Barcelona exited the celebration early, their birthday shared with those who had traveled the farthest to attend. There was music, candles, and a cake, a piano, five presidents, and Pep Guardiola singing on the screen, or at least lip-syncing. But by the time the club’s 125th anniversary festivities concluded at the Liceu theatre on Friday night, there were no first-team players present. Shortly after half past nine, two hours into their grand gala on the Ramblas, a figure emerged in the aisle’s shadow and gestured to leave. Thirty men in grey suits silently slipped out to prepare for the final act, the crowning performance: in just 14 hours, they had a match to play.
Thousands of matches have been played since 1899 when Mr. Kans Kamper [sic] placed a 63-word classified ad in Los Deportes asking if anyone wanted to play foot-vall, and 12 people showed up. The day after the gala would mark Barcelona’s 3,034th La Liga game, a league that hadn’t even started 40 years after the club’s foundation. It was supposed to be a special finale for the festivities. Over 2,000 people had gathered at the Liceu, including former players, managers, and plenty of politicians, though not the mayor—he supports Espanyol. On a sunny Saturday, high above the city, another 43,921 fans were heading to Montjuic to share in the history and the moment.
It didn’t unfold as they had hoped, although it might have ended as some suspected. In one part of the city, at about the same time Barça’s players had quietly left the Liceu, a mile away their opponents, recently arrived at El Prat, were dining on the eighth floor of their hotel overlooking the port, a perfect plan coming together. Las Palmas had traveled a long way—2,173km from Gran Canaria—and were familiar guests. The team that appeared in the first game broadcast in Catalan after the end of the dictatorship; the visitors the night Josep Taradellas, in exile since 1939, first went to the Camp Nou; the opponents when Barcelona won their first Copa under democracy. They had been there on the day of the October 2017 referendum too, with Spain flags stitched into their shirts. They hadn’t won any of those matches; this time, on Barcelona’s 125th birthday, they did. It was their first victory at Barcelona since 1971, and the first home defeat for Hansi Flick’s team all season. On this, of all days.
As one paper put it—as every paper did, in fact—Las Palmas had dampened the party, which is at least better than ruining it. Barcelona had suffered a severe hangover, according to the front page of El Mundo Deportivo. “When you prepare a fiesta, it tends to end in a funeral,” reckoned AS; on their 100th birthday, Barcelona had also been beaten, by Atlético Madrid. And so it was: they had old shorts, white like the first day, a new anthem, and a new mascot designed by Carlos Grangel, but no win. Cat, who is a cat, got the first touch, taking the honorary kick-off. Two long, exhausting hours later, Fabio González, born in Gran Canaria, got the last. Between those, goals from Sandro Ramírez and Fábio Silva had given Las Palmas a 2-1 lead and ultimately another win. They had defended that lead fiercely until the ball fell at Fabio’s feet, the final whistle blew, and subs and staff in yellow and blue ran onto the pitch—those who could still run, anyway. “I hurt everywhere but right now I don’t hurt at all,” the centre-back Álex Suárez said afterward. Barcelona’s captain Raphinha, meanwhile, just sat on the turf, lost. One by one, his opponents came to help him to his feet, but he shrugged them off, staring into space, not quite Lesley Gore but not so far off. He had scored but, he said later, he didn’t care. Asked to explain what had happened, he replied: “There is no explanation: we lost.” Why? “Because we played badly.” Another exchange ran: are you angry? “Yes.”
