cashew | It's complicated (Reply)

Messi is leaving FC Barcelona. This is huge news. How huge?

New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, CNN huge. News outlets that have almost no interest in fútbol/soccer/football/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, have all reported on it. Not just in the Sports section either.

To get a good understanding of why this is making all the major news outlets waste your precious time to tell you that a professional athlete is calling it quits with the club he plays at, you have to first understand that this sport (⚽) isn't just about the sport. It's politics.

Mark Doyle wrote for Goal.com a very surface level analysis for what's going on. His accompanying piece discusses how FC Barcelona managed to waste Messi's talents over nearly a decade. However, to truly get an understanding of the politics involved, you have to first accept that this sport is more than just a sport, this is a struggle for a people's identity, and second you must ask for insight from the Catalan locals who are immersed in this political struggle.

elfals9 has a long (for Twitter) thread that explains the philosophical situation:

(translated with Google and some grammatical cleanup for better understanding)

Increasingly convinced that at the moment the institutional crisis is the most important factor behind the sporting debate. Even today, despite the evidence, the titles (won) and the show enjoyed, much of Barça's (media) environment and fans have not been convinced by the sporting philosophy (of Cryuff & Guardiola). And that's where this all started.

How many of Barcelona's club members/fans/media environment would prefer Mourinho ahead of Guardiola? To have a Keita as an "indispensable (player)" and not an "Iniesta"? To look for a "Larsson" before a "Pedro"? How many would like to put Riqui next to Thiago and Busi?

Having suffered 10 years under Bartomeu and Rosell's reign is more than enough time, and when they are faced with a choice, they stand against Cruyff, drove out Guardiola with no hesitation, and they looked to Rakitic or Vidal to fill the void left behind by Xavi and Iniesta's departure.

That Tata didn’t continue (after a failed campaign) wasn’t a football issue. Would he have continued if he won League? This is the problem with this line of thinking. Or how winning League (titles) with Valverde were valued, but was it the same as before? And the eliminations, was the loss at Roma, Anfield the same as the loss vs Chelsea?

(The) Board has turned politics into a sports philosophy masked in profit, public relations, etc., promoting MSN (Messi-Suárez-Neymar), and later Dembelé, Coutinho or Griezmann (from La Masia (relying on youth) to the Galacticos model (relying on stars)), from the positional game to individualism. From football knowledge to presidential arrogance.

Only with Guardiola exiled, the failure of multimillion-euro signings, and the loss of Cruyff has the talk once again turned to a discourse about football idiosyncrasy. That is, once they have destroyed everything practical (for establishing a sporting philosophy) to get advertising revenue, then they turn to theory.

What hurts the most is the ease with which a football capital has been brazenly set aside for almost 10 years. The starting point of everything is that you play as you live, and the personality that involves applying this philosophy is no longer part of the Catalan or Culer (Barça fan) identity.

Acting and thinking like Cruyff, Guardiola or Laporta created animosity, dissatisfaction ... In one's own culture! And the fall of a major (footballing) Club reflects what the majority of us are in life (just look at where we are as a country).

Economic management is easily manipulated with the press on the (board's) side, the social (public relations) side as well, but sports is only shown in the field, and there what we had/enjoyed has clashed with who we are. We have sought use the flimsiest of excuses to discredit those with talent.

The big obstacle/battle to overcome is to definitively captivate the majority of the masses with the Cruyffista football philosophy, which needs to escape a media environment that prefers physicality (which won't go away so easily), and therefore a change of personality is needed in the amateur viewers.

Total football (Cruyffian philosophy) represents breaking patterns, seeking to delve deeper and deeper into how to find advantages in the game from logic. Putting a midfielder on the side to gain (numerical) superiority, a step back to progress (3rd man) ... Courage and ingenuity, but is there an audience ready (to accept this way of thinking about the sport)?
—elfals9

In other words, there has been a political battle among the Catalans over what the Catalan identity should include, and a huge part of that identity is How do you play the beautiful game?

Cruyff's politics says that the mind, not the body, is the most important asset in playing a strategic game. The amateurs in the media believe it is physical dominance that will win at the end of the day. And the Catalans (who own FC Barcelona) must decide whose word they wish to believe: a professional athlete and manager who revolutionized the sport, or their gut instincts.

The irony is that the battle that is being played out right now at FC Barcelona is one that we see played out everywhere in the world. A battle of the common masses who use their "common sense" to counter experts' advice, whether it's about global warming or a global pandemic. People simply do not want to be told that they don't know any better, that their "common sense" is objectively wrong. That you need expertise to have a worthwhile opinion.

And we see what happens when experts are ignored. Messi leaves FC Barcelona. COVID-19 kills 160,000+ people in the United States.

It all stems from the same moral core: to value "common sense" over expert knowledge.