Why Barcelona still bug me

Four months ago, Barcelona completed their 2011-12 season cum procession when they beat Man United in the Champions League final thus sealing their 3^rd win in that competition in six years to go with five further La Liga titles.

Best team of its generation? Oh yeah. Best team ever? Not yet but we’ll see, the potential is certainly there.

In the aftermath of their Champions League victory, I wrote a blog post explaining why, despite loving the footballing side of Barcelona, their corporate side meant I could never feel more than merely liking the club; not loving or admiring.

Many lovers of the club cite their role in keeping alive Catalan nationalism and opposition to Franco, their community role, their partnership with Unicef, the “Mes que un club” idea that marks them out as different from other clubs.

My argument was basically that they were no different from other clubs; same corporate greed, same big-spending, same dirty politics all wrapped up in a right-on, ‘left-wing’ marketing disguise. Whilst I don’t doubt they take their genuine interest in helping charities and that side of their business, it does make the philosophy a lot more attractive to sell.

After a trip to the Nou Camp, I feel no different.

I wasn’t surprised that the tickets for the ground tour or for a shirt were so pricey (22 and 80-odd Euros respectively) as its football; everything is ridiculously expensive though for a club who proclaims its community ethos, one would think the prices would reflect that.

The tour itself is nice enough, seeing the stadium bowl from the press box, the middle tier and pitchside, seeing the stadium innards such as the chapel, the dressing room and so on but it was the museum that caught my interest most of all.

Over 100 years of history, lovingly restored and displayed with replicas of all the trophies the club have won and memorabilia such as the whistle used in the club’s first game, various footballs and signed shirts and so on. A football nerd like me’s paradise.

However, as you read through the history of the club on tables that run the length of the museum, the one constant message that’s rammed home is the spiritual link between the club and the fans and how it cannot be broken. The pretentious, righteous, left-wing ‘right-on-ness’ that, speaking as a leftie, I cannot stand.

Of course it’s going to be biased, it’s the Barcelona museum, written by Barcelona people so it’s going to be unbalanced but the unrelenting tedium of how everything the club was for their community and fans became patronising and the message stale.

And then, at the end of the tables telling you the history of the club, you have a queue to have your photo taken and then superimposed into the Barcelona team, thus wrenching out more money from you for a tacky souvenir.

In a way, it’s even more patronising and downright bastard-ish than the Real Madrid or Man United marketing model as with them at least you know they are corporate, capitalist vehicles that are out to milk their fans for all they’re worth. Barcelona seem to attempt to hide it in a veneer of left-wing propaganda, that you’re buying into history and righteousness when it’s all just the same bullshit really.

The club does have a history of just behaviour in opposition to the fascist Franco regime in the past and it’s charity work in the present but one can’t help but feel it’s used to shift the “Mes que un club” philosophy for marketing purposes. One does wonder what brave individuals like Joan Gamper and Josep Sunyol would think of it all.