BarcelonaThere are days when a tingling in your stomach is inevitable. Nerves that grip you from the moment you wake up and that you know will increase as game time approaches. It’s about those days when going to the stadium is much more than supporting your team on any Sunday. There are days when it’s like a religion, a date marked on the calendar. These days are usually the day when Real Madrid visit the Camp Nou for Barça fans.
As nine o’clock approached, the moment when referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea decided the game had started, the tingling – and the queues – grew at the new camp. The most punctual, the guiris, roamed the stands around the stadium and also the shop that the club has set up on the Esplanade. For many it was the first classic. It was difficult to hear Catalan in the area until a few hours before the game.
But the terraces of the streets near the stadium were already filling with matchday regulars, beer in hand commenting on the line-up, confident that Real Madrid needed to win and the league all but doomed. At the same time, hundreds of fans gathered near gate 17, where the white team’s coach had to enter. The goal 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 be filled: 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 special moments of the night comes. And the stadium gives you goosebumps when the fans sing just before kick-off the chapel He Barça song. This time without the mosaic, a custom practiced since 1992 during Real Madrid visits to the stadium. Journalist Laia Tudel told Catalunya Ràdio that Barça did it to save money. These are complicated times in Barça’s treasury, but there are traditions that shouldn’t be broken.
I would like to know what goes through a Real Madrid player’s mind when he jumps onto the Camp Nou pitch and sees the biggest stadium in Europe in Blaugrana colors and with an imposing flag. This time they only received a loud whistle. What a whistle! Because if there’s a game where the fans cheer with all their hearts, it’s Barça-Madrid. And all the more so if you haven’t defeated your eternal rival at home since October 2018.
Ecstasy unleashed at Camp Nou
Fans were convinced that this time it was time to beat their eternal rivals at home. The players flew into the game like airplanes, leaving behind the fearsome and pragmatic Barça, who scraped 1-0 in the first leg of the Cup semi-final at the Santiago Bernabéu. At the Camp Nou, Xavi Hernández couldn’t draw conservative Barça and his team, pushed by fans who have struggled in recent years, came out to bite from possession and dominate.
Araujo’s own goal came, a pitcher of cold water to which the fans responded by cheering the team after a few moments of freezing. The best moments were yet to be experienced: exploding with Sergi Roberto’s goal before the break, celebrating a goal disallowed after the VAR review at Real Madrid and, most importantly, shaking the foundations with Kessie’s winning goal. Do you remember the goosebumps and the nervousness in your stomach? So that. “Barça, Barça, Barça”, it echoed through the stadium and happily hit the championship title. “We’re going to Canaletes,” said some fans as they left. A classic day, the most beautiful liturgy at Camp Nou.
