On the plus side, the transfer window is closed, so I no longer need to speculate on who will stay and who will go. All the comings and goings are done! Get out your spreadsheets to calculate up the costs, which are actually made up numbers that do not necessarily reflect reality because nothing is real and everything is speculation. Let’s celebrate arrivals as well as some of the departures. We can all laugh at Ferran, knowing that he has never scored a goal in his life, especially not over the summer. Cha-ching.

Okay.

Let’s go ahead and think about the season, shall we? Two—count ’em!—league titles in a row have earned you that much, I think, especially when the coming year promises to be a slog through Rivalries Past. Additionally, next season (2027-28) will include a lot more financial shenanigans when the Camp Nou is once again closed to put the roof on the refurbed stadium. We might not get any real transfer movement for quite a while, so the assembled squad may be something of a long-haul affair. Think being trapped in an RV with your extended family for a trip across whatever your nearest desert is. You can’t really go outside (too hot), but you definitely can’t stay inside either (too Uncle Bill, who won’t stop talking about how he could have been something if only he hadn’t blown out his knees when he was 11).

Of Those Who Have Gone

Because this is my blog and I write whatever (and, uh, whenever) the hell I want, I’m going to start the meat of the season preview, a project generally considered to involve what will happen over the next 9 months and to have been written before any competitive matches, with writing about people who aren’t even here anymore. It’s my party and I can talk about Marcus Rashford if I want to.

Outgoing players: Marcus Rashford, Robert Lewandowski, Iñaki Peña, Ansu Fati, Diego Kochen, Andrés Cuenca, Marc-André ter Stegen, Ronald Araújo, Ferran Torres, Jofre Torrents, Áron Yaakobishvili, Tommy Marqués, Héctor Fort, Guille Fernández, Álvaro Cortés, Marc Casadó

PHEW.

These moves change a lot of things. In fact, all the things! Things you weren’t even aware could change, things you thought were etched entirely in stone, like Ferran continuing to balloon shots over the bar from point blank range for the rest of time. But that has changed! It has changed so dramatically that his lack of doing so one single time—and thus winning a World Cup—has changed him from being the annoying cousin who shows up at the aforementioned RV unannounced and just sits down in the driver’s seat like he owns the damn thing to being some epic find on Antique Roadshow you discovered in the attic when you were looking for that stupid beach chair that you swear is up there and it’s freaking 150 degrees. And that thing is now worth 50 million euros for reasons beyond your comprehension. Finally, some luck! Please ignore that your grandfather bought that cobwebbed clock or whatever for 55 million euros a few centuries ago and just revel in the 50 million euros for a dumb radio or tinker toy or whatever it is the funny guy said before you stole his money and gave him something out of your junk drawer.

Ferran’s contract extension negotiations were beginning to drag on unnecessarily¹ and we got a pretty solid chunk of money for a player with 1 year left on his current deal. It all counts as profit, which is fabulous because math at this level isn’t real.²

The postmortem on Ferran’s career is a little weird. First, he arrived for too much, then he left a World Cup champion, World Cup 2026 Final player of the match (because he scored and no one else did), 1 time Euro winner, 3 time La Liga winner, and 1 time Copa del Rey winner (when he was also top scorer). He’s even shortlisted for the Ballon d’Or, which…okay, sure, I totally respect that award even more now.³

He made 207 appearances and scored 65 goals for Barça across all competitions, the vast bulk of which (40) were scored in the last 2 seasons. He has scored 25 goals in 65 appearances for the Spanish national team, a little bit worse record than Mikel Oyarzabal has (30 in 61). He runs very well. He is fast. He is fairly strong. He can get into good positions. And then he very often screws those good positions up with a bad touch, a poor decision, a failure to read the play as it develops. But he works at it and he has gotten better. The increase in his goalscoring shows this. We’ll miss…some of what he does. We won’t miss his weird lack of sunscreen or his ability to find the 10^th row from a good position, but we will need to replace his runs, his quickness, his determination.

You know whose contributions we will absolutely miss? Robert Lewandoski. He only scored 19 goals last season, his lowest total since his first season in the Bundesliga back in 2010-11, but he knew how to occupy defenders, create space for teammates, and put in the work. It was time for him to go, yes, and certainly time for his salary to go, but his professionalism, his instincts, and his talent will be hard to replace. He was just 9 goals from being in Barcelona’s all-time top 10 scorers after only 4 seasons in his mid-30s, bagging 120 in 193 matches. He arrived in the middle of the CVC fiasco, his transfer fee paid by the influx of capital from Sixth Street, and the liftoff of the only joke anyone has ever told on a Barça broadcast since (something about levers). There were those who argued that this was proof Barcelona were through, kaput, finito while there were other, smarter people who simply pointed out that it was the right move, even if it left a bad taste in your mouth. I was proven correct, of course, but it didn’t hurt at all that Lewandoski was such a fantastic signing from the beginning. 33 goals his first season, 26 his next, and 42 in his third. Godspeed and I highly recommend you very publicly put ketchup on your hot dogs throughout Chicago. They will love it.

I would be remiss if I did not admit to crying a little over the departure of Ronald Araujo. What a king. He’s the type of player whose qualities are lost on those who refuse to acknowledge them. For instance, when he repeatedly shut down Vinicius in clasicos, it was, according to fools, because he was able to ignore his attacking role and concentrate on pocketing one of the (supposedly) better wingers in the world, conveniently ignoring that Araujo also scored in one of those performances. His downfall was brought on mainly through injuries that he just couldn’t seem to avoid and the inconsistencies in performance that it led to. He is a human wrecking ball whose hamstrings simply cannot deal with the required level of strain to send him hurtling through space and time to thwack opponents, which seems fair enough from their perspective. Moving his salary on is huge for us because he was increasingly a backup, partly because of Cubarsi’s consistency and partly through his own inconsistency. Still, when he was on, he was glorious to watch, from the crunching tackle to the, uh, crunching tackles. May we one day appreciate you properly, king (but thanks for taking your salary off our books).

In a lot of ways, this is similar to Marc-André ter Stegen, who captained our squad for something like 3 decades and whose save on Robert Lewandowski (yes, that one) essentially told the world that we would not be denied a Champions League title in 2016. That was 10 years ago! How does this happen? I am not ready to tell my grandchildren stories about the heady days of the late 2010s, about how I was born in the late 20th century. How dare you. And yet, it was, actually, that long ago and the slow decline of ter Stegen is a small-scale version of what happens to dynasties on the macro level. You slip a little, you aren’t quite as quick in either reaction time or speed, you find yourself saying things like “I just need a little more time” both when you receive the ball and when you’re asked to do something around the house. You have a specific mechanic you like because of the way he explains engines to you and has a mustache, as is proper, but there’s no way you can actually implement his suggestions because there’s karate practice and theater practice and poker night to get to so you just pay him to change out the filters or whatever. And eventually you too are replaced for a younger, fitter model that can get the job done for half the cost. I should probably go do the dishes.

Ansu Fati is also off the books, which is devastating for anyone who thinks it’s 2023, but the right thing to do at this point both for the club financially and for Ansu personally. His career arc was one of those ones where I was sure he would be devastatingly good for a generation and then injuries derailed everything. Uncle Bill, but not made up. Ansu was the first post-Messi #10 in the squad and there were incredible expectations for a guy who scored just 29 goals for the club. It’s kind of weird to look back at that now and see the numbers. They can’t be right, but there they are, in black and white: 29 goals in 123 appearances. Ferran Torres got 21 just last season. Anyway, Ansu’s departure is about his salary more than anything, a topic we’ve all covered exhaustively the last few summers thanks to The Bartomeu Legacy, my least favorite installment of the Jason Bourne series. I wish Ansu nothing but the best and may he have a glorious career on the sun-soaked southern shores of France.

Speaking of idols-cum-misfit-toys, it feels like we are now fully into Laporta 2.0 in a way that we weren’t before. We can spend money, dream big dreams, and fight about whether players have the right attitude. Over the summer, rumors flew about real, actual players, not just weird has-beens or might-bes that are borderline insane. I’m sorry to say that talk about Sofyan Amrabat was completely crazy, whenever it was that we collectively went through psychosis and had whole conversations revolving around where he would fit in the system. I have nothing against Amrabat as a person (I know nothing about him) and I even think he is a decent player, but he was never going to be the stud those random Twitter accounts were acting like he was. Also, did you know Amrabat is currently (Right now, today!) 30 years old? I would have bet money he was in his mid-to-late30s. I do not miss Twitter.

