A Champions to bury all the ghosts

“We blocked ourselves and that match (Rome) came to mind and we were getting worse and worse.” If Barça is Messi's speech, his words last October were enlightening. The black night of the Olympic, April 2018 appeared to the team at Anfield, May 2019. By the time Wijnaldum made it 2-0, everyone knew it would be another tragic night. Messi admitted that they saw ghosts in Liverpool.

Barça years ago entered a dangerous mental loop in the Champions League, where it has been swallowed up by its rivals and has been left without answers, football, physical and mental, to get out of adverse situations. He pointed it out in the Vicente Calderón in 2016; and the crisis in the big European parties exploded in the last year of Luis Enrique. A humiliating 4-0 in Paris, remedied with the historic 6-1; accompanied by a 3-0 in Turin that was the final of the Champions League. Then came the disasters in Rome and Liverpool. Curiously, the only two European defeats for Valverde, who had won at Wembley against Tottenham, at Old Trafford against United, but whose career at Barça was marked by those two fatal but different games. In Rome, the attitude was painful and the reluctance ended in tragedy. At Anfield, however, Barça attacked the game and deserved some before the break to close the tie. But he did not and he began to think that Liverpool would attack in the Kop in the second half … There stars, gods aligned themselves, and an atmosphere rarely seen was generated that made the network miracle possible.

Barça hopes that this year will be different. Football is not much better than last year or the year before. It seems even worse. But perhaps the format of the competition will become an advantage in fighting the ghosts. First, the empty fields. And then the format. A single-game Champions, without electrical environments against it, without biting rivals and without bad thoughts in the head. That can help Barça to forget their ghosts. For a team that has been so suggestive of the psychological issue, it could help to turn it even into an advantage.

Images like those of Alba in the documentary Matchday, crying in the Anfield dressing room when the result was still 1-0, are an example of how the Champions League has mentally weighed on the minds of the players. From a distance, it seems like a good opportunity to turn the curse around.