Welcome to La Barça Soc Supporter!
Introducing the first and, as yet, only dedicated Barça Femení Substack!
After a fair few spins on this floating rock, most folks are who and what they are. They like what they like. Follow sports closely enough for long enough and, as in life, you get set in your ways. Sadly, the childlike earnestness and enthusiasm with which we adopt our passions tend to diminish as part of this process.
Thankfully not always.
While the 1994 World Cup in the United States didn’t exactly leave in its wake a burning passion for the game that the non-U.S. world knows as “football,” it did offer up some kindling and a spark. As I recall, during that immersive month, with the exception of the exquisite Roberto Baggio, seemingly every player I learned about from my father (who is, in fact, a lifelong football fan) - past (Johan Cruyff, the coach of the Dutch side until, naturally, he fell out with the federation before the tournament), then-present (Romário, Stoichkov), and whatever Diego Maradona was at the time - had STARRED for FC Barcelona. The accelerant came gradually afterward.
A year and change later, a day after my seventeenth birthday (irrelevant but fun), Ronaldo - Nazario, REAL Ronaldo - on his own Camino de Santiago, laid waste to an entire Compostela side that was more than willing, but flaccidly unable to kick, grab, and do whatever else came to mind to keep him from scoring for… yep, Barcelona.
As someone who grew up late-’90s suburban Los Angeles and has near-adult memories of a pre-internet, pre-FIFA (the game) world, actually watching European club matches games as they happened (or at all, really) was a virtual impossibility. But two, maybe three days after it happened, on a computer in Crescenta Valley High School’s library, Ronaldo’s goal against Compostela became the first, if not real-time then at least timely non-World Cup football highlight to blow my mind. It also made me a Barça fan.
A couple of years later, at France ‘98, Ronaldo’s teammate with Brazil and replacement at Barça following an acrimonious departure after just one season, Rivaldo, feuled further fascination with whatever was going on at Camp Nou.
And so it went.
Four years later, at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, and another “R,” an absurdity named Ronaldinho, spectacularly led Brazil to a record fifth World Cup win. A year later, Ronaldinho, in a “reverse Neymar,” moved from PSG to Barcelona, and pulled the club out of the doldrums.
Not long after, I moved to New York, where Fox Soccer Channel (RIP), Nevada Smith’s (RIP), and the Eastern time zone made life much more conducive to enjoying things European.
And so it continued to go.
In the summer of 2006, the side that had just won Barça’s second-ever Champion League title visited New Jersey as part of a summer tour. More than 74,000 turned out at the Meadowlands to see Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o, Deco, Xavi, Carles Puyol, Víctor Valdés, and a 19-year-old Lionel Messi, who entered the game as a second half substitute and shattered every notion of what innate genius looks like in this sport. At this point I’d made the move from nominal Barça fan to full-blown culé.
The efforts of that group, along with those of Andrés Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Piqué, Luis Suárez, Neymar, Pedro, Thierry Henry, Robert Lewandowski, Pedri, and Gavi, among so many others, have since run my personal rooting tally to 11 league titles, seven Copas del Rey, and four Champions League titles, and two trebles.
Along the way, almost exactly four years ago, in fact, my wife and I actually moved to Barcelona. I figured I’d take an interest in Barça basketball (I have) but figured it wouldn’t occupy the same emotional real estate as the Lakers and Barça (men’s) football (it hasn’t). I figured I had my two “forever teams.”
And then these women showed up.
On my arrival in Catalunya in 2019, I was aware of FC Barcelona Femení. I knew they were good. Really good, in fact. Of the women’s club game more broadly I knew that Lyon and Wolfsburg were Europe’s preeminent powers and that, in Spain, Atlético de Madrid Femenino was every bit Barça’s equal. That was mostly it. Since this team was Barça, football, and now local, I assumed we’d also settle into a Barça Bàsquet-esque beyond-casual-not-quite-diehard relationship.
Dear reader, this is emphatically not what happened. I mean, the first couple of years did feature the newness of life on a new continent with a side of global pandemic. So, y’know, fits and starts.
Along the way, though, I started watching more and more. In 2021, Barça became the first club ever to win both a men’s and women’s treble, with Alexia Putellas, a quintessential Barça maestra, winning the Ballon d’Or.
The next season, totalment enamorat. Having written about the Barça men for more than a dozen years and NBA basketball (stay tuned for something on this front as well) for even longer than that, I dipped my toe into writing about women’s football. In the final days of 2021. In my first piece for the fantastic Urban Pitch, I offered up a brief history of the who’s, when’s, and what’s of Barça Femení.
And so it’s continued to go.
On April 22, 2022, this team gave me the best in-person sports experience of my life. Then, a month later, they basically did it again.
I’ve written about Alexia & Co. featuring prominently in a "World Mixed XI,” loose ends that refuse to get tied up, the machinations that keep dynasties dynastic, and Alexia’s Labor Omnia Vincit, as raw and vulnerable an entry into the superstar documentary genre as you’re likely to find.
I’ve tried to write about this team and the women’s game in general as I try to write about men’s sports: earnestly, intelligently (debate amongst yourselves), with some humor (ditto)- and here, without ever patronizing or ignoring the myriad issues and indignities that these women have and continue to endure.
Over the past two years, this this collection of spectacular apex predators has inspired in me a raw, unstepped-on childlike enthusiasm that I didn’t know I still had to give. Thanks again to Urban Pitch, The Blizzard, Defector, The Barcelona Podcast and the Blaugranes Show (formerly the Barça Blaugranes Podcast) for giving me outlets to rave about it all.
Somewhere along the way, I concluded that the best way to keep doing is this via a dedicated outlet. Elsewhere, further along the way, I decided to actually do something about. And, in the absence of such an outlet - and with FC Barcelona’s stubborn refusal to capitulate and just hire me - I decided to create one.
Welcome to (as best I can tell) the first and as yet only dedicated Barça Femení Substack!
The (for now) loosely defined plan here involves one or two articles per week. For the time being, these will all reside on the friendly side of the paywall. However, if you are so inclined, financial support for this endeavor will not be turned away.
Over time some of this stuff may creep behind the paywall, though as important to me as making a buck is stoking conversations about this team and women’s football through good old fashioned, not-yet-extinct, gives-a-damn writing. As we go, there will be interviews, chats, and videos for paid subscribers - all in the works, none rollout-ready yet.
This - as is just about everything - is a work in progress. I appreciate you being here now. I appreciate you bearing with me as I find my sea legs. I thank you in advance for your time, attention, and support.
Totes Unides Fem Força!
