Barça is still in strife, both in the backrooms and on the pitch. The Catalan football club's two-nil defeat by Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium has brought the blaugrana fans back to reality: a mediocre team at the mercy of a Madrid which won the game in the second half, fought for it and overwhelmed the FC Barcelona eleven. It is a painful defeat because any other Barça team would have delivered the final blow on Sunday to take charge of the league, and instead, the Barcelona players stood like statues as the most anonymous Madrid team of recent years walked all over them at the Bernabéu.
The most worrying thing about the Barça team is not the defeat but the play, and the dark clouds hovering over the team at a crucial moment in the season. Obviously, there are many factors behind Barça's instability: from the poor planning of the season, the change of coach that had all the numbers to take place last summer but was a shock at the moment it finally occurred, and a squad which is too small and unbalanced.
But these are the sporting factors which, although important, prevent us from analyzing the complexity of Barça's crisis, which begins with the chairman, continues through the rest of the board, expands across the club's offices and includes the technical management and those responsible for the football area. When it became known that the board had hired a company which was creating false social media profiles to discredit Barça voices who are critical of the current leadership - players such as Gerard Piqué and Leo Messi, prominent Barça figures like Xavi Hernández and Pep Guardiola and numerous pro-independence leaders - I ventured that there was a good chance that the club's management debacle would have huge repercussions on the pitch.
Everything points in that direction and chairman Josep Maria Bartomeu and the so-called Barçagate, about which, by the way, the club has still not given sufficient explanation, have upset a season that, at present, is directionless both in the offices and on the field of play.