Joan Laporta arrived at the King Abdullah stadium in Jeddah performing an up-yours and shouting at the “shameless sons of bitches” there, and left again three nights later with the Spanish Super Cup. These had been some weeks and this was some way to end them, only this never truly ends. Debated in parliament, a question of state occupying everyone, Barcelona’s president could not escape the spotlight; now, late on Sunday, 12 days into the new year and 12 days on from that deadline, nor did he want to. So on the pitch, surrounded by confetti, cameras right in front of him and players right behind – Dani Olmo and Pau Víctor included – he stepped centre-stage again, this time taking the trophy, all triumphant.
At the end of the Super Cup, the Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez had whispered to Luka Modric “we had to lose a final some time, no?” and the Croatian agreed. “If we have to choose, I prefer it to be this one,” he told the television cameras. Which, while true, didn’t feel like much of a consolation right then – and not just because it doesn’t work like that, the nature of defeat suggesting others are more likely to follow, not less – and didn’t do much to diminish its significance for their rivals, which was not just the fact that they had won a title, the first under Hansi Flick, but the way they won it. When they had won it too, a sense of liberation in victory. For Laporta and Olmo, particularly.
