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A year later, Bayern’s eight goals were not the worst thing that could happen to Barça

BarcelonaThe journey from Da Luz Stadium to the Sheraton Hotel in Lisbon takes just 10 minutes. That night a year ago lasted a little less, between the little traffic in a city without tourism, due to the pandemic, and the police cars that escorted the Barça entourage. The players were separated on two different buses. Their phones didn’t stop. Messages were sent between them. On two small buses, the management was silent. “We’re dead,” a manager broke the silence. Josep Maria Bartomeu did not say anything throughout the journey. In a WhatsApp group with executives who had not flown to Portugal a board meeting was confirmed on Monday. And, on arriving at the hotel, the insults began. About 100 Barça fans who were in Lisbon raised their voices. The players were not saved either. Some, like Marc-André ter Stegen, made a gesture of apology. Others hid under the cap. Only Piqué went with his head held high, but his eyes sad. He was the only one who after losing 2-8 against Bayern had put his continuity on the table, while demanding “urgent changes” at a club that had lost the north.

A year ago, Barça suffered the most humiliating defeat in its history on the pitch. On August 14, 2020, in Lisbon, Bayern was beating one soulless team after another, beating Ter Stegen eight times. “He was one of the hardest hit. To be a goalkeeper in the first place. Because he doesn’t like to lose, in the second place. And it also affected him to receive eight goals in a game against Bayern, in which the goalkeeper is Neuer, who it covered the ownership of the selection “, they explain inside the dressing room. Ter Stegen would spend five long minutes at the locker room door, staring blankly. Inside, Messi was looking at the ground. The Argentine had explained to his circle of friends that it seemed impossible to defeat Bayern, as the team came out physically. Now, he was not expected to concede eight goals. Nothing went well, that night, because nothing had been done well in the previous months.

“When I arrived, I found a dressing room like I had never seen before,” he explained these days in the magazine Jot Down Quique Setién. “The locker room was not happy,” he added, recalling how “from the fourth goal the team collapses.” “It was a Barça caught with tweezers, we knew the limitations it had. It had been suffering for years, it was already known that the club needed tremendous regeneration, but there was no capacity, not even financial, to change anything. There were renewals in the middle, broken promises … The team was pissed off. ” With the directive, of course. The war was open, as everyone became aware of the economic crisis facing an entity heading for hell.

Setión had arrived in January 2020, when Josep Maria Bartomeu decided to expel Ernesto Valverde after losing the Spanish Super Cup. The Cantabrian, who was not the first choice to take over the team, would find a “discouraged” dressing room, broken on sides and at enmity with the board. “We had 12 players and the rest dwarfs,” Arturo Vidal would complain about making the squad. After seeing Madrid win the league, Barça had managed to eliminate Napoli in that tie that had been cut short by the pandemic. And on the way to the final-stage Lisbon bubble, he fooled himself into thinking he had options against Bayern. Well, not everyone was fooled. Messi, in an attack of sincerity, had said a few weeks earlier: “Playing like this we can not win the Champions League.” This made Setién a tactical substitution in 4-4-2.

“It’s been a year? Looks like two!”

Inside, the situation was already unsustainable. Eric Abidal, who had been in office for a year trying to link the locker room and the board, had seen Messi jump around his neck when the Frenchman said, after dismissing Valverde, that “many players were not satisfied. nor did they work “with the Extremaduran coach. The Argentine would reply, “If he says these things that say names or attacks us all,” then added that he had been hurt by Valverde’s farewell, “a great person.” Bartomeu, for his part, hardly managed to receive positive responses when he sent messages to players, angry both at unfulfilled promises and the contents of the Barçagate case, in which they had discovered that messages had been posted against him on the networks, paid for by club. “That was the drop that made the glass spill,” they explain in the locker room.

