Wembley and the Champions League final are usually related, and not only, to Barça and some of the best moments in its history. It is therefore very unique that Real Madrid, the great conqueror of this competition, has not won, nor played, a final in the temple of the fathers of football, in the venerated pantheon. blaugranaat the legendary Wembley.
If a final is the event that concludes a season, something like the end of the school year party, a Champions League final is the solemn closing event of the club season in Europe. The event that everyone wants, we want, to attend as protagonists, come on, those who play for the trophy on the grass, but which also brings together all of football, in its various layers, elements, agents, media, businesses and various activities that are related to the soccer ball.
We saw it in Bilbao a week ago with the flood of fans blaugranas that flooded the Botxo but also with the restaurant booths full of professionals looking for contacts, relationships, information or simple moments for reunion.
Well, let’s transform, if possible, the Bilbao scale to the London scale and we will have everything that is going to move in this football and that has nothing to do with, nor will it be affected, nor will it be excited, with what happens on the immaculate grass of Wembley but which constitutes a part of the engine that moves football.
The other is that world of emotions, fears, superstitions, hopes and illusions with which the followers of Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund will arrive to English lands to celebrate that they are the great protagonists of what is celebrated and will dye the London streets with songs, colors and rituals. In this, the Germans have some advanced ground, since they have indeed been at Wembley to settle the ownership of Orejona, only since that ended badly for their colors they will look for a way to change their luck, perhaps another shirt, perhaps maybe another cap, maybe another underwear, what do I know, whatever it takes to break the bad mood.
But of course, if one talks about passions and football, you only have to open the window of the olfactory imagination to place yourself in the early hours of this Thursday in Piraeus, and feel the proud pulsation of a fan that celebrated among flares, smoke and songs that His Olympiacos has won the first European title for a Greek club. And that on that classic altar they have a new god called José Luis Mendilibar, the one who looked with a face of pride, satisfaction and a bit of magic at that medal that confirmed that after what was considered the miracle of Budapest with Sevilla, one of those exceptions that make football wonderful, had returned to the bottom step of a European competition and had once again converted the ruins of Olympiacos into an orchard in which the Conference League flourished and joy overflowed, not in all neighborhoods, not in all the houses there also know a lot about rivalries and colors of the Greek capital.
Final is also that moment in which a president, also a vice president, appears in your office and tells you that your time in a club is over and that it is time to pick up, fold up and go home, hurt, surprised, missed, and maybe, just maybe, a little rested.
Final is also when you fill in the last lines of your last article and think about all those ideas, all those reflections, all those football landscapes that you have wanted to transmit and that now it will be time to see, look, observe, learn from another city, another country, others. colors, now blue and white. As that one said, the bell rings and recess is over. I’ll wait for you in Porto and as they say there: “Até ha”.
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