For you and for you, brother

The networks, so stupid and unpleasant at times, are redeemed from time to time with small gestures that do not mean much, just that there are still good and generous people beating copper with the usual noise hoarders.

As soon as the game ended at the Santiago Bernabéu, with a redemptive victory for Xavi's Barça, some members of the Barça family remembered an unknown brother whose image went viral after Liverpool's comeback in the 2018-2019 Champions League.

In the stands of Anfield, dressed in his official shirt and surrounded by horror, our hero looked from side to side looking for an explanation that did not come from either side until, suddenly, without the need for greater stimulation than the love of some colors ,

Football replicates life in such a perfect way that we often forget to appreciate how much and how good it is capable of giving us back as a society.

We get involved in confrontational issues, in political debates, and we end up ignoring the little stories that fill with color –and warmth– a sport used to tarnishing its own prestige in the name of love.

The ultras, with their privileges and their savagery, force us, from time to time, to put kilometers of distance between our feelings and theirs, so perverted by violence and navel-gazing that it makes one want to give up and plant tomatoes as a way alternative to take advantage of Sundays.

But football is not that –or not only that–, and for each insult or drop of blood that spurts from a stand, shared applause will have to be counteracted,

More information

A cultural glue called football: what would a Super League mean?

The revolt against the Super League brought back that old maxim that football belongs to the fans, not its owners, a phrase that contains a great truth but also a huge contradiction.

Soccer as a business, the one that seems willing to empty the stadiums in exchange for millions from television, belongs by law to those who invested their money in a new model of speculation.

Or in an advertising window.

Or in a simple whim of the rich to match the mega yacht and the mansion: they can keep that one because, I insist, legally it belongs to them.

But the other, the one that weaves unbreakable threads between parents and children and even synergies between strangers, belongs to all of us who don't need a title deed or a clearly visible tattoo to recognize ourselves as the base that supports this circus.

no matter how much you order,

As much as those who will never understand the greatness of a game that is about normal people beating anonymously under a shield shout.

For you and for you, brother: football is yours, football is ours.

You can follow EL PAÍS DEPORTES on

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber