Boy, does it feel good to get back to doing what we do best, and that’s kicking ass and taking names. We rolled into Racing with a lot of questions swirling around the side, questions capable of distracting a lesser team. But no less than 3 minutes into the match, the Xavi-Iniesta-Messi combination had our Man of the Match off to the races again, to see if he can top last season’s gaudy goal total.

And suddenly, it was all like it used to be.
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Hey, I knew I’d find something that Pinto does badly, since it ain’t stopping penalties. We won the Gamper Trophy match today, a desultory, half-speed affair that nobody really cared about, because the real news was being made off the pitch. You’d have to have been a cave dweller not to know that Milan is throwing its hat in the ring for our BANGS. Ick.
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"I leave destruction in my wake. Yes."

As a Sevilla fan at that club’s The Offside page noted after they gave our kids and b-teamers a 3-1 kiss at their house, “Remember when we pissed them off last season? 4-0?”

Yes, we do. And it was deja vu all over again, in a masterclass of decisive, dominant football, with a twist: Usually, it’s our opponent who catches us looking forward to a crucial mid-week European encounter. This time, it was us catching someone in a position of disadvantage. Because make no mistake, Sevilla had to balance the club’s Champions League needs past and upcoming, with what will almost certainly be the club’s most realistic chance to win silver.

So they rolled out with a spate of tactical naivete that was sure to fail, and so it did, because they ran into a buzzsaw, and we got, as Parliament-Funkadelic would say, not just knee deep, but hip-deep in that ass.
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For sale. Lightly used, high maintenance. Will deal.

Lordy, what the hell happened? First of all, I’d like to give a big, giant thank-you to Comcast, who have added TVE to their lineup, which enabled me to watch this match in full, big-screen, DVRed glory.

I’m only sorry that things weren’t better. Man, did they start out well, but here is the bottom line: Depth is going to be a problem this season, but we all knew that. When ALL of your starting XI are, for one reason or another, called away from the team with a match that you’d like to win coming up, it’s no surprise that when facing a fit, rested opponent’s first-choice side, things aren’t going to go all that well.

So what happened?
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Arbitrary and capricious “Top 10″ lists are always fun. They are fun for the writer because they get to throw an opinion out into the ether with no real backing or reasoning and pretend this is legitimate. They are even better for readers because they can create their own lists and consistently lambast the writer. So… knock yourselves out.

Here we have FC Barcelona’s Top 10 Moments of the Year (from after the Champion’s League final until the end of the Valladolid match). Please note, these are moments, not just goals, saves, good things for the club, or bad ones. These are the 10 most important events that occurred throughout the year that I feel are the most significant in terms of lasting moments. Feel free to add yours below or correct any I may have missed.

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Pere Punti/El Mundo Deportivo

No, it ain’t THE picture from this year, but it’s symbolic. So symbolic. Club. Trophy. Essential Captain. Celebration. What you have to ask yourself, is what more need be said, really? This image speaks with an undeniable eloquence that mere words can’t begin to express. Not that it will shock anyone that nonetheless, I’m going to give it a go.

This match was immense for so many reasons, not least of which was that everything was on the line.

–Us vs Them and Their Money in a battle for La Liga
–Naysayers ready, if we’d stumbled, to say “See, told you this season sucked.”
–Beautiful football, and what it means.
–And oh yeah, a stinkin’ Championship, our last shot at silver (and what a prize!) for this glorious season.
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In honor of Mother’s Day, we adapt the standard admonition, trotted out when there was some food that you didn’t want to eat. She assured you that your shameful wastefulness was a slap in the face for some starving child your age, as in “There are starving children in (insert country of choice) who would love to have that food.”

I’m sure there are strikers all over the world who, having watched our match against Sevilla, and the chance after chance after wasted chance, chances strikers yearn for, who were saying “Dude! I could have used that!”

And so it goes. I took a while wrestling with a match that, really, was a lot more interesting than it should have been because of four minutes of unconscionable stupidity, in which we let Sevilla back into the match on the scoreboard, but they really weren’t back in it. Not really. Not once we decided to batten down the hatches and play football again.
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“Thank you, we’ll be here all week!” (Claudio Chaves/El Mundo Deportivo)

This one wasn’t as easy as the scoreline seemed, thanks to a team that, despite all the warnings, were looking to Saturday’s big face-off with Sevilla. Ultimately, it was talent that turned the trick and a tiring Tenerife side that fought, scrapped, clawed, pushed and fouled, getting in our faces as if to say “You might be Barca, but we’re fighting for our Liga lives. So bring it.”

We did, but it took a lot out of us, little moments of brilliance that resulted in four exquisite goals. We get used to seeing those kinds of displays week after week after week, but it’s worth noting the sheer beauty and elegance of what we witnessed, putting four past a side that was not going to make it easy. Those dudes probably followed Xavi to the bathroom.
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Mighty Mites to the rescue!

It’s Lesson Time at Baby Kxevin’s Ecole de Barca.

In the aftermath of a most excellent, 1-4 pasting of Villarreal at their house, a match that was supposed to be a banana skin and could have been, were it not for some crapalicious finishing on their part, there are lessons to be had here.

Now, I know what many are already saying: “See? We are better without Ibrahimovic. Look at what happened.”

They’re wrong. But more about that, later. On to the more immediate lessons:
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I am about to say words that I never, ever thought I would say, words that I hope to never have to say again, as a cule and a soci:

I’m glad we lost. Because I didn’t want to win like that.

When Busquets took that dive after the slightest of touches from Motta, and was shown on TV, peeking through his hands to see if the appropriate horror was being registered by the officiating crew, my heart sank and I almost started crying.

The team that I love so much is not supposed to do that. It just isn’t. Last season when we swept all before us, we didn’t just win playing our game. We won doing the right thing, being sportsmen and doing the colors proud. Yes, it’s easy to be graceful when you are kicking everyone’s butts, some might say, but it isn’t. Not at all. When you have your foot on someone’s throat, it’s easy to be a lout, but we weren’t. So it wasn’t just the beauty of our football that seduced the globe, but the pride with which we played it, and the grace that we followed it up with.

But it went from that, to one of the more shameful displays I have seen in a long time, and Valdes squabbling with Mourinho, and us turning the sprinklers on during the Inter celebration. I’m just ashamed right now, and sad and disgusted. It doesn’t mean that I love or support the club any less, but that love and support means calling it like you see it.
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