Incoming players:  Karim Adeyemi, Jesse Bisiwu, Anthony Gordon, Rodri, Dominik Livakovic, Hamza Abdelkarim, Gabriel Jesus, João Cancelo

You will notice that I did not write paragraphs about every player who left, partially because I am lazy and partially because I am going to wrap their goodbyes into hellos for the players replacing them. This feels unfair to players like Marc Casadó, but it’s what’s going to happen.

Obviously this segues perfectly into talking about…Dominik Livakovic. Naturally. The first guy you want to read about after this summer’s moves. Well, today is your lucky day!

I mentioned above that a lot of our moves are predicated on the concept of building a squad that can survive next year without a single incoming or outgoing player. Because of La Liga’s rules, we are able to register players now, but may not be able to do so next year when our revenue sharply declines. That is why Julian Alvarez was a now-or-never signing (more on that later) and why we signed Livakovic on a 4-year deal despite having a bevy of young goalie talent in our system.

Livakovic is a regular starter for Croatia, including at this past summer’s World Cup finals, and cost just 2 million euros. He appears to be fine just sitting around in Spain, given that he spent 6 months on loan at Girona last season and refused to enter a match, leading to banishment and an eventual loan to Dinamo Zagreb in January. Fenerbahçe were clearly ready to see the back of him and maybe Dinamo were too since a supposed plan to sign him and loan him out for the season fell through. If this is true, it likely cost one of Diego Kochen or Áron Yaakobishvili (both of whom are 20) a squad spot. They’re both loaned out, so I suppose hope never dies, but it seems unlikely that they will make the jump back, as is the way with loanees.

It is good to have a capable backup in case of injury—depth! It’s cool!—and that seems to be the real modus operandi of this year’s moves and why I’m mentioning Livakovic first. We must clear the decks and build squad depth so that when the Winter of Scarcity is upon us, we can survive and maybe even thrive until spring.

The central question for squad members wasn’t “Are you capable of contributing in the future?” but rather “Can you meaningfully contribute to or improve the squad right now and in the future?” Any hesitancy on the part of the technical staff or the front office in answering that question in the affirmative seems to have spelled doom for a few players. The main examples of that are Héctor Fort and Marc Casadó, both of whom are solid players with long professional careers in their futures, but they are not world beaters, as much as I love Casadó and wanted him to succeed at Barça.

With financial constraints and a win-now mentality (as always), there are no places in the squad for possibilities, only sure things. Fort found himself behind Eric Garcia, Jules Kounde, and even João Cancelo. Casadó may have had it worse: Rodri, Marc Bernal, Frenkie de Jong, Gavi, Pedri, Dani Olmo, Fermín López, and Eric García are ahead of him in the depth chart, which means he would have been begging for scraps in minor games, playing-time-wise. This is the simple math of having a squad with actual depth. Ferran was, in a way, a victim of this same formula, which is fun to be able to say because, well, depth is awesome.

Here’s my current guess as to our depth chart, with started listed first, followed by backup and then 3^rd string, etc.

GK: Joan Garcia, Wojciech Szczęsny, Dominik Livaković, Eder Aller

RB: Eric Garcia, Jules Kounde, Joao Cancelo

RCB: Pau Cubarsi, Andreas Christensen, Jules Koundé, Eric García

LCB: Gerard Martín, Andreas Christensen

LB: Xavi Espart, Joao Cancelo, Alejandro Balde

DM: Rodri, Marc Bernal, Eric García, Brian Fariñas, Frenkie de Jong

CM: Pedri, Dani Olmo, Fermín López, Gavi, Marc Bernal, Frenkie de Jong

RW: Lamine Yamal, Raphinha, Karim Adeyemi, Fermín López

LW: Anthony Gordon, Karim Adeyemi, Raphinha, Joao Cancelo

FW: Raphinha, Fermín López, Karim Adeyemi, Anthony Gordon, Jesse Bisiwu, Hamza Abdelkarim

Feel free to quibble with my placement of a few of these, especially Frenkie, who may or may not be injured for the rest of time, but the truth is that we are purring without him and I do not see how he regularly makes the lineup once he is back. There is serious competition at every position, although we are perhaps “lightest” at left and right back, depending on your particular opinion(s) of Balde and Kounde. Still, if luck holds and there are no long-term injuries, we’ll have plenty of cover even in those positions.

One player I have not included is the injured Roony Bardghji, who I doubt we’ll see play for Barça again and who would have been offloaded had he not gotten injured when did. I enjoyed watching him, but he just doesn’t seem to have the It factor that is required at such a high-performing club. He wasn’t taking over matches or even hinting that he could, really.

There is also Brian Fariñas, who is maybe just kind of there? Maybe slated for stardom? I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I had originally included him in a “ones to watch” list to end this preview and then he went and got promoted to the first team. Watching preseason matches is always fun because we get to see the next crop of players and make outlandish calls about them (The Next Big Thing! or No Chance in Hell!), so it’s nice to look at that list of performances I like and note that one of them is already in the first team. Go me! I also had Álvaro Cortés penciled in, but with a note that I expected him to be sold and replaced with a new arrival. It is extremely rare that I am right once in an offseason, much less twice. I’m giddy.

For the record, the other players I noticed were Ebrima Tunkara, Orian Goren, and Jordi Pesquer, with Goren the most impressive to me, but also the rawest. That can be a good thing at that age, though.

So: the major question that every commentator asked repeatedly throughout the preseason was whether or not the team could find a true 9 and thus find enough goals. The math is simple enough:

144 total goals last season, 58 of which were scored by players who have since departed (Ferran, Lewandowski, Rashford, Araujo) and 2 which were scored by Roony, who is out indefinitely.

Replacing Lewandowski, Rashford, and then Ferran were obvious priorities and the club jumped all over Anthony Gordon even before the World Cup, shelling out what seemed like a lot for a player who was, statistically, basically a slightly younger Rashford. The comparisons between the players were easy to make:

Rashford is 28, played in 49 matches last year, and scored 14 goals. 5 of his goals were in the Champions League, which seems worth mentioning, especially since none of them were penalties.

Gordon is 25, played in 46 matches last year, and scored 17 goals. Although he scored 10 goals in the Champions League, 4 of them came in the qualifiers against Qarabag and 7 of his total (including 2 against Qarabag) were penalties. 3 of his 6 league goals were also penalties.

Weirder yet is that Rashford notched 15 assists with Barça and Gordon got just 5 all season with Newcastle. And then Gordon went and scored against Barça, of course, but Rashford, well, he scored two, against Newcastle that same match, both of them very nice goals.

Do those 3 years really make the difference? Well, Gordon has played in 5 matches so far for Barça and has…5 assists. I would compare some xG and xA stats, but apparently FBRef no longer has the Opta license, so I can’t do that and I’m not smart enough to figure out xGStat right now or sign up for an account or anything like that. Basically I’m saying that I don’t know what the underlying numbers suggested, but I would guess they showed that Rashford either overperformed or was right in line with expected returns while I would simultaneously guess that Gordon’s would show that he underperformed expectation. I could be wrong! I don’t know!

All I know is that Gordon has been stellar. They’re even calling him Catalan in the stands. His language skills are ridiculous and he fits like a freakin’ glove. It is already obvious that he was the correct call between him and Rashford, even with the price difference.

The other major outlay is less clear cut so far, with Rodri only starting twice so far, but the signs are good and my optimism remains high. Very high. Probably too high. When the rumors swirled that Rodri was likely going to sign for Madrid, I declared the season a complete loss, it was all over. They would lift something like 52 trophies this year. And then there was an about-face, Madrid was shunned, and we became the kings of the world. Err, am I getting ahead of myself?

Probably not.

Season predictions: 52 trophies, 2500 goals scored, 3 goals allowed across all competitions, and the new roof will be installed in 2 months next summer with no problems.

1. Any amount of time we spent contemplating whether to extend him instead of sell him was time we could have used in any other way and been more productive. Such as doing research on whether Joan Laporta really can drink all the cava in Catalunya in one sitting (I believe in him) or if there is open wifi at the Bernabeu and we can print various pictures of Ronaldo crying while being eliminated from the World Cup (again) on their office printers while parked in the parking lot (if we haven’t tried this, fire Deco immediately). ︎
2. Accounting math is the best math because 55 minus 50 is…50! Science! Why does my wife keep asking why we’re broke and our kids keep repeating grades? I have a spreadsheet that shows exactly how we have enough money to buy another original Monet and I’ve taught the children everything I know! ︎
3. I do not respect that award. ︎

Flick’s Barcelona right now is, for people with a sense of fun (lacking a better word), that thing. Someone watches for the first time, or comes across some highlights of this year’s team and that light bulb comes on.

My appreciation and respect for online tacticos is real, the ability to make all of that stuff make sense. For me, football is marbles in a bowl, a series of actions and reactions. There are tactics in a broad sense, but what is a tactic for what Lamine Yamal does? “Just go … do … ah, screw it. Nice goal.”

