“We travel with the mentality of winning a title and we will compete with the intention of winning.” This is how the words of Jonatan Giráldez, Barça coach, resonate in the run-up to a decisive match. One more victory for a trophy, for a record and for relief. Barcelona depends on itself today against Granada (8:30 p.m., on Dazn) to win again in the League and add to the Spanish Super Cup title won last January. A challenge, too, to clear the way in a long and condensed month of May, with the finals of the Queen’s Cup and the Champions League ahead. There are three victories, three games and three Saturdays left to achieve poker, a historic challenge for the Blaugranas. “Being the only team that has the possibility of winning four titles in one season is something that fills me with pride. But now we have the most difficult part: consolidating what we have – the League –, winning the Cup and the Champions League. And do something that would be unforgettable for the club,” Giráldez confessed after last Wednesday’s game against Madrid CFF.
Against Granada, twelfth in the table and in the middle of the fight to escape the relegation places, they could become champions for the ninth time and fifth consecutive time — no women’s team has achieved it, and in the men’s team, only Real Madrid has done so twice. —if they win. They would thus expand their advantage with the second most successful team in the competition: Athletic Club, with five titles, followed by Atlético and Levante with four. With four games left, there would be 12 points left to distribute, just those that separate Barça from second place, Real Madrid. “All that depends on us is to win. The possibility has arisen that we can be champions in Granada. It would be nice and important. Before playing the finals it would give us a lot of peace of mind ahead of the games against Athletic and Éibar, because the work of the League will already be done,” Giráldez confessed. The club has, once again, had a domino season. In the League they have won all their games except one: a draw against Levante that broke the record of always having won at the Johan Cruyff. In the league total, 114 goals scored—close to double that of Real Madrid—and only eight conceded. In the rest of the competitions, a single defeat in the entire season against Chelsea and another draw in Europe against Benfica.
A hegemony that has been present for five years and an unbeatability that has been forged and that draws on the commitment to the professionalization of the women’s section of the club, to position itself as the Goliath of Spanish football. Between 2011 and 2015 they won the League thanks to Xavi Llorens. But there was a break and they came in second place the following four years, where Athletic Club won in the 2015-2016 season, and Atlético exercised renewed hegemony with a victorious three-year period -2017 to 2019-.
But in 2015, professionalization arrived and the foundations were laid for the successes that would be achieved starting in 2019, when they played their first Champions League final. Two years later they won their first continental title and, with Lluís Cortés, they were the first Spanish women’s team to achieve a treble. People began to talk about unbeatability, and the dynamic in the League was transformed: another four consecutive titles from 2019 to 2023. With the change came consolidation.
And in addition to the eight Leagues, nine Queen’s Cups, four Super Cups and two Champions Leagues, the names of the Barça players crossed borders, as has been seen in all the award ceremonies in recent years and with footballers such as Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmatí, Salma Paralluelo, Caroline Graham Hansen, Keira Walsh, Cata Coll or Mariona Caldentey, to name just a few. This month of May, the list of winners can grow. “We are where we wanted. We wanted to get to this month like this, and I hope we can finish it well,” confessed Patri Guijarro after the match against Madrid CFF – the only rival capable of beating them last year, which fell with a crash and resounding last Wednesday: 8-0) with the hope of sentencing the league today. And looking further: make history with the four titles. Barcelona will be able to surpass itself again, being its great rival as it has been for a long time.
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