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Barcelona fans woke up to dark grey skies in the city on Thursday morning.
After a couple of weeks of what felt like summer at the start of spring, temperatures dropped this past week and there’s been cloud and a little rain (much needed, given the Catalonia region is experiencing a drought).
The mini heatwave (up to 29C/84F was recorded) matched the soaring spirits of Barca fans who came back from Paris with the feeling of having fallen in love again, as it should be with any trip to the French capital.
From the moment Xavi’s side beat Napoli in their last-16 Champions League second leg, optimism began to grow, and victory in the quarter-final first leg against Paris Saint-Germain sent everyone’s hopes higher still.
After many years of European trauma, it felt like a change of season was on the way.
For many Barcelona supporters, there can be no nuance, their football lives are lived in black and white. You make your choice: wild expectation or dedicated fatalism. Some thought it was necessary to be prudent and resist enjoying the happiness of that 3-2 win at the Parc des Princes. Many others gave in — and the atmosphere for Tuesday night’s return leg told you that plenty of people were ready to celebrate.
It lasted about 30 minutes.
Araujo’s red card sparked Barca’s unravelling against PSG (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Ronald Araujo’s red card, Xavi’s red card, Joao Cancelo’s mistake for the penalty — there were many low points. But Araujo’s dismissal was the almost immediate dose of ice-cold water poured over flaring passions. The final whistle brought defeat, silence, and the sad shuffling of emptying bars.
Barcelona lost 4-1, PSG progressed as 6-4 winners on aggregate. That night, the players were dejected, Araujo especially. “As if they were run over by a truck,” said a club source on the state of the team’s spirits, speaking anonymously to protect their position.
In truth, there was little reason to think of the defeat as traumatic — although maybe that says more about the nature of those defeats by Roma in 2018, Liverpool in 2019 and Bayern Munich in 2020.
And at that point at least, there was still one reason to look on the bright side: Pep Guardiola.
Last season, Manchester City’s victory over Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals was celebrated as a Barcelona win (in a season when Xavi’s side failed to make it past the group stage). There were firecrackers in the streets. Many locals are more capable of taking pleasure in Madrid’s failures than their own team’s successes.
In the case of this week, Madrid’s possible elimination seemed more like a consolation prize — because of the positives that could still be taken from Barca’s improvement on the elite European stage this term (it was their first appearance in a Champions League knockout stages since Lionel Messi left, after all).
But even here, there was a familiar disappointment.
Madrid will play Bayern Munich in the Champions League semi-finals (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)
The way Carlo Ancelotti set his Madrid side up against City was reminiscent of the tactics Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan successfully deployed at Camp Nou against Guardiola’s Barca on their way to the treble in 2010. The Barca fanbase had seen that movie too many times over the past decade.
“Whoever wrote this week’s script for Barca fans must be feeling pretty happy with themselves,” it was said on Catalan radio. Truly, the script could not have been worse.
Barcelona had a chance to reach the semi-finals but failed to take it thanks largely to a red card and how the team (and its manager) responded.
Ousmane Dembele returned to torment them, flourishing in a hostile atmosphere as he was named player of the match.
Madrid went through.
And in doing so they knocked out not just any team but the Manchester City of Guardiola, the prodigal son who plays the football Barca fans long to have back at home again.
In Catalonia, they call it an ‘estiuet’ (little summer): the occasional phenomenon of unseasonable warmth in autumn or spring, before temperatures drop again.
One week ago, some Barca fans were confident of reaching Wembley (the prospect of Borussia Dortmund or Atletico Madrid in the semi-finals was not too worrying) for the Champions League final. Xavi was the man who would continue this success next season. Some might even have been thinking about narrowing the eight-point gap on Madrid with victory in Sunday’s La Liga Clasico.
Now, those European hopes are gone. There is little certainty over who will be Barca’s head coach next term, and the single alternative to Xavi is Rafa Marquez, whom sporting director Deco recently described as only a ‘plan B’.
The estiuet of April is over — but maybe there is time for one last hurrah.
(Top photo: Adria Puig/Anadolu via Getty Images)
