BARCELONA // Storm clouds gathered above Camp Nou before Sunday’s late match against Athletic Club Bilbao, obscuring the communications mast that stands sentinel over the Mediterranean city.
U2’s With or Without You played on the public address system, into which fans could have read any number of problematic situations enveloping the Catalan club. After three straight defeats, only 57,090, the second lowest crowd of the season, showed to see the match against the Basque Country team, who is one of the league’s best.
Easter break tourists being solicited for tickets outside the official Barcelona shops in the city – priced between €65-€198 (Dh330-1,005) – could have found them for a fraction of that outside the stadium. Crowds have shrunk since the start of this less than spectacular season for Barcelona.
Those three losses in three different competitions so far this month, two of them against foes from Madrid, had all but ended Barcelona’s season. They will look with envy at the Champions League semi-finals being staged in Madrid on Tuesday and Wednesday, the first time since 2007 that Barca haven’t reached the last four.
The club faces an uncertain summer. Coach Gerardo Martino will almost certainly depart after a season in charge. Unofficially, the club will listen to offers for several first team players, with the Camp Nou futures of Isaac Cuenca, Christian Tello, Alexis Sanchez, Daniel Alves, Alex Song, Pedro and Cesc Fabregas uncertain.
Victor Valdes and Carles Puyol will also depart, the latter likely to a league where the physical challenges on his knee will be lower. Other players will be fortunate to stay given their mediocre form.
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Barca have seen a president resign after becoming embroiled in the Neymar transfer scandal and they have been hit with a 14-month ban from Fifa, to which they will shout injustice – publicly at least – and appeal against.
The positives are that they have players returning from loan, emerging B-team talents and the club’s under 19s were also crowned European champions after defeating Benfica in Nyon last week.
One player almost certain to stay is Lionel Messi, though he has had a difficult month. Barca have continuously indulged him with new contracts and decisions to accommodate his preferences, from the appointing of a coach from his home city in Argentina to the fitness coaches used at training.
When you are usually the best player in the world you have considerable bargaining power, but that is bestowed on the condition that you deliver and Messi has failed to deliver recently.
Once a match winner, he has become a bystander in Barca’s biggest games.
Disquiet regarding the golden boy was rife among the 19,000 Barca fans in Valencia for last week’s Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid. The principal accusation is that he is saving himself for the World Cup finals in Brazil with Argentina.
Questions have been asked about the distractions of negotiating a new contract, but Messi and his people are involved in negotiating new, always improved, contracts as often as Messi breaks another goalscoring record.
The Argentine still enjoys a vast store of goodwill among Cules who appreciate all that he has done and what he will hopefully go on to do for Barca. They will forgive him a bad month in lieu of the 100 outstanding months he has given the club in the past decade.
When he went through on goal against Athletic on Sunday, fans chanted his name, as they did when he scored one of two goals in two second-half minutes as Barca came from behind to beat Athletic 2-1.
Barca have already made him the best paid player on the planet, but when Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea are capable of spending even more on player contracts than Barca, Real Madrid and Manchester United – the three biggest clubs in world football – uncertainty over Messi’s future at Camp Nou will persist.
When any Barca director is bold enough to infer that the star player is being greedy, he is shouted down by an adoring public, if not the player himself.
In mitigation, Messi was rightly miffed to find out that Neymar, who has experienced an underwhelming first season in Europe, was earning more than him given his vast signing-on fee.
Also, while the fees that Messi receives are high, they represent a fraction of the club’s enormous and rapidly increasing turnover. Without Messi, where would Barca have been in the past eight years?
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