Happiness from another World…!!!

After Saturday’s game, Alex Ferguson laughed. Normally after his team loses a game he is furious and he screams. Not on Saturday. He couldn’t do anything other than laugh. Later he said, “This is the best team I have ever faced”.

This Barcelona team isn’t from this world. They win everything, but that’s not the only thing they do. They do so much more, outside of the pitch. When the players walked out on the Wembley turf, the Barcelona fans held a mosaic that read “WE LOVE FOOTBALL” and that’s what Barça do, they love football and they make everyone love their football.

If you’re a football lover, right now it’s impossible not to love the way Barça play, even non-football fans are stunned. I read a British sport journalist say that Manchester United was the best football team in the world. Fútbol Club Barcelona, he said, was from another world, another sport.

The word is Happiness

He is the best player in the world; he has won everything at both a club and individual level. He has scored over 50 goals; he has scored in a Champions League final before. He has scored before in the most important games. But never have I seen Lionel Messi as happy as he was after his goal against Manchester United yesterday. He couldn’t control himself, he didn’t know what to do, he was too happy, he kicked the mike next to the pitch, he screamed, he was in another world. It was happiness.

Happiness; that is the word I think is most correct to use when describing what Barça have done the last three years. They have created happiness.

Just as they have played football from another world with a player from another world, they have created happiness from another world. Camp Nou, the home of team Barcelona, is famous for being quiet. It isn’t anymore. When team Barcelona play like they do the fans can’t stay quiet; Camp Nou is everything but quiet these days. The city of Barcelona is everything but quiet. Catalonia is a “country” with big economical and political problems at the moment, but Barcelona has made people forget about it and has given them happiness. On Saturday people from all over the world cried, they cried because they had just witnessed one of the best football teams in history play football from another world. They cried out of happiness. I was one of them, I screamed at the time of the goals, I jumped around, I celebrated like Leo but at the end, I just sat there with tears in my eyes. It all felt like a dream.

Tears in the eyes, an open mouth, but no words; that is how many of us culés have been during the last three years. But we are not alone; our players have been the exact same way. What has happened is unbelievable, it’s a huge, wonderful dream. When Barça won the sixth title in 2009, Josep Guardiola started to cry on the pitch, he didn’t want to but he couldn’t help it. After the Manita this season at Camp Nou against Real Madrid, Carles Puyol and Xavi Hérnandez both started to cry in the dressing room. I’m sure that on Saturday millions of people all over the world were crying out of happiness, and I’m sure some of them were on the pitch at Wembley.

Barcelona is a team full with homegrown players, but more than homegrown players, it’s a team full of culés, players who will always love the team Barcelona more than any other team, players who have grown up with love for the club, players that are just like us … they are culés!