Champions: Barcelona, ​​with Messi's lifeguard in the lair of Maradona | Champions League 2019

Setin's team, after four consecutive wins in LaLiga, visits a Naples where Insigne, Mertens and Fabin Ruiz stand out.

The first thing the taxi driver does when he sees that those who enter his car are Spanish journalists is to take advantage of the glove compartment. Take out a postcard of Diego Armando Maradona, in principle signed by the former footballer, and hangs it just below the rearview mirror. To be Diego who welcomed the outsider. Similar scenes are repeated again and again in every corner of Naples. In a restaurant, an ultra bomber already stabbed and who had to go through better times in the stands of San Paolo, takes out his worst fleas when another diner occurs to put Leo Messi above Maradona. And what about murals. And who keeps a piece of Pelusa hair in an urn. Or who says he has a boot of his with which he won the World Cup in Mexico'86. Maradona, as some Neapolitans say, is above San Gennaro, because the player, at least, complied.

Often forward Lorenzo Insigne, Neapolitan pure strain and whose glasses librarian paste mixed with a chain on the neck, it is clear: Messi is currently the best in the world. But I don't compare it with Maradona. For us Neapolitans, Diego is sacred.

Barcelona returns to the Champions League in one of those scenarios where it is easy to be haunted. The psychological hammering by the deeds of Maradona during his seven years in Naples is not only impossible to ignore, but ends up devouring you. The Neapolitans do not even seem to notice too much in the advance of the coronavirus through northern Italy, where the midwives always felt repudiated. The masks are for now a rarity in Naples and only the temperature controls on arrival at the airport -measures of course also applied to the components of the Barça expedition-, refer to a present that, in Naples, is always passed.

Debut at 61

Leo Messi, at age 32, treads for the first time San Paolo, where Maradona lived as a god to end up frolicking in hell. And he does it also carrying the full weight of a club. There was no better example of it than in the game last Saturday, when he himself piled up to four goals that allowed the Camp Nou stand to forget for a while the president's poor management Josep Maria Bartomeu. Messi helped the president, as he does with the technician Quique Setin, who at 61 years old debuts in the Champions League at the best moment of his team. His Barcelona accumulates four consecutive victories in the League and has just snatched the Real Madrid leadership, just in the week in which he visits Santiago Bernabu.

Barcelona and Npoles, who face each other for the first time in an official match – they had done it before in friendly matches – arrive at this first leg of the Champions League round trip with coaches different from those who obtained the qualification in the phase of groups Exiled Ernesto Valverde from Camp Nou, Aurelio De Laurentiis, owner of Naples, did the same in December with Carlo Ancelotti.

Reunion with Manolas

Instead he put Gennaro Gattuso, who, little by little is stabilizing a team that is running sixth in Serie A (24 points away from Juventus). But, besides being one step away from the Italian Cup final, he has won six of his last seven games. And with triumphs of mrito like the one obtained against Juve in San Paolo (2-1) or the last victory in San Siro against Inter in the first leg of the semifinals of the Cup (0-1).

El Npoles, unlike Barcelona – attends San Paolo with 14 chips from the first team after the last injury of Sergi Roberto-, s took advantage of the winter market, with Demme (Leipzig), Politano (assigned by Inter) and Lobotka (Celtic). He still suffers in defensive transitions, no matter how much he is there Manolas, remembered for his goal to Bara in the collapse of Rome; instead, the azzurri they have very dangerous soccer players from the three-quarter zone: from Fabin Ruiz and his hammer in the front until the imbalance on the flanks of Insigne, Politano or even Alley, with Mertens in the outpost.

Although, as usual, be what Messi wants. In Maradona's house.