This iteration of Flick’s Barça is superior to the previous two in very clear ways, like a racing driver who suddenly gets a car that works. There was always theory behind the football but the implementation was lacking because the eight-cylinder engine was firing on five or six cylinders.

Flick’s football has also adapted in the face of an extraordinary series of stimuli. Having Pedri, Lamine Yamal, Cubarsi makes a manager adapt to the talent present in those players. But this season, in the wake of a summer transfer window defined by many as a mixed bag as they focus on the single thing that they believe the team absolutely has to have, that very same window allowed the remaining cylinders in the engine to start firing.

Anthony Gordon has brought something to that left wing that even Raphinha didn’t have, in a selfless sense of footballing intelligence. Raphinha wants to attack. He also thinks, like most top-level ballers, that he is always the best option, because duh.

Gordon has pace, dribbling, passing — all the tools, but Gordon also has something that coats his toolbox in gold in that selflessness. He will take a shot if the shot is screaming for him to take it, but his default thinking is, “What does the team need in this moment?” It’s like having Pedri as a winger in many ways.

And then there is Rodri.

For those of us who believed that a DM was more important than a CB in that grand scheme of allowing the back line to play better football, that first half against Valencia is something that is easy to point to. There hasn’t been a sense of order and calm in the hole since the days of Busquets. When he calmly popped over a diagonal ball to switch play, it was the missing thing.

We are so accustomed to seeing Flick’s team attack, and attack in a zone. It’s like people get so focused that they never ask, “What would happen if we just switched play to the other side?” Having a DM who thinks like that automatically completely changes how the team plays because it unlocks the whole pitch for a team that attacks like marbles in a bowl.

Xavi Espart is the surprise package, the player who also activates that left flank, which has been a dead zone for the past two seasons, absent the ability of Cancelo to do a madness. The left flank is now an active, vibrant part of the attack and the overall effect is a kind of “AHA” football that is joyful to watch.

Not since Guardiola’s treble team has a group of Barcelona players been so hungry to score goals, then get the ball back so they can score more goals. The press had holes in players such as Lewandowski and Ferran Torres, so an attack based in the press that starts from the front, can’t start because there is no first layer of the press.

What made the Guardiola team so effective is that from the moment the keeper got the ball there was pressure. Eto’o ran at him, Henry tracked attackers, Xavi looked for the steal, Iniesta nipped at their heels, Messi treated an opponent having the ball as a personal affront. If it got past that group, Busquets was trolling the space in front of the back line, casually strolling over to dispossess an attacker as we watched Rodri do many times against Valencia.

Everybody up front could attack, everybody up front could score. The same is true today, as moving Raphinha central looks to be a very smart move. Flanking him with Gordon and Lamine Yamal means that the ball always has somewhere to go, a pair of willing feet ready to slot it home. Add Fermin Lopez to that mixture and defenders don’t know what to do, who to stop because you can’t stop everyone. Put two defenders on Lamine Yamal and he just feeds Raphinha. Put two on Raphinha and Gordon is running in, or Pedri is slotting diagonals to runners. It’s football that is irrepressible by design, and joyous to watch.

Formation? Sure, when things start. But Fermin Lopez making like Lamine Yamal with a mazy dribble up the center as Gordon and Raphinha interchange and Lamine Yamal pops up whereever he finds space is the kind of football that just makes you happy to watch.

It’s been a while since Barcelona football has been appointment football for aesthetes. Xavi’s teams were dour. Effective but too often joyless. Koeman … the less said about that the better, except for Luuuuk! Luis Enrique’s unleashing of the Messi/Neymar/Suarez trident was fun, but not in the same way mostly because it was a hydra rather than a full monster. Everybody worked to get the ball up front. It garnered a treble and we enjoyed the goals, but it was different. This Flick team is a machine, from flank to flank, front to back, a machine that produces goals.

This group has 17 goals in four matches, or some ridiculous number. And more than the goals are the way the goals are happening, leaving aside whatever that was that Lamine Yamal did against Valencia. The team is producing higher percentage chances through movement and an abundance of potential creators and scorers. Defenses have to move, keepers have to move so shooters have bigger holes to aim for. Goals are easier when the percentages are higher.

The press starts from the front, continues in midfield. A liberated Pedri can now work in his preferred and most effective zone, no longer having to serve as DM, occasional fullback or CB. Passing is off the first touch more and more, as movement becomes the thing rather than players carrying the ball in attack, a feature of the first two Flick seasons. As Cruijff said, the ball moves faster than the man.

This isn’t one of those “this is how football is supposed to be played” things, because there is no single way for the game to be played. But the game is entertainment at its core, and football is supposed to be entertaining. Even when goals aren’t going in there should be thrilling moments, possibilities, things that move you to the edge of your seat in anticipation because the game feels alive, vibrant. Ideally, watching the team you love will be fun, and there is no more fun team in football right now than Flick’s Barcelona, even given what is happening with Aubameyang and Depor.

Opponents are going to start bunkering in, goals will be conceded, Champions League football will be fraught. What we can hope is that the team will continue to play in the same entertaining way. We can also assume this because in past years, even to its detriment, they kept playing aggressive, attacking football, even if it wasn’t always logical. What is different this year is that there is logic to go with the aggression.

Guardiola’s teams made triangles, and that was beautiful to watch the ball pinging around. Flick’s team makes slashes, Jackson Pollock to Guardiola’s Piet Mondrian. The picture is still beautiful, still amazing to look at because great art is great art. Flick’s Barça is making art, and it has been too long since culers had such a museum of wonders to visit, week after week.

We know he was a bum because he was at the club for four seasons, had Messi and a coterie of legends at his disposal, and only won the Champions League twice.

Luis Enrique was also a bum. Come on, Messi, Suarez, Neymar and you only win ONE Champions League? How is that even possible?

Rjkaard, bum. Xavi Hernandez? Bum. Ernesto Valverde? Bum. No, he is even worse than a bum because the players he was in charge of had absolutely epic collapses, twice. Seventh circle of hell for him.

Hansi Flick has created one of the most delightful Barcelona teams to watch in some time. He rolled in his first season and, with a bunch of kids and freebies, won a domestic treble and made the Champions League semis. His next season he won the league again and is rolling into his third season, looking to repeat the feat of winning the league.

Pity that he, too, is a bum because he hasn’t won Champions League.

These days, Champions League has become an obsession for so many — too many culers. Everything is defined by that random competition.

–“He is fine in league, but I don’t trust him in Europe.”

–“Winning the league is fine, but they are supposed to do that. Not winning Champions League is unacceptable.”

An obsession with what is truly a random competition is strange, and has come to define everything about the club. Can this player help with Champions League? If not, why even bother. Hell, I think Flick should go all in for Europe by just playing his starters enough league matches to not get relegated, to keep them fresh for the competition that matters.

The year the team made the semis and lost against Inter, something that history tells us was all the fault of Ronald Araujo, reality was that Raphinha scored a goal to put them ahead, and all they had to do was play two minutes of controlling football.

Instead, Lamine Yamal tried a shot, even as Pedri was telling him to take it to the corner. Then Lewandowski lost the throw. Inter bashed it long, where Cubarsi won the header but fell down, leaving Martin, who tried to play the ball instead of just bashing it out, as De Jong stood there watching proceedings.

A light touch that wasn’t called by the same official just a minute or so earlier, nonetheless was tried by Martin, who yelped and fell down as Inter played on. Cubarsi didn’t even try to pressure the cross, Szczesny didn’t come out to fist it away, and Acerbi off-footed a worldie into the roof as Araujo stood there instead of getting harder into his body.

The following season, they faced Atleti without Raphinha, whose hammies did a “Peace out,” for the second or third time that season. Without any pressure from the front, Barcelona conceded a couple of those typical Barcelona goals. Couple that with slack finishing, and it was another year of watching the Final on TV.

For supporters, who of course absolutely know better, that is just unacceptable. Flick out. The league? Who cares. Transfers? Can any of them help win Champions League? If not? Who cares.

The Champions League is a lottery, from the selection process to the matches. A keeper has a blinder, a fluke goal off a deflection and suddenly a knockout match is a mess for a favored side. Untimely injury? Add that to the pile of randomness. The best team in Europe is defined as the one that wins the CL trophy. It is usually also the luckiest.

Defining a season or a team’s accomplishments by such a metric is not only weird, but misguided because it just doesn’t make sense. When did we become so entitled that only the biggest trophies matter? Real Madrid, trophyless for the last two seasons, would love to be able to say, “Yeah, winning the league is expected. Ho hum.” ANY of the other teams in the league would murder to say they won the league, once they recovered from the hangover of a week-long bacchanal.

