Barcelona left the party early, their birthday also belonging to those who travelled the furthest to be there. There was music, candles and a cake, a piano, five presidents and Pep Guardiola singing on the screen, or lip-syncing at least, but by the time the club’s 125th-anniversary celebrations closed at the Liceu theatre on Friday night there were no first-team players. A little after half past nine, two hours into their grand gala on the Ramblas, a figure appeared in the shadow of the aisle and gestured to depart, 30 men in grey suits silently slipping out to prepare the final act, the crowning performance: in 14 hours they had a match to play.
There have been thousands of them since 1899 when Mr Kans Kamper [sic] put a 63-word classified in Los Deportes asking if anyone wanted to play foot-vall and 12 turned up. The day after the gala would be Barcelona’s 3,034th in La Liga alone, and the league hadn’t even started for another 40 years after their foundation; it was also supposed to be special, a finale for the festivities. Over 2,000 people had been at the Liceu, among them former players, managers and plenty of politicians, if not the mayor – he supports Espanyol – and on a sunny Saturday high above the city another 43,921 were coming to Montjuic to share the history, the moment.
