BARCELONA – 2020 will be remembered as the year that emptied the stadiums, interrupted all competitions and closed a continental season in an improbable way, with a Champions League centralized in Lisbon that confirmed the undisputed power of Bayern Munich.
In Spain, with their eyes fixed on the big two, in 2020 they will have to look at themselves from a different perspective: Madrid regained the League throne after two years and Barça failed, resoundingly, in all scenarios. Even in the institutional to provoke the resignation of his dieectiva.
The year of the covid has destroyed all the economic plans in Barcelona and Madrid but, curiously, the Real has been able, able, to weather the storm with better spirit, daring even Florentino Pérez to take the team to Valdebebas while advancing in the pharaonic transformation of a Bernabéu that in a few months will look radiant while the image of Camp Nou is every day that passes more depressing, waiting for some cranes that still do not begin the works … that do not have nor date of ‘start being how Barça is on the brink of financial collapse.
Sportingly, December arrives with the meringues on top, tied with Atlético, and the Catalans halfway between recovery and disaster, without forgetting yet the collapse that meant the end of last season in which losing the League after a confinement in which he could only win seven of the last eleven games of the tournament, to deliver the title on a tray to a Madrid that with or without controversy of VAR proved intractable.
2020 has been the year of the three coaches at Barça, which began with Ernesto Valverde, dismissed after the defeat in the Spanish Super Cup in January, followed by Quique Setién, already condemned for his disastrous League final and sentenced after the historic 2 -8 suffered in Lisbon against Bayern, and ends with Ronald Koeman, a legend at the Camp Nou who has not been able to escape criticism from the irregularity of play and results that his team has shown in the first four months of competition, dangerously dropped in the League and qualified for the round of 16 of the Champions League as second in the group after suffering a terrible defeat at home to Juventus which meant the end of the best history streak of a local team in the tournament.
Eliminated by Athletic in the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey in February, this has been the worst year for Barça since 2008, not winning a single title. Lacking the game that will close the year against Eibar, Barça have played 47 games of which they only won 28 (59.6 percent) and lost 11 (23.5 percent), an absolutely inappropriate statistic for the azulgrana club.
Defender of the style, given to a non-negotiable philosophy of play in which the ball is, or must be, the main protagonist, Barcelona sank into mediocrity almost without noticing this as he progressed the year … Until the Lisbon disaster, the historic thrashing in the hands of Bayern Munich, blew it all up.
Quique Setión was fired immediately and a week later the Messi case broke out, with the Argentine crack requesting his immediate departure from the club. Bartomeu remained firm in his refusal, alluding to the fact that the clause that allowed him to leave had expired in June, and managed, against all odds, to keep the captain at the club … Still that that ended up being the last stone on the road.
A motion of censure encouraged by various groups of partners brought an end to their resistance, and with the team trembling between good, bad and worse results, the president and his board left prematurely. The storm at the Camp Nou has been historic in 2020 and, rightly, fingers crossed waiting to say goodbye once and start a better life in 2021 … No matter how much it is understood that the road will not be easy.
WHITE … BUT NOT RADIANT
If it is said, affirmed and confirmed, that Barça and Madrid, Madrid and Barça, are communicating vessels between which disaster and success go hand in hand, it is clear that the smile at the Bernabéu has been undisguised in 2020. As much as Zinedine Zidane, the coach of the three Champions, has gone through difficult times, the league title he won in July by winning ten games in a row after the confinement erased any sense of failure.
Even more so if you take into account that Madrid has only won three league titles in the last ten seasons … And that two of them bear the signature of Zidane, who always ends up responding to criticism with results.
The League won in July erased from memory the disappointment, failure, which led to the elimination in the quarterfinals of the Cup, against Real Sociedad and the Bernabeu (3-4) and motivated a feeling of happiness that it ended, one by one, in August, when Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City left him on the street in the round of 16 of the Champions League … in a tie that had started in February losing at home by 1-2 and which could not be traced back to England, where the citizens again won by identical result.
It has not been, for nothing, 1 2020 round in Madrid but the collapse of Barça has limited, and not a little, the damage around the Bernabeu with a team that is waiting for the last game of the ‘year against Elche has played 48 games with 32 wins (66.6 percent) and 10 defeats (20.8 percent).
Madrid closes the year with a good mark, approved high could be said, thanks to its league title won and enter 2021 at the top of the standings, equal to Atletico and well above a Barça to which he won in the Classic played at the Camp Nou, and sentenced his passage to the round of 16 of the Champions League as group champion.
It is rightly said that Zidane is a lucky coach … While Ronald Koeman, a legendary character in the Barcelona imagination, is still looking for that luck that has too often eluded him.
2020 will be remembered as the year of the coronavirus, the year that emptied the stadiums … And it collapsed a Barcelona that started losing the Spanish Super Cup in Arabia, continued with the worst failure of its history in Lisbon and ended up without a president. Worse impossible. It is not surprising that at the Bernabeu the smile has been undisguised.