One of the world’s greatest sporting institutions lost sight of the principles on which its success was based
Ten years ago at Wembley, FC Barcelona won football’s Champions League with a performance that established an absolute hegemony in the world’s most popular sport. As Sir Alex Ferguson conceded, the Catalan team had given his Manchester United side “a hiding”. But Barcelona’s hold on the global imagination has been about more than trophies and victories.
Arguably the most famous football club in the world, Barcelona is owned not by an oligarch but by its members, and run by a democratically elected president. For years, the team’s shirts bore the Unicef logo, rather than the name of a commercial sponsor. On the pitch in the early 2010s, the football reached a level of choral beauty never witnessed before, orchestrated by a trio of diminutive homegrown geniuses: Xavi, Andres Iniesta and, first among equals, Lionel Messi. Cups, ethics, rootedness and aesthetics: Barcelona had it all. “More than a club”, as the well-known slogan has it.