Well, of course. Barcelona had taken 27 shots and hit the bar. Jasper Cillessen, who joked that he had gotten the inside track by watching Raphinha’s clips on Instagram, made a superb stop from the Brazilian’s free-kick. There had been missed chances and missed tackles too. A penalty shout or two. And yet this was no fluke, no freak result written off as luck and soon to be forgotten. Iñigo Martínez admitted “we didn’t feel right; it was hard for us to create, we lost the ball a lot” and Flick added: “We haven’t had a really good match.” Worse, it was no one-off. Instead, this was the third consecutive league game Barcelona had failed to win, the advantage they built already blown. Since they beat Real Madrid 4-0 in the clásico, Barcelona have only defeated Espanyol, 3-1 in the derby, and even that day Flick said he wasn’t happy, a three-goal first half giving way to a flat second. They then lost 1-0 to Real Sociedad, drew 2-2 at Celta Vigo, and now this. Eight points gone in three weeks. While the coach noted that they had key decisions go against them in all three matches, he was not handing responsibility to the refs and it is not about absentees either, although the four games that Barcelona have failed have been the four that Lamine Yamal has not started, and both Marc Casadó and Dani Olmo were unable to play here. In fact, curiously, this run has happened as players have returned, the squad no longer quite so short.
“What are you doing badly?” Raphinha was asked. “Many things,” he said, applying the full stop. And if some of it is temporary—“We had a great start, we have slowed a bit but I have no doubt we’ll come through this,” Martínez said—right now it is also real. Flick suggested that there has been a lack of cohesion and insisted: “We have to defend better.” They have to attack better too. Scoring the first goal changes everything, the coach said, but Martínez admitted “we’re struggling to create”. In Lamine’s absence, one of the front three has tended to be turned inside, instead of going for the throat. Robert Lewandowski looks his age again. The team that scored five against Villarreal and Sevilla, four against Girona and Madrid, 40 in 12 league games, plus four against Bayern, has three in three. The space into which they ran, identified now, is being closed; the space which they leave exposed, meanwhile, is exploited better.
The edge, the intensity has gone from their game, the press applied a fraction late. The offside trap, which was always a way of living on the edge but looked like genius, now looks risky again, the timing needing fine-tuning. Identified now, it surprises less and opponents’ movements are modified. Barcelona had caught the opposition offside 108 times until this run, averaging almost seven times a game. Kylian Mbappé fell into the trap eight times alone, Madrid 12. Real Sociedad, though, fell just three times, Celta two. Las Palmas were caught five times on Saturday, but not only did both goals come from invading the space behind Barcelona, two other clear chances were worked the same way. And worked is the word, Martínez saying the bit that too often goes unsaid: that there is another team and they are good, the side who had not won in 23 games racking up their fifth win in seven since Diego Martínez took over. A side in which everyone contributes. You would name their outstanding players at Montjuïc, only you would have to name them all. That said, some of the definitions in the Canarian daily La Provincia were fun and not far off: Álex Suárez, the Tarzan of Tamaraceite. Scott McKenna, the banana Braveheart. Silva, the Robin Hood of glory. Javi Muñoz, doctor of physics and fury. Enzo Loiodice, the marquis of the Eiffel Tower.
“We knew Las Palmas could cause us problems; they could have scored more,” Martínez admitted. Watch the two goals again and they are wonderful, the ball taken from one end to the other, not by blind hoof but by design, one swift touch at a time, Barcelona drawn in and then defeated, space opened and occupied. “It’s mechanised: we practised that all week. We know that they have a high line that works for them but it was good for us,” Mika Mármol said. “We thought we could win, we really believed it,” José Campaña said, and so it was. “The key was not to be small,” Alberto Moleiro said; instead, they were as huge as the effort they had made, the front of one Las Palmas paper declaring them “heroes”, another calling this “the great apotheosis of the century”, the “mother of all feats”. In the dressing room, music blared and players bounced about. Vicente Gómez, the former midfielder who was born on the island, played for them and works in the sporting directorate, was waiting. “He told me: ‘You don’t know what you have done,’” Suárez revealed. This is the 75th year since Club Deportivo Gran Canaria, Real Club Victoria, Atletico Club, Arenas Club and Marino Club de Futbol became la Unión Deportiva, an anniversary of their own: for the last 50 of them, they had been unable to beat Barcelona. Now, though, they had, more history made and another party starting.
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