Managers, including the coterie of bums listed above, all value winning league titles because it shows off the work they have done in building a team, shows the consistency of that work and the sustained excellence of their project. Any manager would love to win Champions League. Duh. Some of them, when asked, even had the temerity to say they valued the league championship more.

What is wrong with them? Are they crazy?

Maybe it’s time to take a step back from a competition that is becoming an obsession, to just enjoy the football being played by FC Barcelona this season. Anthony Gordon looks to be the business, Xavi Espart is casually dropping masterclasses. Rodri has been added, as has Karim Adeyemi to be able to let Lamine Yamal get some rest. Gabriel Jesus, a pressing demon if his knees hold together, has been added to a chameleon-like front line where any player could pop up anywhere to score or assist.

“But they haven’t added a 9 or CB! How are ‘we’ supposed to win Champions League without a world-class 9 or CB?”

The biggest transfer Flick can add to that roster is composure, on and off the ball. Rodri will help bring some of that, so will another season under the legs of the team’s young stars. There isn’t a single player they could add who could bring more to that roster than composure. With Composure in the colors, Flick’s team is in the final for both of the past two seasons.

Defining success by absence of the right kind of success just makes everything as joyless and dour as it has been throughout the summer transfer window and through the first three matches. “Well they won, but it was (insert team name here).” It’s at the point where even winning a Classic is becoming humdrum, because none of them are that One Big Trophy that defines everything.

The game is a game. It’s supposed to be fun, and joyful. When I watch Xavi Espart I don’t think, “I sure don’t think he’s good enough against the top European sides and how are ‘we’ going to win Champions League with a player like that?”

Don’t know, don’t care. If you can’t get excited watching this team this year, there won’t be anything capable of exciting you. Even if Flick’s team goes trophyless this season it will still be fun to watch. “Are you not entertained?” is not conditional, or a “Yeah, but … ” It is what it is.

But for some players, football moves slowly, so slowly that they have time to consider, time to choose then time to act. Those players are rare, and often not appreciated until someone who doesn’t have the same time-shifting capabilities supplants them, or someone explains about their almost supernatural capabilities.

The game has had a number of those mutants, from Zinedine Zidane and his otherworldly control, which gave him extra time on the ball, to Xavi and Iniesta, magicians each in their own distinctive way, who used possession to extend milliseconds into seeming hours.

Messi would hunch his body over the ball, using movement as a way to extend time, able to do what he wanted at the end of that arc. Busquets, Kroos, Modric — it seems weird to be talking about a kid having those same kinds of capabilities, but precociousness can be fun.

When Xavi Espart debuted late in the season at RB for FC Barcelona, not sure people will remember that one of his first actions, when an attacker was running at him, was to pause. When he acted, it was with directness and clarity to stop the attack.

Another time he took a diagonal line to cut out a pass, a veteran move because usually, young players know straight lines. It takes a while to learn that a diagonal can be the fastest distance between two points.

His actions were defensive in nature because fullback is a defensive position, but all of his shifts were at fullback. Naturally, when people talked about him over the summer, they mused about where he would fit into that RB rotation, disparaged him by saying he would be found out in Champions League, too slow, not physical, etc, etc.

Then Flick put him in midfield, more his natural position if not his best position — certain players have the capability to make whereever they play their “best” position — and he sparkled, and sparkled again.

“Pffft. It’s pre-season, everybody looks good in preseason. Just wait until the real matches start.”

In the first match, Flick played him at LB. Flick didn’t just play him at LB, Flick started him at LB and what did Espart do? Held that flank down like he had been there since the beginning of time. Even more interesting is because Elche’s principal attacker occupied that space, they were coming at Espart time after time after time, and got nothing.

Espart not only defended, but was able to read play and distribute balls, knowing when to move up and when to sit back, none of his actions being automatic or seeming without thought.

“Yeah, but that was Elche,” said his detractors because that is what you do when something is happening that isn’t supposed to happen.

Then came the first home match against Athletic Club, when things were supposed to return to normal. Cancelo had a proper training period, Balde was going to stay and fight for a spot and made the matchday squad.

Flick started Espart at LB. Again. And Espart played LB like he had been there his whole career. Again. From the first minute, distributing a pearl of a pass, to late in the match where an Athletic Club attacker had a running start at him only for Espart to recover, whereupon he did something really smart: Instead of trying to DO SOMETHING, an instinct typical of a young player, he understood that the best course of action would be to just stay between the attacker and the goal, action by inaction, so that space and time could do what they do.

Later in the match, Flick subbed on Rodri and Cancelo, the latter moving to LB. Pedri subbed off and Espart moved to midfield, where he worked with Rodri in the name of command and control. And whether at LB or in midfield, every action of Espart was defined by intelligence. Like Pedri, he holds off for a beat just to be sure, because he has time. He knows that he has time even if the game doesn’t.

He has a sense of when to release a ball quickly, off the first touch, or when to hold a second to let a defender’s body weight shift so that it will be more difficult for him to jump a passing lane.

The great Ray Hudson used to talk about players such as Xavi playing as though they had already watched a replay of the match, already knowing how everything was going to go in real time. Pedri plays that way. So does Xavi Espart, and it’s weird to watch because it doesn’t make sense for one so young.

He isn’t fast, isn’t tall, isn’t physically strong, like Pedri, or Xavi, or Iniesta. He isn’t fleet of foot, but neither was Busquets, another player who could stretch time like taffy. His most powerful quality is his brain, a computer that seems to be able to decipher football in a way that allows him to have time.

Having time allows a player to see things. Pedri offloaded an assist to Raphinha for the first Barcelona goal, the kind of pass that harkened back to the glory days of tika-taka and magical mids, but he took a little pause before the ball was released, just to allow things to settle, but not so much that Raphinha would be offside.

Later in the match, Espart offloaded a similar ball to Gordon, a direct diagonal that shot through space with the correct weight and placement, eliciting praise for the moment, rightly so. My reaction was, “Xavi Espart, what are you doing,” because it doesn’t make sense for a damn kid to have already figured out how to play a fast, complicated game in a way that makes it seem slow to him, that gives him time.

It is beautiful to watch, even more so because he is another product of La Masia, a genius factory that accounted for 70 percent of the starting Barcelona XI against Athletic Club.

Espart is going to have bad matches, because they all do. Human bodies aren’t computers. How people react to those matches will depend on so much, including the omnipresent entorno. But when you watch him play, there is an ease to his game, an assurance that consistently leads to the right action. On a team when lost possession can so often spell danger, having a player on the pitch who understands that forcing things is bad unless it’s safe, is invaluable.

Flick, after the match, singled Espart out for praise, saying he was surprised at how well he played LB, lauding his preparation and capabilities, and rightly so. This is another special one, that you hope the injury gods protect, that Fate will be kinder to than it was to Marc Casado, who lost that crucial step after his knee injury and is now on the way out of Barcelona.

The game needs special players, time shifters, and it only seems right that at a club where such qualities are held in such high esteem, another one would pop out of the academy just in time for people saying, “Man, I sure wish there was a midfielder who was good enough to let Flick give Pedri some rest,” to watch him and say, “Oh. Okay. Cool.”

The announcement from Alexia Putellas that she would be leaving the club of her ACTUAL life, a story lived from childhood and a father wanting her to one day, fight for the colors, an arc of sustained excellence that ended with helping that very same team lift the Champions League trophy, hit me and a lot of other people like a ton of bricks.

In looking for the words to explain why, for me they are in fact pretty simple, once the world is no longer being seen through a veil of tears: Alexia Putellas embodies everything that Barça is supposed to stand for. From coming up through the system to helping build a team that became a juggernaut, a selfless devotion to a club that is rare.

So many culers don’t and will never understand why Barça Femeni is special, and has a special place in the hearts of those who do understand. And that’s okay. But it’s weird to remember the first time you saw a player, having no idea who it was but seeing them and their game and saying, “Who TF IS that?”

On a pitch stuffed with fellow professionals, like that player at the top of their profession, and this player just makes everyone look second class. She goes where she wants, does what she wants, scores, assists, plays like she has already seen a video of the match.

The greatest players make a sport feel like a game in the childhood sense, this thing approached with unbridled joy. Alexia Putellas always seemed to play the game with a sense of “Wheeeee!” that is rare in a player of that level, joy unbound by the idea of failure. If you don’t try, you won’t succeed. “I have the skill to execute that pass, so here goes.”

Like any great athlete in any field, she played the game with a bigger pitch. Just like basketball shooters say when they are on one of those nights, the hoop looks like it’s the size of a swimming pool, her quality made the impossible not only possible, but expected.

