Barça ease past Brest in strange, quiet atmosphere as club shut out most vocal fans

FC Barcelona have been flying high this season under difficult circumstances. 

The team are soaring at the top of La Liga and took a step closer to finishing in the top 8 of the Champions League group stage with a relatively routine 3-0 win against Brest on Tuesday night. 

However, the win came in a strange atmosphere in Montjuïc, as Barça shut their most vocal supporters out of the game, and will continue to do so indefinitely, because of a dispute between the club and the supporters groups. 

The good results this season have been managed all while playing away from their iconic Camp Nou stadium, as it goes under renovation works. Barça won’t be playing in their regular home stadium again until at least February. 

Part of the success of this season has been making Montjuïc feel a little bit more like home. The positive results on the field have energized crowds to make the awkward journey up the hill and fill the stands at the Olympic Stadium in higher numbers. This year so far, Barça has had an average attendance at league games of 46,381, up significantly from last season’s 39,846. 

But now, there’s a problem. Earlier on Tuesday morning the club announced they would close their ‘grada d’animació’ after the four fan groups who form it refused to pay €21,000 in fines that the club received for 14 different incidents in the past season. The club affirm that covering these costs is part of the agreement signed by supporters who occupy this section. 

The four groups – Almogàvers, Front 532, Nostra Ensenya and Supporters Barça – reject the collective punishment model and instead argue that the individuals who chanted the offensive remarks or who lit the flares that resulted in the fines should be responsible.

The result, for the foreseeable future, will be quieter Barça games. The fans who go to games in other areas of the stadium outside the dedicated singing section occasionally spark some chants, but for the most part, they aren’t singing, although most of the stadium does audibly respond to on-pitch events, raising the anticipation as the team get closer to goal. 

The lack of a singing section was not particularly an issue against Brest, but that’s probably because the opposition largely didn’t cause much of a problem for Barça, and late-evening Champions League ties are generally easier for fans to get more excited by than a humdrum league clash. 

The club are adamant they won’t open the singing section until the fines are paid and the fans are adamant they won’t pay the fines. Barça will be without their ‘12th man’ for the foreseeable future, and this could be a serious problem in some games where they are struggling to break the opposition down. 

In the league, they have taken just one point from the last two games, leaving a gap of only four points between them and Real Madrid while Madrid have a game in hand, and Barça host an in-form Las Palmas side at the early time of 2 pm on Saturday, a fixture and time slot that, given the exceptional circumstances, could now be seen as a potential banana skin.

The Catalan giants could well resume their winning form over the long term this season and prove that the lack of a singing section is no problem.

Mediation and dialogue will be necessary and key to resolving this problem. The club will point to the fact that they offered three separate deadlines to pay the fines, none of which were met.   

But for the sake of €21,000, they may also be cutting off their nose to spite their face.