“We want a handle, we want a handle”

Madrid55 minutes into the match. The Santiago Bernabéu, full to the brim, is silent. Nearly 300 Barça fans can be heard singing from a corner of the imposing white fiefdom, watching Barça reborn live. “We want a handle, we want a handle,” they sing, to their heart’s content. Until, embarrassed, the white fans answer with a few whistles. Aubamenyag’s fourth goal just hit the scoreboard. As Xavi melts into a hug with his brother and assistant coach, Oscar, Carlo Ancelotti is having his worst night as a Barça coach. The whites will surely win the league and are still alive in the Champions League, but Barça have regained their identity. He did it with Xavi on the bench and confirmed it by destroying Real Madrid at home. It was a night to feel proud to be at Barça. It was a night to re-dance the white ensemble at home and to do so with a T-shirt in which the flag is worn from shoulder to waist. Why the Barça team is football, but it is also an identity.

It’s only been a few months since a giant canvas with the photo of Joan Laporta and the slogan “Ganas de volver a veros” presided over the Paseo de Havana, a hundred meters from the Santiago Bernabéu. Yesterday was the first time that Barça stepped on the white feud from this powerful marketing idea devised by Lluís Carrasco during the election campaign. Laporta put his charisma into it, Carrasco was the ideologue and Xavi is the executor. Despite not being the first bet of the Barcelona lawyer, the Egarenco coach is giving Barça fans an almost lost enthusiasm for how the team had been managed in recent years. Xavi traveled especially motivated to the Bernabéu match, wanting to be one of them again enfant terriblethis time from the bench.

Maybe the distance to the top of the league could have made you think it would be a decaffeinated derby, maybe the white fan went to his stadium still under construction with a position of superiority, unaware that they would end up living one night to forget. The staging of a gala dress dressed for the occasion was soon swept away. Before the initial whistle, while the Barça players shared directions on the pitch, with Busquets cheering on Ferran Torres, Piqué doing the same with Eric and Araujo of history. At the same time the hymn resounded, leaving a few brief moments of silence from the public address system for the white parish to be encouraged to test their lungs. This elaborate performance would only surprise Barça in the first ten minutes, when Madrid tried to show that they wanted to discuss possession of the ball with Barça.

The Bernabéu, a specialist in canonizing players, wanted to raise the daring initial sprints of Vínicius to unsuspected limits, but those of Xavi, surrendered to football between the lines of Busquets and the ideas of Pedri. The canary did not tire of asking for the ball, apologized to Alba when he went around the whole band without a prize and served sweet balls to his friend Ferran. Ansu Fati inherited the number 10 from Messi, but the Argentine’s leadership on the pitch has been picked up by Pedri. But if the Canaries and Busquets timed the increasingly dominant football on white ground, the picossades would be borne by Dembélé and Aubamenyang.

The more Barça shone, the more whistles were heard in a Bernabéu, which went from imposing to powerless. The stands also wanted to blame Martínez Munuera’s refereeing, when all he had done was not whistle a penalty to Vinícius that never existed, as he was in charge of reminding the Brazilian Piqué himself, taking him fraternally from the coll. From fury they would go to disappointment: powerful goal from Araujo that showed the obvious superiority of Barça. The few hundred Barça fans made themselves heard more and more, chanting Xavi’s name. They were privileged. “We all have a name that everyone knows: Barça, Barça, Barça”, was heard at the Bernabéu after the final whistle. While the players

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