Her celebration after slamming home the goal that assured the Champions League title became iconic — it was the best doing the best at a moment when the best was required, as much affirmation as execution, an exorcism of emotion from a player who ascended to the summit after starting below ground.

Knowing when to leave is an art. Like Xavi, who left the Camp Nou after a treble celebration, Alexia leaves after a quadruple celebration, and her gold dust flecked boots were all over it.

Athletes are the harshest judges of their performance level, even when it seems like they aren’t, like they are hanging on too long. They know, because they know. The better the athlete, the clearer the knowledge. Great athletes also have egos. Michael Jordan will tell anyone, in a moment of honesty, that he shouldn’t have come back, that the moment when he dropped in the title-clinching shot, pose held for the cameras and posterity, should have been it.

Athletes know.

There is no arguing about the decline of Alexia, something we can admit even as we can appreciate and revere her. The shots that would have been goals that this season went wide or were too soft to bother the keeper, the passes over or underhit or struck a second too late so they were cut out at the defense instead of yet another lustrous assist — the signs were there.

If we could see them, you know she could see them, but also feel them. Someone — memory escapes me who — said they knew it was time to retire when the game started feeling like it was being played at normal speed. This referenced the quality that the greats have, which reduces things to slow motion, like they are the only one moving at normal speed.

She is being quoted as saying that part of why she is leaving is to not stand in the way of the natural progression of the team, also an extraordinary thing, because athletes have egos. They say they are going to “stay and fight for a place” and similar things. The admission that it’s time is rare. And maybe, just maybe, had the team seen failure at that topmost rung, she might have stayed another season.

Maybe.

Barça Femeni is an incredible team. During the match feed, which I couldn’t wait to watch as soon as we returned from Oslo, the commentators were talking about how stacked with young talent the team was, that youth underscoring those statements. Clara Serrajordi, at 18, played a Final like she was a veteran of many more years. Aicha Camara subbed on for Mapi Leon and made the things that the veteran put effort into look easy. Youth will be served.

Perhaps it was less difficult for Alexia to leave because like any proud parent, you watch a grown, successful child do things you could never have imagined and smile in satisfaction. She was there from the beginning, through all the failures, when Femeni wasn’t a colossus, there to raise them up, to present an unassailable level like the sign at amusement parks that read, “You must be THIS tall to ride this rollercoaster.”

“You must be THIS good to do this. Let’s get there together.”

This hits so hard because she was part of the team in a way that transcended being a player. Their excellence was her excellence in that same Jordanesque way, as a team grew with her, learned to excel as she did, finally tapping her on the shoulder and saying, “We’re ready. Thank you for absolutely all of this, but we are ready.”

But even if they are, and they are, it will feel weird for a long time to not have number 11 gliding around the pitch, captain’s armband on, making difficult moments look easy but also getting down and dirty when needed.

She has more football in her, even if not at the topmost level, but it’s hard not to wish she would hang up the boots. Some players don’t feel right in any other shirt, and Alexia Putellas is one of them. She was ours, is ours, will always be ours. Eterna.

I checked set lists, listened to all of his music, read articles, did everything I could to educate myself about a performer who, artistically, I wouldn’t cross the street to piss on if he was on fire.

The show got a rave review, not because of what my views were on his music, but rather did he do the job he was there to do, and how well did he do it?

A classical music critic who I respected a lot, the late Robert Marsh, told me two things about live event criticism:

— Never applaud, show pleasure or scorn. The publicists know where you are sitting, so show nothing.

–The second, most important one was you are there to review the performance, not what you think of the performer.

When Flick selected Ronald Araujo to be in the starting XI against Newcastle, the reviews of his performance wouldn’t really need a match to be written, because they were what people thought about the performer, rather than the performance.

“Pfft. He was pretty good in the air, but that’s about it.”

“He didn’t do anything to help Lamine Yamal in attack.”

“The Newcastle goal was his fault. Just another clown moment.”

After the match, Flick essentially said he was supposed to defend, and defend he did, so he was satisfied.

Nobody else was.

He is a player whose career at FC Barcelona is defined by three moments: the PSG red, the Chelsea red and the Acerbi goal. All of the other good to excellent performances he has delivered for the club he now captains, are immaterial. Supporters expect the worst when they see his name, because of those moments.

Is that correct?

Obviously, no, but correct has nothing to do with logic. Even when you break down what happened with the goals or reds, it’s immaterial to the “reality” of perception. He is bad. Even when he is good, he is just a play away from being bad. Good moments are greeted with silence, because that isn’t what people are there for. They are there for the bad stuff, the Tweets and comments pre-written.

Gerard Martin is another player on the same path. He has to have a fantastic match for people to say “He was decent.” His life has been defined by when he was still finding his legs as a fullback, and got danced a few times by tricky wingers. He is a bum in waiting rather than a fast improving player who Flick now trusts fully.

The weird thing about seeing what preconceived notions tell us to perceive is one of the fascinating things about psychology and how people perceive an event. What we expect becomes what we see, because expecting nothing is a challenge that requires a weird mindset.

“Kid Rock’s music sucks, and because the music sucks, the show sucks,” was always a very useful way to identify critics who weren’t very good, because they reviewed what they thought about the performer rather than the performance.

You could go minute by minute and document the good defensive plays that Araujo made against Newcastle and people would still say that he was poor and the goal was his fault. Psychology can’t be overcome, but asking the question about HOW we see what we see is interesting — at least to me.

My first reaction to seeing him hobbling back up the pitch right before the Newcastle set piece was, “Why didn’t he sub off, I hope he doesn’t try to switch with someone just before the play, because yonder lies madness.”

So when he stopped at the top of the box, presumably to deal with lofted balls or aerial threats that wouldn’t involve him cutting or sprinting on a cramping calf, my reaction was, “Cool.” Because everybody had zones covered, until they didn’t.

My reaction to the play was tempered by the tumble he took before the goal, the calf that was clearly bothering him and the way he gimped up the pitch. So everything that he did made sense.

What others saw was very different, and relates to how everyone sees an event. My mention of Rashford being lazy on the initial pass wasn’t something many mentioned, but it mattered because in the context of a team being a collective that protects individuals, his first reaction should have been, “If the winger gets that ball, Cancelo is in trouble.”

My guess is when managers break down goals, it is likely very different from how supporters break down goals, because managers see the game differently. Flick probably saw all of it, we can surmise, because he mentioned the lack of covering on Barnes.

Cubarsi had an excellent match. Cubarsi also was done for pace on three different occasions, but teammates picked him up by either making plays or working the offside trap. But maybe, just maybe, part of why Cubarsi was so good was because he had a defender on the right side. Maybe. It all depends on what and how you see what you see.

Nobody’s way of looking at an event is right or wrong. It’s just what they see, how they are programmed. “The right fullback is supposed to be primarily an attacker who plays off Lamine Yamal so that he can be at his best.” When a fullback doesn’t do that, they had a bad match. In their context, their assessment of a performance is correct.

Football, for such an objective endeavor, is quite subjective, right down to who performs an individual action and the consequences of those actions. As a fun psychological experiment, ask, the next time you react to a play, good or bad, what your view would be if a different player made that play.

Thirty years of assessing performances with an empty mind and a bloodless pen have made me look at everything in a different way. What happened, and how? The who is irrelevant. For me, it has to be. It’s how I am wired. When someone else who is wired differently suggests a different idea, we discuss it, hopefully with respect and understanding of the other person’s view.

But the biggest challenge in evaluating a subjective event is removing the evaluator from the event. Football, music, dance, visual art, whatever. Asking “What do I think about the performer and how is that affecting my reaction TO the performance” is one of the most useful things we can do as observers.

Asking that question, and answering it, doesn’t even need to change what anyone might think. Just asking the question has value. Back in the day, good copy editors would come back at critics during edits, with something like, “What does this have to do with the performance? This reads like you are putting yourself in the review.”

As critics got questions like that more, they got better at the selfectomies necessary to evaluate events. It’s worth thinking about for all of us.

Players, clubs, reputations, everything goes in and out comes the waste in an ugly process participated in by clubs, media outlets that are the mouthpieces of those clubs, people who prop themselves up as arbiters of various things, and the supporters that latch on like cuttlefish, seeking affirmation in reflected glory. They don’t really know what to think until someone tells them — this player is good, no matter what he does, that player is bad, no matter what he does.

That maw doesn’t know what to do with things that aren’t black and white. A hamstring injury is black or white. But mental illness is also an injury, just as debilitating, just as significant to a player’s health and well-being. But the maw mostly doesn’t really give a shit about that.

Ronald Araujo is braver than any of the people slashing and lashing at him for what he has done, which is to say, essentially, “This is too much, and I am struggling.” He is injured.

