A century ago, or at least sixty years ago, when a singular footballer, Julio Cesar Benitez, abandoned his position in defense to get Barça out of a quagmire in Seville, when Betis was challenging the Barça team to a 2-2 draw in a match as difficult as last night. The tiebreaker was Benitezglorious character of our history.
This time Barça was saved by a clever Portuguese who combines an enormous dose of competitiveness with his intelligence. If it had not been for Benitez then and for Felix Last night, this Barça, threatened by the cold of its recent history, would have gone to bed with nightmares.
The young people who play now are a major new addition to the squad, so their game is being developed, just like them (Pedri, Lamine Yamalso many) are learning to associate to turn Barcelona into the possible light of what it already was.
While those plays were developing that gave Ferran opportunities to display the nature of his ambitions, the sense of the game of Benitez that time he was the one who saved Barça from a decisive slip.
Food poisoning
His shooting, his presence, his sense of humor, and love of the club, resembled what drives these guys now. So it was logical that its emblem was part of my memory as a culé who last night, like so many others, saw the future of our merits in danger.
Shortly after that glorious victory (2-3), Julio Cesar Benitez died of food poisoning. His last hours coincided with the date of a decisive match against Real Madrid. Passionate as if he had been born in La Masiaa, he left this epitaph, which was an encouragement to his teammates: “Come on, friends, let’s defeat Real Madrid 2-0.”
It was April 8, 1968. Then the match was suspended, because the duel was deep, it affected all the Spanish fans, and to this day there are fans who, like this chronicler, associate these Barça matches against Betis as part of a memory. greatest of football, full of glory and pain in memory.
Vital and mortal moment
That’s why, before the match started, and when it became more complicated for Barcelona, I couldn’t help but feel that the simple, happy shadow of Julio Cesar Benitez He would be flying over the Barça soul that was facing a decisive match in its history.
Last night was a vital moment, and also a deadly one. They came Ferran and Joao Felixthis Benitez of our time, to prevent history from making fun of the Barça color.
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It was an afternoon of bad omens, which had begun in Madrid, in the beautiful new stadium in which I wish Madrid the best talents, the most beneficial future. Hopefully these do not coincide, as happened yesterday afternoon, with an arbitration shame that will take a long time to undo.
Teacher Alfredo Relaño, one of the most lucid football writers in this country, said it right away in As: «Three points for Madrid, but at the cost of tremendous reputational damage. (…) Madrid won the game, but its legion of enemies has received food for a couple of decades. The teacher is right, as always when injustice becomes the center of the disaster in football.