who understand the universality of Real Madrid know does not represent the identity of the Merengue. But it does define the current victim narrative, which requires the hypothetical malice of its opponent to justify limitations that, as Barça fans well know, are often the result of one's own incompetence or self-destructive impulse and not, as happened in Seville, the greatness of a football in which, sometimes, the team that plays best wins.