People are, of course, using that to sharpen their long knives, to say things such as, “Better off without him,” or “Leave my club,” or “He hasn’t been the same defender anyhow.” It is all done so casually, tossing a player off and aside, then flushing him and his career down the toilet.

Football, that giant, ugly thing that is only infrequently as beautiful and joyful as we like to delude ourselves into thinking it is on the regular, doesn’t care. It shapes how people are thought about by what it says about them.

What is important to know is that mental health issues are related to a great many things, from internal chemistry to susceptibility to things being said and how those things are shaped. Some people don’t care what others say about them, don’t care about the effects of their actions, athletic sociopaths in a way. For others, it matters. They care. Football and a supporter base, a media mass, doesn’t care about any of that as they shape and define what a player is and how he is perceived, without thinking for an instant about the effect on the player and what that might mean.

Many years ago, working the newsroom overnight shift that was one to nine a.m., the phone rang. At that time of the day it was usually people looking to settle a bar bet. On this night it was a young man, wheelchair-bound after an auto accident. He was considering suicide because in his view he had gone from being a hard-working, healthy young man married to a wonderful woman to a useless bum that people had to push around because he couldn’t do anything.

We talked for hours, for most of my shift as we got into how and why he felt that way. He didn’t do it. It was the whisper stream, the people who acted compassionate to his face but said and did things behind his back that stripped away kindness and dignity, that came to define how he felt about himself.

The call ended with him resolving to talk to his wife, talk to his family, deal with the world in a way that allowed him to find space in it. And for days after that I would check the medical examiner’s report for his name. That it never showed up provided some solace even as I could never have any idea about the anguish that made a complete stranger put his life, essentially, in the hands of another stranger at the other end of a phone line.

What people say defines us, like it or not. People are vexed about it on social media when they shouldn’t be. Why? Because it matters to them. Ronald Araujo is, in the eyes of the shit production system that is the Barcelona entorno, a bum. He is stupid, reckless, a red card machine that lets his team down time and again in big matches. He is the reason for the Champions League exits of the past two years. He can’t play a high line, can’t work an offside trap, can’t pass, can’t do anything. Big accounts define him as someone who needs to leave so that he can “find a club that suits his style.”

None of that is true. None of it. But it has become true, has become what Araujo is because his reputation and perception have been shaped. A more favored player in the exact same situation, with the same outcome and the system shapes it differently. “How can the ref make that call,” or “What a soft call at such an important moment.”

Dembele is a bum whose lifestyle led to his being injured all the time. Another player is, “That’s rough luck, I hope his luck changes so that he can become as great as we all know that he can.”

What shapes those situations? The maw.

Ronald Araujo has played his leonine heart out for FC Barcelona, time after time, match after match. There was a time when he was lauded for that quality, that fire, that effort. But since the PSG red card, a bang-bang play that terminated in a soft red, he has become a different player, shaped by those who define such things. He has become a bum, a wastrel, a mess.

We don’t pay attention to structures unless they benefit us. We don’t note that his best years were when he had a functioning midfield and the fullbacks were much better. Because that isn’t part of the game, unless it is for chosen players.

Some players have the luxury of being victims of a system, the “Once x or y changes we will see the full magnificence,” then x or y changes and they are the same player and another excuse comes into play. They are the lucky ones. Players such as Araujo aren’t in that cadre.

What makes it worse is how Twitter, the predominant metaverse of football discussion, functions. Blue ticks are paid for engagement, and you don’t get engagement by bucking trends, by saying what people don’t want to hear. Engagement is money. So he’s a bum. And big accounts are influential because they are big accounts. So it escalates. Ter Stegen is likened to a “terrorist,” Rakitic is even worse. And on it goes, because it has to.

No care, no time is spent wondering what all of that is doing to the player because they are the pawns, the property that is ours to be played with, used and abused as we see fit. We see, hear and read about the deleterious effects that social media, the whisperstream has on ordinary people — the depression, the suicides — and we think, “These players are getting millions. They can take it.” And on it goes.

It takes an immense person to own their frailty, precisely because of that system that will take that admission, spit on it and smear the player with that detritus. But Araujo is brave, extremely brave, for doing that. And his passion and love for the club should never be questioned, even more so because he has said, “I have something preventing me from being my best for my club. I need to fix this.”

The club, the coaching staff, the players are backing him 100 percent because they understand. They have likely struggled with the exact same thing, whether it’s depression around a spate of injuries and wondering if you will be the same again, or a run of bad results that people blame you for. People in the game understand. Araujo, in the arms of the club, will be fine.

It’s the outsiders that need to do a mirror check. People have no idea what they are doing to other people. None. Want to say a player had a bad match? That’s part of the analysis. When it goes beyond that, it’s ugly and cruel. What Tweet is the last straw? People don’t know, nor do they care because social media isn’t social at all. It is fundamentally anti-social in the way it dehumanizes. It’s a bunch of avatars and to hell with them.

Everything about that is wrong. And pretty much everything about the way social media barrages the unfavored is wrong. It’s also potentially harmful. Nothing about any of this will make anyone less horrible, which is the real shame of it all. It should, but it won’t.

Andre Gomes had his issues, and the way he was treated at Everton was beautiful and reassuring. Bojan Krkic had his issues, and we didn’t know about them until long after, but the revelations from those struggles put a lot into perspective. Who else is struggling, and how much do we care?

After all, these players are only the goals they score, the championships they help win, the goals they prevent, the amount to which they allow us to bathe in the glory they created. They aren’t human, so why should anyone care?

Ronald Araujo will come back from this, and when he comes out of the other end, my personal view is that whatever player he is becomes secondary to the human that he will be. Because that is how it is supposed to be.

When a player is injured, people Tweet “anims” even though it’s empty, this thing they are supposed to do. When a player has a different kind of injury, there is no “anims.” There should be. Araujo is injured. Not physically, but nonetheless impeded from giving his absolute best for the club by a physical condition. He deserves and should get our complete support, respect and yes, admiration.

Because since then, increasingly, life lived on the Internet has shaped behavior. When the young man was talking crap to Mike Tyson and got punched in the face, in many ways that is emblematic of life lived on the Internet. You say stuff to people all day, day after day, and don’t get punched in the face. Then you happen to be out in the world, with behavior shaped by life lived on the Internet, and you get punched in the face.

Life lived on the Internet dehumanizes.

Everything.

People aren’t human, they are things, followers, foils or adversaries. The Internet rewards with dopamine hits — followers, reTweets, the approbation that is the coin of the realm. It makes people do and say things that in real life they never would, but Internet life isn’t real even as it becomes real for the people who are immersed in it, but in a selfish way. “I am real, what I feel when people react to my stuff is real, but none of the things I post about are real, really. Just things.”

Which brings us to Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, hashtags and the utter lack of humanity surrounding the situation in Barça Twitter (Barça X just sounds weird, so yeah.) A hashtag campaign has started, has grown increasingly virulent and ugly. A “supporter” of the club has even made a video that is making the rounds, of all of the Ter Stegen errors.

My views on the hashtag campaign, which feels more like a tantrum to me, are clear, and clearly stated: those people are horrible. And they aren’t horrible because they want the club to acquire a new keeper, feeling that the current No. 1 keeper isn’t up to the standard. It’s doubtful that there is anyone at the club or who follows the team, me included, who thinks that Ter Stegen should continue as the starting keeper for FC Barcelona. Cool.

What is happening with this hashtag stuff is a symptom of life lived on the Internet, where people cease to be human. Ter Stegen is just a thing, something to be used to get those dopamine hits. “Yeah, got more likes for my video, or my Tweet calling him a terrorist.”

The problem with that is obviously that Ter Stegen is human. He has friends, a family, hopes and ambitions. He has ideas about his level of play that any human would have. He thinks he’s better at his job than he is, just like the vast majority of people digitally piling on. If people were to meet him in real life, they would probably find that he’s a pretty nice dude. Or maybe not. Immaterial. What is material is that he is a human being.

In my past life as a journalist, my job entailed arts criticism, from visual art to movies. It also meant opportunities to write columns off the news. Invariably, no matter how nasty and vituperative the e-mail, a response brings about an immediate change of tone. “Whoa, shit! There is a human on the other end of this thing!”

What social media does, what life lived on the Internet does, is make people forget that there is a human on the other end of this thing. “I support the club, therefore those things are my property, to do with as I desire.” As a soci for going on two decades, whose dues ostensibly fund the club and its operations at a thimble-like level, my opinions about players, managers, things the club does are many. But the thing I have never, ever forgotten is that the people I am talking about are human. Nothing written by me isn’t something I wouldn’t say to that person’s face. That’s fair.

