Ok, so trying to quell my anger and be fully detached here. The club is still in a mess financially and had to do a lot to make the deal happen. I'm sure they wanted to, because it would have been extremely good PR and branding and revenue enhancement.

Valladolid down along with Elche and Espanyol. Sad Ronaldo. Oh, wait, Espanyol can still save Valladolid if they win.

So… I have some time on my hands and was thinking about doing a thread since I’ve basically been avoiding the football discourse for the last few weeks to give myself a break. It’s probably going to be very very long. Sorry 😅 I think the main issue people have with what Barça is doing is the fact that it’s good to have clear narratives and good/bad divides. A club is run well therefore its team is doing well. A club is run badly therefore its team is doing badly.

Gonna translate a bit of what Pique said on his Twitch last night. Pique: "Today was a day full of emotions, first of all because we had our fans with us again, even though there were just about 20k. It's been about 17 months of playing in empty stadiums and the truth is that hearing people again is amazing...

Lol, Piqué saying that he's doing the selfies thing simply because he's bored 🤣 He said a teammate was talking to him about getting engagement on Instagram and stuff and he'd never used Insta like that so basically decided to do the selfie thing as a joke because he was bored and he'll stop... One day 🤣

The thing is that my main concern for this Barça season is kind of the same as it was 10 days ago: Koeman. Didn't even know such a nation existed, but by the look of the abuse in my mentions my benign take has angered them.

https://twitter.com/alihxssan/status/1426890655628988416?s=19

So here we are. Barça after Messi. Day 1. We can score goals. Who knew?

Anyway, just got home after 2 weeks and have nothing to eat or (more importantly, considering the circumstances) drink. So I'll just go do some shopping and hopefully the mundane life tasks will get me through this. One day at the time. I've done it before. I unpacked first. Baby steps.

OK, so here's how the story makes sense in my head.
Laporta wins the elections, talks to Leo, they agree he wants to stay and will work on a new contract. The new board starts looking at the finances of the club and get more horrified the more they look at them. The Superleague mess happens. Which means thag Barça are now allied with Madrid and Juve in this legal fight that will go on for years against UEFA and their national leagues. Not sure being allied with FloPer is a good thing in essence, but it is what it is.

Funny to me to keep seeing people say "can't blame players for not taking a paycut, they have contracts" when last year my company asked us to take a temporary 10% paycut because they didn't know how the pandemic would affect us and like 95% of us did that. Like, sure, they don't have to, they have short careers, they signed contracts and it isn't their fault they got ridiculous salaries. But if someone told me that in order to keep the best person to ever work at my company I'd lose a bit of money I'd probably be fine with it.

I don't get how you can go from constantly saying it's ok and it's gonna be fine, that you're working on it, then briefing the press that it's going to get done and then in a matter of hours announce that it isn't happening. Like... Warn us at least. Like... I'm super cynical. I've known we're broke for years. I've accepted that. I knew it would be very hard to move the players the club wanted to this summer, because the transfer market is generally collapsed. I know our wage bill. Is way over the limit even without him.

OK, I'm going to try to do this now. Fair warning: it's gonna be *very* long, because it's like a solid 90 minutes of conversation.

https://twitter.com/TeamBarcaPod/status/1314638159167262722

Q: This interview format is called Tiki-Taka. Some people don't like that term, referring to possession play, combination play. How do you feel about it?
JM: I don't relate positional and combination play to tiki-taka. Of course I like it, it's what I most enjoyed in my career.

*flexes translation muscles* Haven't done this in a while. OK, let's go. lavanguardia.com/deportes/20201… Q: How do you fell? Why have you been so silent?
Gerard Piqué: I'm very well. The end of last season was dramatic and I needed time to digest it. I used the days off to reset. It's about starting over again.

Why yes, quite shocking thst this trash board is acting like trash. 🙄 The Suarez issue has been an issue for like... 3 seasons? Give or take. He himself has said in interviews that Barça should probably buy a younger striker. Of course he believes he js able to compete with anyone, he's Luis Suarez, you don't do what he's done if you doubt yourself

Given that I have a bit of time and have got myself up caught up a bit, I'm going to try and explain the deal with Barca's current financial difficulties. Which is less a problem for the club itself and more of a personal problem for the members of the board. First, some history and context.
Back in 1990 when most Spanish clubs got turned into sports corporations, the ones that were profitable at the time were allowed to stay sport clubs. They were FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atheltic Club and Osasuna.

43 minutes, you say? *flexes, cracks knuckles* OK, let's do this. Q: "What does it mean for you to have a show made by Cirque de Soleil for you, based on your life?"
A: "It's impressive. It was very weird when it all started, when they said they wanted to do this. For me it's incredible, because it's not normal for someone who is still so

I have multiple Barcelona related thoughts that aren't necessarily connected to each other so I'll try to make a thread to see if I can make sense of them. First of all: I think the current CL obsession engulfing the club and fanbase is kind of unhealthy and reminds me of pre-Decima Madrid. *Everything* is seen through the perspective of the CL.