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Get used to losing |  Soccer |  Sports
Sport

Get used to losing | Soccer | Sports

Madrid does not lose. It is an illusion that you are subjected to during some games, even throughout certain seasons. His specific failure is only a rhetorical contribution to the sporting spectacle, so that the rest of us have the feeling that we can also win. So that we go around thinking that there is a competition. But if you look closely, he can easily see the trick: in reality, he never fails when he has to win. How many Champions League finals have you lost? Three of 17, and they were almost all in black and white. That is, Real Madrid has not lost a final for 43 years.

Sunday seemed like one of those games where the result doesn’t matter and everything is meant to contribute to the spectacle. He didn’t give the impression that he had the slightest interest in the three points. It’s curious, because you see the Madrid from the first leg with City and the one that trotted around the Bernabéu against Barça with its old legends in the midfield, and they seemed like two different teams. But it’s the same. Madrid on Sunday was upset by the result. And still, he won. Or they wanted me to win, since they will give more at this point. The fact, as always, is that the ones who lose are always the rest.

The feeling of decadence on the other side, however, is total. The brawls have begun in the locker room. Gündogan, who, having seen Sunday’s game at the Bernabéu, is not one to pull his teammates’ ears either, came out for the second time this season to air his dirty laundry. The impression from the outside is that there is no one left from the board with which Laporta planned his return to the box: they have fled like rabbits when they saw how the sausages were made. Even the coach, who has said everything, has lost his nerve and has even broken Diderot’s famous fourth wall (the day he went to the field chamber to proclaim that this was a “shame” he created a new language) still We don’t know if he will leave at the end of the season. Although he warned that he would do it, now he is no longer so clear.

The coach believes that everything is unfair, except what happens inside. They have stayed in the offices, yes, a group of friends and some intermediaries, masterminds of the latest and disastrous signings (Vitor Roque may be very good, but he has played 276 minutes and will cost around 60 million). The sporting philosophy of the last presidents could be summarized in a simple André Cury (Roque’s agent) and ten more. And the inexplicable payments to Negreira, of course, perpetrated by all the directives and whose adverse effect on this year’s arbitrations seems evident.

And then there is genomics and DNA, whose double helix has ended up definitively strangling the club this year. Xavi’s Barça, in its best days, has been more similar to Luis Aragonés’ teams than to Cruyff’s. But they don’t even have that “Win, win and win again” that was the basis for the definition of football that the Hortaleza coach once stated. The Barça that I grew up with, the one that preceded Cruyff’s coach, was not much better than now. And we had a good time anyway. Maybe it’s time to settle, enjoy going to the field, put together a young and talented team of footballers who will work hard for the club and not for each other. Starting with the offices, of course. Maybe we should accept reality. That, or get used to losing.

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