A lot of time has passed, but from time to time it is worth remembering that Barça was a club installed in the most absolute happiness the day Pep Guardiola announced that he was leaving his position as coach of the first team. In the end, the members had voted by an overwhelming majority for Sandro Rosell to become president, a true declaration of intentions. And anyone could coach that team, or so it was said, with the exception that said anyone ended up being Tito Vilanova, neither more nor less, the sentimental bond necessary to say goodbye to Guardiola without the bitter taste so typical of breakups.
It’s time to insist on it, I say, because memory is usually as liquid as soap and we all like to keep our best memories clean. That is why we make the mistake of idealizing our position in the face of past circumstances. And perhaps this is why the feeling still circulates around the club that Guardiola left because he wanted, for no other reason or more cardboard, a simple justification for a complicated moment, which is all a football fan can want to not feel challenged. in excess and much less overwhelmed.
We then began to read and hear that the one from Santpedor was not as good a technician as we had been told. The blackboard was the work of Tito Vilanova, a very important fact. And Messi barely needed to be restricted from eating hamburgers and soft drinks, he took care of everything else as soon as he took the field and stopped philosophizing, absorbed in his thoughts next to the whitewash. Piqué was happy, finally, without the dungeon guardian. And Cesc Fábregas was also happy… Everyone was happy with Guardiola out of the equation, and thus the idea began to take hold that his goodbye was the most convenient thing for everyone, especially for that part of the fans that preferred to remember the signing of Chygrynskiy above the game or the titles won.
Know how to leave
Then the accusations of a personal nature would arrive, that mud orchestrated from the club and which gave rise to an accountant from Murcia or a retiree from Les Corts to explain to you, in detail, what had happened between Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova. Like someone who talks about the last fight between Rosa Benito and Amador Mohedano, at that point came the moral rot of an environment that is almost always moved by outbursts and a certain lack of scruples. By the time Guardiola returned to the Camp Nou for the first time, this time as coach of Bayern Munich, the soup was already so cold that only a few night owls and unconscious people dared to greet him with applause.
This week, after Guardiola confirmed for the umpteenth time that he will not sit on the Barça bench again, a part of the fans have shifted uncomfortably in their chair and there are many who have started to question the coach’s Barcelonaism, especially on social networks, where one only has to mix the Barça crest with the photo of their favorite superhero to invest themselves with a certain moral authority that judges everything, also the heart of a legend. “If now that we need him he is not willing to come back, he won’t be such a culé,” says a good friend of mine who I usually forgive for almost all of his outbursts, including this one. Perhaps the teacher’s last great lesson is precisely that: knowing how to leave on time is almost as important as knowing how to settle.
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