"For many, football is played with the feet. In my opinion, you play with your head, using your feet”. The phrase is from Johan Cruyff, who on Sunday would have turned 74 if he had not died prematurely from cancer, and it is the perfect expression for understanding the progress of a team that had nowhere to go in mid-season and that, after Sunday's victory at the difficult ground of Villarreal, has - for the first time - serious options to be champion of the Spanish league. Another famous phrase, this one from Jorge Valdono: "Football is a state of mind." And it couldn't be more applicable. The return of Joan Laporta has given wings to a team that needed a push and has found it in the hands of a coach who has won a renewal of his contract, Ronald Koeman, and a president who knows better than anyone what strings need to be pulled to motivate the squad.
Barça has put itself squarely into the fight for La Liga, when at Christmas the realistic objective was as modest as securing a place in the next edition of the Champions League. And a week ago the team won the Copa del Rey, a minor tournament, but which lifted self-esteem for a squad that under captain Leo Messi had not yet won a trophy. With five matches to go - FC Barcelona has six games left, one more than its rivals - the league is looking more possible than ever and the Barça team can take it solely by ensuring their own results. Something that seemed impossible even a month ago when Laporta took over the presidency.
As important as the result is that Barça seems to have found an essential point of calm from which they can look forward to the coming years, where there will be the need to combine a competitive team - and this includes the renewal of Messi and possible signings - with the delicate economic situation of the club that Laporta has inherited, consequence of bad management by the board headed by Josep Maria Bartomeu. Never in the recent history of the club has the financial situation been so overshadowing and the difficulties in overcoming the situation and the pending debts so difficult.
It is completely understandable that in these circumstances Barça clung to the lifeline that the Super League offered and that, after the unravelling that has taken place, it is more of an idea than a project. There will be no Super League - at least in the short term - but Barça will have the obligation to continue looking for income outside the usual paths if it does not want its economy to collapse, if it wants to keep its own club structure in the hands of its members, and if it wants to prevent the giant clubs of the continent - almost all of them public limited companies - from gaining a completely unbeatable advantage.