Barca feel the love but happiness not guaranteed

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL: Mary Hannigan, a dyed-in-the-wool United fan, argues that, although most of the world want Barcelona to prevail, the holders won't care

ATTEMPTS HAVE been made in certain mischief-making quarters to cast tonight’s Champions League final as AIG v Unicef. They are, of course, the names that appear on the shirts of Manchester United and Barcelona. AIG sponsor United, Barcelona sponsor Unicef, leaving some to declare: “Enough said.”

It has even been suggested that United and AIG are a perfect match – corporate greed, that class of thing – while Barcelona’s decision to wear (for free) the name of the United Nations’ International Children’s Emergency Fund on their sacred shirts, where no sponsor’s name has ever appeared, adds to the impression that they’re several cuts above the rest.

As part of that arrangement they also agreed to donate 0.7 per cent of the club’s annual revenue to Unicef each year for five years, roughly the equivalent of Cristiano Ronaldo’s annual expenditure on hair gel, another noble gesture that enhanced the club’s already honourable reputation.

“FC Barcelona is not only a football club, but a club with a soul. Through Unicef, we the people of ‘Barca’ are very proud to donate our shirt to the children of the world who are our present, but especially are our future,” said club president Joan Laporta when he announced the deal two years ago. The sentiments might have sounded a bit Oprah Winfrey-ish, but they were admirable nonetheless.

“Mes que un club” (more than a club) is the Barcelona motto. United don’t really have one, although their foes would suggest something along the lines of “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good”. Or “50 per cent off Tevez shirts (with a free Nani duvet cover thrown in)”.

United, then, with this alleged vulgar commercialism and ruthless exploitation of their supporters, are sort of the Bernie Madoff of world football, while Barcelona, the people’s club, are kind of a cross between Susan Boyle and Robin Hood.

(“You are joking, aren’t you? There’s as much skulduggery at that club as there is at **deleted on legal advice**.” In fairness, this Real Madrid supporter made his allegations the day after his side lost 6-2 to Barcelona at the Bernabeu earlier this month. So.).

In that respect “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” could have been said of tonight’s game, the good men possibly being Barcelona’s three-pronged attack. If they fire blanks in Rome, then evil will bring the cup back to Manchester. That’s the gist of the argument, anyway.

Then there’s the romance. And only a Real Madrid devotee could fail to see the romance in Barcelona. True, that Gaudi cathedral needs a bit of work done on it yet before it looks right, and yes, some of us have had regrettable experiences with paella and pickpockets on Las Ramblas, but everything else about the city and its football club (with apologies to the other lot, Espanyol) is just about perfect.

Famously, the home of the footballing artists is the most alluring attraction for visitors to the city, Barcelona FC’s museum proving more popular than the Picasso Museum. The tour of Camp Nou, too, is a must-do, the highlight the sight of that little chapel off the players’ tunnel, where, it has been said, God can be heard whispering a prayer to the divinity that is Lionel Messi.

Uefa president Michel Platini, a great player in his time, not just a good one – will be rooting for Barcelona tonight because, he said, they “seduce” him. If Fifa president Sepp Blatter had talked seduction in this context it would have sounded like an affliction, but Platini, being French, you know yourself.

“Barcelona represents my philosophy, not just in their style of play, but how they form their footballers,” he said. “They embody the ideals of Spanish football, which represents technique, an easy and open style of play. It seduces me.”

Need it be said, since Alex Ferguson, Glasgow’s own footballing Casanova, arrived at the club 23 years ago United have been doing a bit of seducing themselves, but mainly just of their own besotted congregation. It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that Ferguson’s United have been loved beyond their own support, even if there is a concession that their brand of football, like Barcelona’s, is exceptionally easy on the eye.

True, United have gazillions of supporters worldwide – although fewer than Barcelona in Europe. According to a survey earlier this year 44.2 million Europeans support Barcelona, compared to a mere 37.6 who are of the United faith (only eight of whom live in Manchester, City fans will contend).

But the key finding in these types of polls is always that Barcelona are most supporters’ favourite second team. Apart from the people who love them first, if you know what we mean. With United it’s more of an all-or-nothing type situation: if you don’t love them first, you don’t love them at all.

Barcelona’s history – the feisty pride of Catalonia v the reprobates of Franco’s Real Madrid, all that stuff – has made them endearing, and who doesn’t love a rebel? (Messi, incidentally, was born in the same city as Che Guevara. Spooky).

United’s history used to make them loved, but then they started winning everything, building megastores and serving more prawns than pies at Old Trafford. And that was it. Now grown men from Derby to Durham, from Coventry to Carlisle and Liverpool to Lincoln will be baying for Barca tonight.

But still, the notion that the only people on this earth who will wish defeat on Barcelona are the United faithful is probably flawed. Just under 33 per cent of the Spanish population confess to supporting Real Madrid, so that’s a third of the country who’ll be urging Ronaldo to out-Messi Messi. For them, a Barcelona victory would be marginally less palatable than a dodgy paella.

So, AIG v Unicef? Well, perhaps, in a sense, but that’s not to say that Barcelona will be bailed out by love tonight. As someone with a pen once wrote, “romance is the fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of things as they are”. And, as they are, Manchester United are the best team in Europe. All they have to do is prove it. Which is the tricky bit. And let’s be charitable, AIG could do with some good news.