Each speaker he has his style and grace to get the stadium buzzing. We’ve seen it a lot over the last few years: often this announcer acts as conductor when the home team scores a goal, or during a title celebration, or simply works, as he has always done since the beginning of the ‘sport, carrying out a task as easy as chanting the names of the players on both teams. The speaker at Ceuta’s stadium – the Alfonso Murube Municipal Stadium – is in the news for the show he put on during the preview of the Copa del Rey game that Barça played this week (0-5). He decided, no less, to Spanishize all the names.
Ni ‘Roberto’ Lewandowski saves
Barça already arrived in Ceuta with the pack complete with an – in the words of Xavi Hernández – “atypical”: plane to Malaga, helicopter to Ceuta to cross the strait and a bus to get to the stadium of their rivals in the Cup. The path of the Blaugrana expedition was not the strangest of the night: one more surprise was still waiting for them. Just a few minutes before the footballers of both teams appeared on the field of play, thespeaker of the Ceutí team wanted to be the first of the (in this case) 23 protagonists. “Ignacio Peña, Sergio Roberto, Enrique Garcia, Jorge Alba, Roberto Lewandowski”, he sang, with one last detail: “Barça’s goalkeeper, Javier Hernández”.
Real Sociedad, Barça’s opponent in the quarter-finals
Everything that came after that, during the 90 minutes of the game, was joy for Xavi Hernández’s team. Barça materialized an impeccable classification towards the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey with five goals against Ceuta. Goals from Raphinha, two from Lewandowski, Kessie and Ansu Fati. Lewandowski has 22 goals in the 23 games he has played in the Barça shirt this first season. The draw for the quarterfinals of the Cup took place today, and Barça will have to sweat to beat Real Sociedad at the Camp Nou if they want to play in the semifinals.
