Even if you don't like football and this article has fallen into your hands by chance, I'm going to recommend one thing: tonight watch the Cup final between the Athletic club and the Barcelona That will be played at the La Cartuja Stadium in Seville (9:30 p.m. DAZN and Tele 5) we will not deceive you: we do not assure that it will be a great match, rather it paints the opposite in view of the last performances of both teams. But you will attend a lofty drama. In which the afraid to to lose can dominater to the ambition to win, in which he will try to adjust pending accounts that include trumpet and history, where you will fight against the rival and the Ghosts of the past, which may be the last final of the best player I have ever seen and that will mark the immediate future of the two institutions that have most honored this competition: Athletic Club and Barcelona (follow the game live on AS.com).
Both teams reach this final with traumas to solve. Both are also recent. They still sting. The Barça comes after failing again in a decisive match as it was the classic against Madrid and Athletic after lose the cup final last year (things of the pandemic) against the Royal Society.
If to that we add that the Barça When he steps in Seville, all the ghosts from his past (from Duckadam to Villalibre) and that Athletic knows that having Barça in front of a decisive match is like the dentists' slogan against sugar-free chewing gum (nine out of ten do not advise them as nine out of ten finals fall on the Catalan side) the match already supposes not just a title, but a self-assertion exercise.
Let's add to the equation the Messi factor. The best player in history (and put what you want here, decade, century, time, Barça, Rosario or with three children and a dog) he's tired of losing. He already got tired eight months ago and said that he was leaving, but now, after the final of the January Super Cup –which played hard– can pick up a trophy as captain of Barça. He has been in the culé entity since he was thirteen years old and the detail to outline his decision should not be trivial.
Do you want more pepper? Let's go there. Rematch is a fundamental factor for the game. The Athletic this tired from lose Cup finals to Barcelona, who has taken away the title of king of the competition, and the one that did not lose to the Catalans was lost before the Real. That does not help the personal reaffirmation of the Biscayan people to whom the barge sounds like memory of their elders.
For its part, the Barca has to take off all at once that loser face worn for too long on big days. One of those last days was in Seville (a city that for Barça is like the Bates Motel shower for Vera Miles when he reaches a final) when Athletic traced him back a final that Koeman's men seemed to have won in a sporadic Griezmann's appearance.
Villalibre forced the extension and Williams, who recites his best lessons against Barça, defeated a Barça that seemed to be in growing process. The logical celebration of the lions with the trumpet of Villalibre is another pending account that stings in the Blaugrana dressing room.
Both teams have reached the final rushing the playoffs, with one goal difference, asserting the value of the goals away and forcing extensions. They are cupbearer at their best, they are going to dispute tonight the one that is probably the most beautiful party of the year in the best scenario. But without an audience, this is something else. It is fear and pending accounts. The party is missing.