BarcelonaThere are days when it’s inevitable to feel a tingle in your stomach. Nerves that invade you from the moment you wake up and that you know will increase as the game time approaches. It’s about those days when going to the stadium is much more than going to support your team on any Sunday. There are days when it is like a religion, a date marked on the calendar. These days, for Barça fans, are usually when Real Madrid visit Camp Nou.
As nine o’clock approached, the moment when referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea would rule that the match was underway, the tingling – and also the queues – were progressively increasing around the Camp new The most punctual to get there, the guiris, roamed the stalls around the stadium and also the shop that the club has installed on the esplanade. For many, it was their first classic. Until a couple of hours before the match, it was difficult to hear Catalan spoken in the area.
But the terraces of the streets close to the stadium were already filling up with regular match-day patrons, commenting on the line-up, beer in hand, convinced that Real Madrid had to win and leave the League practically doomed. At the same time, hundreds of fans gathered near access 17, where the coach of the white team had to enter. The aim was to remind them that this is Blaugrana territory.
It’s almost nine o’clock and the Camp Nou is already full, although there are still plenty of seats to fill: the Barça fans, the lifelong ones, the ones who aren’t visiting, don’t have a reputation for being very punctual. But they will be ready when one of the most special moments of the night arrives. And it’s that the stadium gives you goosebumps when, moments before the opening whistle, the fans chant the chapel he Barça song. This time, without mosaic, a custom that had been done continuously since 1992 during Real Madrid’s visits to the stadium. Journalist Laia Tudel explained to Catalunya Ràdio that Barça had done it to save money. These are complicated times in the Barça treasury, but there are traditions that should not be broken.
I would like to know what goes through the mind of a Real Madrid player when he jumps onto the Camp Nou pitch and sees the biggest stadium in Europe painted in Blaugrana colors and an imposing flag. This time, they only received a loud whistle. What a whistle! Because if there is a match in which the fans cheer with all their might, it is Barça-Madrid. And even more so when since October 2018 you haven’t defeated the eternal rival at home.
Ecstasy is unleashed at Camp Nou
The fans were convinced that, this time, the time had come to beat the eternal rival at home again. The players took off for the match like planes, leaving behind that fearsome and pragmatic Barça that scratched a 0-1 at the Santiago Bernabéu in the first leg of the Cup semi-finals. At the Camp Nou, Xavi Hernández could not draw a conservative Barça and his team, pushed by fans who have had a hard time in recent years, came out to bite and dominate from possession of the ball.
Araujo’s own goal came, a pitcher of cold water to which the fans responded by cheering the team on after a few moments of freezing. The best moments were still to be lived: exploding with Sergi Roberto’s goal before the break, celebrating a goal disallowed after the VAR review at Real Madrid and, above all, shaking the foundations with Kessie’s winning goal. Do you remember, the goosebumps and the nerves in the stomach? So that. “Barça, Barça, Barça”, resounded in the stadium, beating joyfully towards the League title. “We’re going to Canaletes,” some fans said as they left. A classic day, the most wonderful liturgy at Camp Nou.