Koeman: a political goodbye | sports

“It is incredible that we lost today,” declared Ronald Koeman as soon as the Vallecas festival ended. His team had shot at goal once, from a penalty, not to mention a miracle. But stripping words of their original meaning seems the sign of the times and the Dutch should be granted the benefit of the doubt applicable to anyone who does not finish mastering Spanish. If i had said incredible, which according to the Google translator is the translation of incredible into Dutch, there would be reasons to worry and refer him to the club’s medical services. Or to the Government, directly, which months ago approved an action procedure against disinformation, which at street level we know as fake news.

The aspirational degeneration of Barça in recent years seems to have no end. From winning playing like the angels, he went on to win without more, with punctual brushstrokes of brilliance and some hidden Lord’s Prayer. Then came the always terrible “you can’t lose like this”, which hides a trap at its origin because it allows you to lose in any other way or, at least, in a very specific way. With the return of Laporta, the resignation was made up: it was time to play well, adjusted to the right, and the defeat would have consequences. But neither one thing nor the other, so the team was right now at the minimum required of its centennial history: that the coach did not use the post-match press conferences to falsify reality. Of all the political expressions that have been the backbone of Barça since its birth, Trumpism is the only one that does not seem to have a place in it … although it has ruled the club for much of its modern history, mainly in democracy.

So, and when the tactic is reduced to self-deception, what was really incredible It was the cold blood of a Joan Laporta who continued without making a move until midnight yesterday, after announcing the “bid” with all possible signs. It was to be supposed that his party began after the last assembly of delegates, finally freed from some statutory traps that threatened to make the mistakes of others their own. With the dismissal of Koeman, the president makes his first important decision in sports: finally Laporta as Laporta. It remains to know the intrahistory, the reasons, even those that led him to maintain a bet that was not his. The others, those who encouraged him to rectify the established course, are not difficult to imagine: a team manifestly unfit for what is expected of a cruyffista club, a coach overwhelmed by reality and a hobby on the verge of burning.

It should also not be forgotten that we are dealing with a Joan Laporta who has passed through the intestines of politics and no longer acts as an agent of chaos: although the body asks for mambo, the situation demands a ballad, and right now there is no greater nod to romanticism in the culé panorama that the landing of Xavi Hernández, with all the certainties – and also all the doubts – that his signing raises. “Get on the ground, ours are coming!”, As ex-minister Pío Cabanillas used to say: a guy so intelligent that he spent most of his life speaking about the true nature of Barça but without knowing it. “We won, but we still don’t know who,” he declared on another occasion. And, look where, that is as true as incredible on a night like yesterday.

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