Araújo, Puyol’s successor in times of gloom

Ronald Araújo become Carles Puyol. The Camp Nou fans, the few that maintain their loyalty to all tests, chant his name today as 20 years ago they chanted that of Carles Puyol. While Geovanni, Christanval, Petit or Alfonso crawled across the grass and received the reproaches of the fans, Puyol’s tireless heart, pride and caste became the reason for being of a dwarfed Barcelona, ​​of a Barça that, as in Nowadays, it survived, it lived badly, based on its claw.

Araújo turned into a symptom of the problems that this Barça dragged, which against Granada dedicated itself to hanging balls, to forget about the combination to resemble a British half-table team in the 90s of the last century, looking for the Uruguayan as a Luuk de Jong in the second half in the area while Coutinho, the most expensive signing in the club’s history, walked the pitch like a banshee, as John Benjamin Toshack would say “a chicken without a head.”

Barça has lost its head and is maintained by the heart that Araújo and Mingueza personalize, waiting for the emergence of Gavi, Demir, Nico or Balde just as Puyol was the savior of a team in which Xavi and Iniesta were cooking, Valdés … and finally, Messi. Before that Barça was catapulted to glory, first with Rijkaard and then, until eternity, under the hand of Pep Guardiola, Barcelona lived times of gloom and crisis, a crisis that today some consider the greatest in history, unaware of that history that repeats itself inexorably.

Araújo is Puyol and is Migueli. If Xavi was called the guardian of the essences, Araújo is the hero of the disinherited in Barcelona. The player who, it is suspected, would have no place in a tag team, who does not have the quality of Pique nor the touch of Eric GarciaNeither the taste of Márquez or the ability of Koeman … But that in times of crisis is catapulted to the forefront because no one, absolutely no one, is capable of overshadowing its delivery.

Uruguayan chanted by the fans, Ronald Araújo would be said to have had the fortune, within the collective bad luck, of being in the right place and at the right time. When Barcelona’s football team sinks and the fan needs to hold on to whatever it is, the presence of a player like Araújo is received as if it were a hero.

As was Puyol. No more no less.

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