El Chiringuito couldn't have returned more intense after a long vacation. Between beaches and mojitos, many controversial situations have occurred that would've filled the entire show every night. In order to make up for all the lost time, last night Tomás Roncero made sure to let out everything he hadn't been able to do on television in previous days. Of course, Barça has once again become one of the great antagonists of the summer.
"What amazes me is that we've normalized that a club like Barça, five days before the season starts, hasn't registered five players; and three of them are this season's signings," the journalist began to denounce.
Roncero emphasized that the situation is even more serious when the club's attitude toward its captain and one of its greatest legends of the current culé era has also been accepted: "That we see as normal that your captain, who one day deferred his salary so Barça could sign Lewandowski, Koundé, and Raphinha, has his captaincy taken away one afternoon, loses his number as if he were an outcast, and is given a disciplinary file... it's unbelievable."
Roncero's outrage also extended to the unexpected departures in defense. "How do we allow Barça to let Iñigo Martínez go, the most important man in the backline, because they need to free up salary cap space?" he questioned. For him, these kinds of moves reflect an erratic policy far removed from the greatness that a historic club demands.
The double standard: "If that happens at Madrid..."
The most forceful moment came when Roncero compared the situation to what Real Madrid would experience if they went through a similar scenario: "If that happens at Madrid, we'd be making a..." he said, making it clear that, in his view, the media and social pressure would be much greater. The surreal thing, for many, is that Real Madrid itself has been the protagonist of traumatic departures of legends like Raúl, Iker Casillas, Fernando Hierro, Manolo Sanchís, or Sergio Ramos, episodes that also left open wounds among the fans.
Nevertheless, the journalist insisted that Barça's current image is below the standard that should be demanded: "Barcelona are getting hit from all sides and it seems like everything is normal."
An empty Camp Nou and a Gamper with reduced capacity
Roncero also made ironic remarks about the impossibility of playing at Camp Nou due to construction, pointing out that the club has gotten used to an atypical normality: "What, suddenly, you can't go to Camp Nou? We don't go to Camp Nou. Nothing happens either. We end up playing the Gamper at Johan Cruyff with 6,000 spectators (6,000). It seems that's normal too." For him, this kind of resignation doesn't fit with what the institution should represent.