The management of the change of coach, from Valverde to Setión, did not help either. And after a clash between the assistant coach, Eder Sarabia, and Messi, a point of no return had been reached. The Argentine, in fact, no longer responded to Bartomeu’s messages. And the week after the defeat against Bayern, the Argentine would already tell the new coach, Ronald Koeman, that he was seriously considering not following Barça, a type of nonsense for the board. A few days later, he would send the famous burofax in which he officially asked to leave the club. If Barça thought it would take time to forget that 2-8 defeat, in a few days they already had other debates on the table. Bartomeu’s last act in the market was beginning, which would end with his resignation and, a few weeks later, with his arrest for the Barçagate case. So much has happened in these 12 months that a club worker reacted with surprise when asked about his memories of a year ago. “It’s been a year? Aren’t there two?” He said in disbelief. In fact, a year ago now, the candidates were already moving, aware that the elections were approaching. “Bartomeu’s statements demonstrate his incompetence and ineptitude,” Laporta would tweet. Víctor Font demanded the end of an era that would still last a few months.

“Of course we made mistakes. Too high salaries, not taking care of the plant …, but we also got it right in many things. Now, we couldn’t imagine that between covid-19 and that defeat everything would go so badly,” he said. justifies the former director Jordi Moix. Bartomeu’s management, from which a number of managers led by Emili Rousaud had left a few months earlier due to differences over how to manage Barçagate, among other things, had already considered doing without Setión before the match against Bayern. The players did not believe in the coach and the results had not been good. “No one thought we could win that Champions League, but we weren’t expecting that defeat either,” admits a locker room worker recalling the previous atmosphere. “Setien had no power over the players,” they say. In fact, once Madrid won the League, the footballers argued that they were tired after that strange season, stopped and prolonged by the coronavirus, and took five days off. When a manager found out, he asked why they were on holiday instead of working preparing for the Champions League. “I haven’t given them a vacation,” Setien would have replied.

The coach, then, left the stadium Da Luz aware that he had his hours numbered. “I know what such a defeat means,” I would say. Now, he did not resign. As if it were a way to make it clear that problems already existed before his arrival. On Monday, when he returned to Barcelona, ​​Setión heard on television how Bartomeu was announcing that he was being kicked out. “Eric Abidal – then sports director – called me to go to lunch the next day and told me. And he asked me if I could give up the money that belonged to me,” explained the Cantabrian coach. A manager would contact him later, to ask him also if he could forgive him money at the club, as they did not have it. The case is over in the courts.

Lewandowski and Müller celebrating Bayern's last goal.

Abidal would leave shortly after. Instead, most of the players remain at the club. Piqué was the only one who put his continuity on the table, as he has now been the only one willing to cut his salary. The others complained, criticizing the management of a club that had spent more than 400 million on players like Dembélé or a Coutinho who played that game with Bayern, on loan, but did not leave. Of the headlines in Da Luz, the first to leave would be Arturo Vidal. Then Semedo at Wolverhampton and Luis Suárez at Atletico Madrid. And finally, a few days ago, Lionel Messi. The other seven are still at a club that in six months had three different coaches. And four sporting directors in five years. Messi, who played the game against Bayern affected by some discomfort, realized that day that the project had no future. A few months earlier he had already asked his father to stop talks to renew with the club. A few days later he would send the famous burofax, but Bartomeu did not let him go.

Now that he wanted to continue, Laporta could not hold him back, dragging the debts of the previous president. The Argentine, as captain, had already said before the match against Bayern: “Everything has been done badly since January”, being colder than ever with the box when adding that they had wanted to put under the magnifying glass to the players. Messi did not share the club’s transfer policy, especially not being able to recover Neymar when the pockets were full. A year ago, they were already empty.

On the same day that Setión packed his bags, Bartomeu announced that the elections, scheduled for the summer of 2021, would take place from 15 March. Bartomeu, harassed by the problems, was trying to gain time by shortening his second term a bit. It would do him no good. “Luckily there are no spectators or we would have had handkerchiefs,” admits one manager. The insults in Lisbon and the police charges in the offices when Messi announced that he wanted to leave, were not spared a directive that was agonizingly extending a mandate that has left the defeat against Bayern turned into another setback. More than eight goals, it has made it even worse to see the club ruined, losing to Messi and immersed in court problems.

When PSG scored four goals at the Camp Nou to leave Barça out of action in the next edition of the Champions League, Barça had such a tough skin that it did less harm than could have been expected. The Lisbon party a year ago was the result of years of decline. What was hard to imagine was that party opening the door to hell that has been the last 12 months. A hell that ended with Messi wearing the PSG shirt.

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