Barcelona’s league title celebrations almost ended in serious trouble when Espanyol fans breached security, invaded the pitch and ran after the newly crowned champions, chasing them down the tunnel. Fortunately some of the players and staff, dancing in circles on the pitch having defeated their city rivals 4-2, spotted them coming just in time and they were able to outrun their pursuers, forced to continue festivities from the safety of the dressing room instead. As they escaped, there were some confrontations between home supporters and security staff, as well as protests aimed at the directors’ box.
La Liga winners for the first time in four years, Barcelona’s party had barely been going a minute but Xavi Hernández had already begun telling his players to make way just before the stampede started. It was, the coach said, a question of “respect”. He knew what this meant: for himself, lifting a first major trophy and for everyone. Opposite him in the other dugout was a friend and class-mate from his coaching course, experiencing very different emotions. If success and failure, triumph and despair, coexist in every game, it could hardly have been expressed so clearly as it was in Cornella.