When we forget that people are human, liberties are taken, and people think it’s okay. One of my favorite thought exercises for people is to ask them what it would be like if, at their job, they were assessed by multitudes, who talked about it on social media. They call you an asshole if you made an accounting error, didn’t perform your job perfectly. Day after day, at work and on social media. You log on and there you are, a hashtag blaring to the world how shitty someone thinks you are, with posts to back up their opinion.

It’s a safe bet that most people wouldn’t like it, would say, “Don’t they realize I have feelings, that my friends and family can see that stuff?”

Well, no, because you aren’t human to them. Twitter makes us all avatars, blocks of type with which people interact, argue with, quote Tweet. Of all the people I have met in real life from Twitter, there was only one where the interaction wasn’t with another human in that human way, and it was weird, and stunted, and brief.

We are each a self-contained world on the Internet, and too often forget what it’s like in the real world, of people and feelings and humans and maybe getting punched in the mouth. That isn’t a good thing.

One person asked me, “What are we supporters supposed to do?” Well, calm down and don’t be horrible, because even the biggest hashtag campaign on the planet will have about the same effect on the FC Barcelona technical staff as farting in the direction of Barcelona and hoping they smell it. They have budgets, and priorities, and ideas about needs. They have talked with the manager who has delivered his ideas about what needs what, and when.

Those people don’t give a shit about your hashtag, or increasingly ugly utterings. Ter Stegen, Araujo have been the targets this season, and both look set to stay at the club. Want to talk about their play, and how them staying means the club isn’t likely to win any silver or Champions League? Cool. You can do that without being horrible, without being inhuman. Really. You can.

Empathy is a muscle, one that is easy to have atrophy in a Darwinian way. Use it or lose it. The Internet doesn’t care about empathy unless everyone is told, by someone with enough juice for it to register, “Hey, you need to be empathetic about this.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. Wow, yeah.”

Otherwise, very little registers because the Internet doesn’t make anything real. Or human. It’s for us, by us, about us. The target of our … whatever? Not human, so anything goes. Everything about that is wrong. Will any of it change? No, because of life lived on the Internet. And that is a shame.

Mix in the unknown quantity of Hansi Flick’s arrival, the clear reliance on finding free transfers like Iñigo Martinez to fill gaps in the squad, and a plethora of young but unproven talent, and it honestly hard to imagine how we were even going to finish top 2 or avoid the playoffs in the Champions League. It was less the lack of quality in Barça’s setup than it was the growing pains we were going to experience under a different tactical regime and the reinforcement of rivals.

The arrivals of Mbappe at Real Madrid on a free (with a signing bonus of infinity bajillion euros) and Julian Alvarez at Atletico Madrid for nearly 100 million euros felt like a kick in the teeth given Barça’s financial constraints. The questions about arrivals like Dani Olmo weren’t on fit within the squad or new tactical arrangements, but rather whether we could even field him and Pau Victor at all. How can we splash 65 million euros on a player, given that we were still looking to make up budgetary shortfalls? Indeed, it would take some shenanigans and a couple of unfortunate injuries to get them registered for the first half and eventually some absurd tight rope walking to get them cleared for the second half.

Expectations were low. I can’t point to any now-embarrassing social media posts because I was taking a decent break during my move from The Hell Site to Bluesky, but at least privately I suggested we would go trophyless. And why wouldn’t I? On August 12, Monaco steamrolled us in the Gamper 0-3. We did not feel like a cohesive unit or in any way a team that would make a run for anything. A subsequent loss in the first Champions League match of the new group stage format, also to Monaco, suggested that our “cannot perform in Europe” dynamic was by no means in the rearview mirror and should not be discounted as demonstrating significant problems in squad depth and overall competitiveness.

And then the season started, Lamine Yamal went from “wow, that 16-year old is good” to “Holy crap, that 17-year old is my new religion,” and the team won its first 7 domestic matches. A 4-2 loss to Osasuna at El Sadar felt bad in the moment, but more like an aberration after the next several matches:

5-0 vs Young Boys (CL)
0-3 at Alaves
5-1 vs Sevilla
4-1 vs Bayern Munich (CL)
0-4 at Real Madrid
3-1 vs Espanyol
2-5 at Crvena Zvezda (CL)

7 matches, 29 goals scored, and 5 goals allowed felt incredible. I returned to social media a little bit, saying during the Bayern Munich match that “We are good at football again and it is…I don’t know how to handle this.” And I didn’t. It wasn’t clear then that Real Madrid were a team in trouble (they had lost just once, to Lille in the CL, but had actually outperformed their opponents in almost every metric), but we routed them. It felt fantastic. It felt like we were seriously pushing into a place where we could dream again, not just about the league title we were putting to bed in the first half of the season, but in Europe too.

By late December, we had fallen to 3^rd in the league and flirted with disaster in the Champions League. It felt lucky to be where we were in the CL (2^nd) after being outperformed for much of the match by Borussia Dortmund. Domestically, we were a mess. We lost 4 of 8, including at home to Las Palmas and Leganés, the former of which is officially relegated and the latter of which is 4 points from safety with 2 matches to go, as well as to Atletico Madrid. That last loss is the one that put us in 3^rd and we seemingly cemented our position behind the top 2 with a subsequent draw at Getafe to start the league back up on January 18, but at the same time we were clearly on the up since we won the Spanish Supercopa in Riyadh, smashing 5 past Real Madrid in what could very well have been a thousand goals to 1 had Wojciech Szczęsny not been sent off for a (failed) tackle on Mbappe.

There was a sense of regression to the norm for a few weeks, but after that loss to Atleti in December, the team has not lost in the league again, winning 15 of 17. Both of the draws (home to Getafe and Betis) were statistical anomalies that they should have won given the volume and quality of chances, yet at the same time it was a run that simply felt impossible in early January and a run that, as it went on, felt increasingly likely to end at any moment simply out of sheer exhaustion.

The team has now played 58 matches in all competitions and will reach 60 by the actual end of the season in a couple of weeks. At times they have looked completely worn out and yet also were sprightly against Espanyol in the title-clinching win. They looked as if they could go a full 90 with anyone and, really, if there is a letdown from this season it is in missing that 61^st match. In the 92^nd minute of the Champions League semifinal, we were all mentally filing our plans for the afternoon of May 31, ready to party it up in Munich—Germany has been kind to us on the European stage before, why not again?—and so to have that taken from us at such a late hour hurt a lot more than it might have otherwise.

Yet now that that immediate pain has subsided and even been replaced by the joy of winning a dramatic clasico and then the league in successive matchdays, it is easy to think of this season as an unbridled success. We not only won the domestic double and accented it with a little supercopa victory, we also beat Real Madrid 4 times in a single season for the first time in our history. We scored 16 goals against them! We blanked them at the Bernabeu, hung a manita on them in January, scored a trophy-winning late goal in April, and all but ensured ourselves the league title at their expense in May. And then went to Espanyol and mathematically secured the title there.

Really, what more do you want out of a season?

Yet, we got so much more. We got joy. We were treated not just to Lamine Yamal’s emergence as a precious possibility, but his arrival as a true force of nature. The season began with a need to use him as sparingly as possible and ended with him as our title-winning goalscorer. It simply jaw-dropping what he is capable of, that the academy has produced such a gem again, and that he is hardly the only home-grown star in the squad. Until January, he wasn’t even the only 17-year old star in the squad, thanks to Pau Cubarsi and even then we’re leaving out Marc Bernal, also 17, who was playing extraordinarily until his injury sidelined him for the rest of the season. Bernal isn’t even the only Marc in the squad whose injury looked like it might derail the season, with ter Stegen’s knee exploding and leaving us all wincing not just at the obvious pain, but also at Iñaki Peña needing to step in. And in he stepped, doing a far better job than I expected before he was replaced by Szczęsny coming out of retirement, cigarette in hand, to become a minor Barça legend.

Coming into the year we felt a bit thin, as I mentioned in the first paragraph. By mid September we seemed like we were full of world beaters. Injuries piled up along with the miles on legs, yet the squad never put its head down.

Bernal, ter Stegen, Gavi, Christensen, Pau Victor, Gavi, and Dani Olmo all missed significant chunks of the year with injuries, yet the team put together not just a winning run, but a fun one. Sure, there were moments when it felt like maybe we should do some more defending, especially in the back half of the season, but in the first 20 matches of the year (up through the lost to Atletico), the team allowed 1.15 goals per match. In the last 16 matches, that number fell to 0.81. The team scored 2.6 goals in the first 20 and 2.81 in the last 16. In all competitions the team scored 169 goals, exactly 100 more than they allowed. A goal difference of plus an entire century is absurd and we were blessed to watch it happen.

Before the season, there were fans calling for Raphinha’s ouster. He scored 34 and got a team-high 22 assists.

