BARCELONA – 2020 will be remembered as the year when the stadiums were emptied, all competitions were interrupted and a continental season ended in an unlikely way, with a centralized Champions League in Lisbon confirming Bayern Munich’s indisputable strength.
In Spain, with eyes on the two greats, 2020 must be seen from a different perspective: Madrid regained the throne of the competition after two years and Barça failed, unfortunately, on all stages. Even in the institutional to provoke the resignation of his dieectiva.
The year of the covid destroyed all economic plans in Barcelona and Madrid, but, curiously, Real’s conscience has been able to weather the storm with a better mind, even challenging Florentino Pérez to bring the team to Valdebebas as he progressed in the pharaonic transformation of Bernabéu that will look radiant in a few months as the image of Camp Nou grows more depressing every day, waiting for some cranes still not starting the works … who have no start date as Barça on the edge of financial collapse.
Sportingly, December is reached with the meringues on par with Atlético and the Catalans midway through recovery and disaster, without still being able to forget the collapse that marked the end of last season in which they lost the League after being incarcerated only seven of the last eleven matches of the tournament, to deliver the title on a scale to a Madrid that proved unmanageable with or without VAR controversies.
2020 was the year of the three coaches at Barça, which started with Ernesto Valverde, who was fired after the Spanish Super Cup defeat in January, followed by Quique Setién, who was already convicted for his disastrous League final and was convicted after the historic 2 -8 suffered in Lisbon against Bayern, ending with Ronald Koeman, a legend at Camp Nou who has not been able to escape criticism for the irregularity of the match and the results his team has shown in the first four months of the competition, off the hook dangerous in the League and classified for the Champions League knockout stages second in the group after a terrible defeat at home to Juventus, ending the best historical streak of a local team in the tournament.
Eliminated by Athletic in the quarter-finals of the Copa del Rey in February, this is the worst year for Barça since 2008, without winning a single title. In the absence of the match that closes the year against Eibar, Barça has played 47 matches, winning only 28 (59.6 percent) and losing 11 (23.5 percent), an absolutely inappropriate statistic for him. Barça club.
Style defender, committed to a non-negotiable philosophy of play in which the ball is or should be the great protagonist, Barcelona sank into mediocrity without hardly noticing as the year progressed … until the Lisbon disaster, the historic defeat against Bayern Munich blew everything up.
Quique Setién was immediately fired and a week later the Messi case broke out, with the Argentine star demanding his immediate departure from the club. Bartomeu remained steadfast in his refusal, citing the fact that the clause allowing him to leave had expired in June and, against all odds, managed to keep the captain at the club … Although that ended the last stone on the was gone.
A vote of no confidence, encouraged by various groups of partners, put an end to their opposition, and as the team trembled between good, bad and worst results, the president and his board left early. The storm at Camp Nou has been historic in 2020 and rightly fingers crossed in the hope of saying goodbye to him one day and starting a better life in 2021 … Difficult as it is understood that the road will not be easy.
WHITE … BUT NOT RADIANT
When it is said, confirmed and confirmed that Barça and Madrid, Madrid and Barça are communication ships between which disaster and success go hand in hand, it is clear that the Bernabeu’s smile has remained unvarnished in 2020. While Zinedine Zidane, the three Champions League coach, has had a rough time, the league title he won in July by winning ten consecutive games after incarceration erased any sense of failure.
Especially when you consider that Madrid has only won three league titles in the past ten seasons … And that two of them bear the signature of Zidane, who in the end always reacts to criticism with result.
The League triumphant in July erased the disappointment, failure that led to the quarter-finals elimination of the cup against Real Sociedad and the Bernabéu (3-4) and motivated a sense of happiness that ended from Suddenly, in August, when Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City let him out in the knockout stages of the Champions League … in a draw that started in February and lost 1-2 at home that couldn’t be overcome in England , where the citizens won again with the same result.
It wasn’t a 2020 round in Madrid at all, but Barça’s collapse has limited the damage around the Bernabéu, and not a bit, with a team having played 48 games with 32 wins ahead of the last game of the year against Elche ( 66.6 percent) and 10 losses (20.8 percent).
Madrid ended the year well, you could say it was approved highly, thanks to the league title won, and to top the rankings in 2021, on par with Atlético and well above a Barça it beat in the Classic. played at Camp Nou, and sentenced his pass to the Champions knockout stages as group champion.
It is rightly said that Zidane is a happy coach … While Ronald Koeman, a legendary character in Barcelona’s thinking world, continues to search for that happiness that has too often eluded him.
2020 will be remembered as the year of the coronavirus, the year when the stadiums were emptied … And it brought a Barcelona that started with losing the Spanish Super Cup in Arabia, continued with the worst failure in its history in Lisbon and ended without a president. Worst impossible. It is not surprising that the Bernabéu’s smile has remained unconcealed.