the Blaugrana team has a team without a home that has traveled 22,000 kilometers by bus

BarcelonaThis season they have traveled 22,000 kilometers by bus, mostly concentrated between January and March. All this year they have been unable to train in conditions. They haven’t had the option of playing in front of their home fans. They have played matches on consecutive days to recover from postponed ones. And, despite all that, they have been close to winning the League and the Copa del Rey. Last week they fell in extra time in the fifth game of the League final against Jaca and this Sunday they lost the Cup against the same opponent (3-2). The team that has achieved this milestone is Barça ice hockey, which was left without a home to play and train in May 2022. The club’s temporary museum is being installed in the Palau de Gel, which will be inaugurated this summer and will be open during the works on Espai Barça.

“We postponed all home games until December because the club told us that from then we would have a track. But the time came and it didn’t happen. That’s why we had to play two games on some weekends in other cities from January to recover those we had postponed,” Danilo Didkovski, the Ukrainian technical director of the Barcelona team, explains to ARA. The provisional track was to be built on the Camp Nou esplanade, a project that was eventually scrapped. The solution was to play the matches as a local in Jaca, Madrid and San Sebastian. Long bus journeys that did not allow the players to face the duels in the best physical and mental conditions.

The lack of home has not only had an impact on the matches. It has also affected training. Barça has been all season without being able to practice on an ice rink. The closest to a session in conditions has been when the players have put on their inline skates on a parquet floor. “At least we got to practice the throws,” says Didkovski. The rest of the year they only did physical work twice a week in the Palau Blaugrana gym. “It was difficult to encourage the squad to deal with such a situation. They are amateur players who have their jobs. The luck we had is that we started the League very well and that increased motivation -explains the technical director-. It’s a testament to the commitment of this team that, despite the setbacks, in every call-up there was the maximum number of players allowed: 22. It’s impressive what these guys have done.”

Saturdays, more complicated than Sundays

Barça reached the final of the League after finishing the regular season in second place and eliminating Majadahonda in the semi-finals of the play-off. Jaca, who had only lost one match in the whole season, awaited him in the final. The duel in the best of five confrontations was held entirely in the Aragonese town due to the lack of Barça’s pavilion. The first four games of the series were played on the weekends of March 19 and 26. “On both Saturdays, unused to the ice, we lost. On the other hand, we won on both Sundays,” explains Didkovski. The fifth and definitive game, played on Saturday 1 April, the Blaugrana team lost 3-2 in extra time.

After being left with honey on their lips for not having been able to add the third consecutive League title, Barça has wasted an opportunity to end such a complicated season with a good aftertaste. This weekend he played in the Copa del Rey final four in Madrid. The Blaugranes beat Puigcerdà 4-3 on Saturday in the Catalan derby of the semi-finals and this Sunday they met Jaca in the final again, who scored the double after beating them 3-2.

Negotiations to play at the University of Barcelona

Barça’s ice hockey situation could change next year. The Blaugrana club, Barcelona City Council and the University of Barcelona (UB) are in talks to build an ice rink in the university sports area, located on the border between Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. “From the City Council, we don’t think it’s bad for them to build the provisional court as long as it doesn’t condition any of the obligations the club has with the city. Especially, the park and the open area that we agreed with the neighborhood and the club during the process participative”, municipal council sources explain to ARA.

For his part, also in statements to this newspaper, Arístides Maillol admitted that “there are currently negotiations with the City Council” and that “the intention” is to change the team’s difficult situation. But right now, after 51 years of having it, neither Barça nor Barcelona have a permanent ice rink, a fact that has also fully affected the lower categories of ice hockey and the figure skating section of Barça . The Espai Barça project envisages the construction of an ice rink attached to the new Palau Blaugrana.