Well into the season, I, along with a bunch of others, was calling Ferran a dumb lummox made of crap who should be shot into the sun. He scored 19 and got 7 assists, by far his best scoring record over a season, not just for us, but in his entire career.

There were those questioning the wisdom of the Lewandowski signing despite his goal tally last season. He scored 40.

Obviously Lamine Yamal was good, but bagged 17 goals and got 21 assists, which was just a revelation despite the entire season seeming to be a litany of “I can’t wait to see how he’s going to top THAT one.” Well, the answer was his goal of goals to win the league against Espanyol. I can’t wait to see how he tops that one.

Jules Kounde clearly accepted his position at right back and lit up the season, even grabbing 4 goals, including the one to win the Copa del Rey in extra time.

Pedri is a god, full stop. The greatest bargain in Barça transfer history?

Frenkie de Jong seemed on the outs and then he was suddenly indispensable, making 23 starts, most of them in the 2^nd half of season and going the distance in all of the major matches down the stretch except the Copa del Rey final where he put in 84 minutes.

Eric Garcia was destined for Girona until he wasn’t and then he slowly worked his way into the good graces of the manager, ending up with 43 appearances and 17 starts. It felt weird to rely on him at right back for the last clasico and even weirded to realize he was doing a very good job against Vinicius as well as making strong forward runs.

Apparently being named Marc and playing for Barcelona makes you very good, but also you are doomed to get injured. Marc Casadó was billed as the one who would make a huge impact this season, came out flat, and looked decidedly less capable than Bernal before suddenly becoming a fantastic player who understood the assignments and played well. He only made 36 appearances because of injury, but he still has 500 more minutes than both Eric Garcia and Ferran Torres as well as 600 more than Dani Olmo and Fermin Lopez. And he also made an appearance at Canalets after we won the title, singing with the fans late into the night and absolutely endearing himself to me forever. Make him captain. Make him president.

In August I was sure we were decent.

It’s May and now I know we’re spectacular.

What a season, what a ride, what an absolute blast. The trophies feel like something of a secondary thing to the fun I had, but of course winning and getting the hardware is part of it. I didn’t see how we would radically improve by getting rid of Xavi and retaining the same squad, but I was also convinced that Xavi’s lack of willingness to change his assistants was strangling what was a talented group of players. We’ll never know the extent to which the manager changing was the difference and whether or not new assistants would have helped Xavi overcome some of the roadblocks he encountered, but we can still give Flick full credit here. He has really, really done the thing and we can all be proud of the players, the staff, and the club for this season.

Oh and next year in the Camp Nou? I’m giddy already.

In trying to figure out why Hansi Flick’s Barça is like it is, maybe that’s the answer. Kids.

In an interview, Dani Olmo said that the young Barça players make the locker room like a party. Because what else would kids do? Being sensible is for grownups, and there is plenty of time for that.

Late in the Inter match, during that momentous minute, Pedri passed the ball to Lamine Yamal, a pass that came with instructions. Do this. We need time to go away. Pedri, all of 22 years old, gave the ball to a 17-year-old, a kid who was and is, fearless.

So many asked, “Why would you take that shot?” Lamine Yamal would likely answer, “Why wouldn’t you?” PlayStation, social media, fun and bad decisions, kids always seem surprised when things go badly because one of the beautiful things about youth is nothing is ever going to go badly. It never occurs to them.

Flick’s Barça went down 2-0 to Inter at the San Siro, were 2-3 up when things unraveled in a minute. The same team went down 0-2 to Real Madrid, essentially with the league on the line, and in a relatively wee hunk of time, were suddenly up 4-2.

Of course they were.

The second goal was an audacious strike from Lamine Yamal (who else?), a curler hit from an oblique angle, a challenge to the best keeper in the game. “Stop this one, smart guy.” He didn’t. Couldn’t. The shot wasn’t struck with venom, hit just hard enough. The main thing was the curl, off the first touch because controlling a ball is for mortals, people unsure of where they are in life.

Kids make bad decisions, because they’re kids. Lamine Yamal was going to take that shot against Inter because … well … what could happen? A goal. Let’s do this.

Do something. Nothing might be something to grownups, taking the ball into the corner, standing over it, letting time elapse, but where’s the fun in that? It never occurred to him that he wouldn’t score, that the rest of the match would collapse, that it would go into extra time where his team would lose. And maybe, just maybe, it isn’t supposed to, is wonderful that it doesn’t?

Flick essentially handed the reins of the team to kids — Lamine Yamal up front, Pau Cubarsi at the back. They are two of the best players on the team, and also the youngest. When kids are leaders, their senses infuse a team, permeate the room with the scent of impossibility. “Why can’t we come back? There aren’t any rules.”

One of the most audacious things Lamine Yamal did in that Inter match was a snap shot, taken in a single motion that had him act like he was turning away from the Inter goal only to unleash a rocket. Sommer dove and just saved it. It was an astonishing strike.

Aging builds common sense, builds logic, builds fear, limits possibilities. “We tried that once and it didn’t work.” Kids are like, “Well I haven’t tried it. It didn’t work for you, but you’re old.”

Athletics, particularly team sport at the topmost levels, talks about belief. Believing you can do it. What if there is also a quality of not really believing that you can’t, not interested in being told that you shouldn’t, so you act like you can. And you do, often enough to win a domestic triple, to be one minute away from being in the Champions League final, to go undefeated against your club’s historic rival.

When Lamine Yamal scored the goal that curled past Courtois as though on a track, he hit it and started running to the corner to celebrate. He hit it and knew. Could Courtois have done something incredible and somehow saved it? Sure. But he wasn’t going to, because kids also have confidence.

Grownups so often ask kids, “Why would you do that?” The kid invariably replies, “I dunno. I didn’t think anything bad would happen.”

Flick’s Barcelona team has no template for failure. Those kids weren’t around when Valverde’s teams gave up big leads in Europe, weren’t around for any of the Champions League failures except the one under Xavi and even then, it wasn’t their team yet. They were lauded debutantes, given a shot by a manager who needed to do so.

This team is theirs and maybe, just maybe, it does what it does because why wouldn’t it? Two goals down? “So what. We’ll just score three.” “But we’ve never done that before.” “YOU have never done that before. I just got here.”

Kids roll through life with joy. They run, leap, scream, do everything to the maximum because they haven’t learned how to be grownups, how to be tempered by failure. Flick has instilled his team with belief. We talk a lot about the mentality of this team, how it just doesn’t even think it’s done, how it seems surprised when time runs out and they haven’t done it, like, “How did that happen?”

A friend of mine had a daughter, a new driver, who knocked over a post at a restaurant drive-through. She got her food, misjudged the turn and nosed into the post. So she hit the throttle. Seemed easier than backing up, and what could happen? Down went the post. Problem solved. Sure, there was damage, but we can fix that, right? So what’s the problem?

At some point, Lamine Yamal is going to grow up, Pau Cubarsi is going to grow up. They won’t become lesser players, will likely become better players. But you’re only a kid once, only one shot to approach the world as this vast palette of possibilities. As a team leader, you infect and influence. You keep running, and working, and shooting, and pressing, and trying to score. And you score the goal that equalizes and just stand there with your arms folded, like, “Well, what else was going to happen?”

What is difficult for us is to not think, “Well what are they doing that for? You don’t do that.” You don’t come back from multiple goals down, don’t win trophies with a team of kids, geezers and freebies, don’t sweep the season series against your club’s eternal rival, a rival just off winning the league and who added the alleged best forward in football to the roster.

Everything Barça does is slathered in audacity. The high line, the offside trap, passes with the outside of the foot, runs. So many runs made out of belief that the ball will get there. Week after week people said, “Rivals are going to figure it out.” And sure, they lost a few matches but were rarely beaten, rather they lost because of their own errors. Not finishing chances, poor decisions on the ball late in a match. Inter snatched Champions League glory from them but even then if a few players do something other than what they in fact did, the result is different.

Do something. Kids want to do something, to take action. Lamine Yamal will sometimes pick the wrong pass, or the most difficult option. To us it’s “Why would you do that? There is a safer, easier pass.” Kids are like, “Yeah, but it’s gonna be cool when it works. Watch.”

Szczesny, who just a few months ago was strolling the countryside enjoying a cigarette or two, after the Classic ended, just squatted down in front of his goal, in tears as the kids danced. To him it was an incredible thing, something that has been a wonder to experience. Christensen walked down the pitch to get him, playfully stomping the last few steps like, “Hey, it’s party time. Let’s do this,” awakening Szczesny from his reverie.

This has been an astonishing season, one that not even the most bright-eyed culer would have predicted. The team has never stayed down long. The Sunday after a massive disappointment on Tuesday, it showed up and dusted off its rival, coming back from two goals down and setting up winning the league.

“Well, duh.”