Debates about identity have poisoned the world. Europe raises the disgusting specter of the Great Replacement, of ethnic replacement. It’s always the immigrants’ fault, who cross half the world on foot to impose their customs on us and slaughter a lamb on the next balcony just when Fernando Alonso is left out of Q3 on yet another Saturday. If I wanted to collude with replacements rather than immigrants, I would focus on that new floating category of citizen called expatriate. Expatriate. In other words, senior employees of multinationals moved to cities where life is cheaper and better.
THE expatriates They are immune to context. Mentally, they remain in their countries. Or anywhere. They eat muffinsthey drink smoothies, They line up at cafes to order eggs Benedict with avocado and a plain white at four euros. They destroy the city’s social and real estate fabric (they pay whatever is necessary for whatever is necessary because, fundamentally, they don’t pay). And they will never learn the local language, because they are passing through. Without this, its existential provisional, necessarily implying a temporal issue. The bad thing about expatriatebut also the best thing is that he usually doesn’t know anything about what’s going on around him. And this, to a large extent, was very useful for Hansi Flick last year to isolate himself from the pot of crickets in which he had landed.
The German, however, decided to join in, to be one more. Have your aperitif in Turó Park, stroll through the Galvany market among the bourgeoisie of Santaló Street in search of a good turbot or eat in the sun on the Bocconi terrace in Sarrià while your employees He trains at a chain of gyms in the neighborhood. Furthermore, Hansi Flick no longer controls his impulses, he lets out some sausages to the referee if necessary, he makes excuses when he loses, he criticizes the referees and he proclaims that he will give everything for a club and a city he loves, a demonstration of Mediterranean passion completely incidental to a German who has signed a professional contract with the entity that pays him.
Flick’s stubborn side emerged without any complexes and he also decided that he will not take a step back. Something very Spanish and, in recent years, also Catalan. Not a single step! Of course. But it would be better for his defense to take a few steps back. Or meters. At least until he solves the problem that arose 10,000 feet above sea level when Iñigo Martínez told him this summer that he was leaving during his flight back from Japan and wished him good luck. Barça have conceded 20 goals in 15 official matches this season, an average of 1.3 per game, the second worst of the century.
Flick doesn’t speak the local language, neither Spanish nor Catalan, it’s true. In this he remains true to the spirit expatriate how well it worked last year to isolate yourself. But the famous culé atmosphere, the pressure and the spotlight point to the German. In addition to the disaster against Bruges, which looked like Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, the image of Lamine Yamal, an 18-year-old star, asking the bench for solutions is the clearest symptom that the coach will no longer be able to live at Barcelona and at the club as if things were not his. They point out the results, the game and the star of your team in the middle of the game. Now he will know what it’s like to coach Barça. Welcome home.