Barcelona (EFE)
A goal from Robert Lewandowski and another from Alejandro Balde left the match on track for the Catalans in the first twenty minutes. The Pole scored again to make the third and the win was closed by Koundé, although Espanyol closed the gap in the final stretch of the duel with goals from Puado and Joselu.
The celebration of the culés players was marred by a field invasion that forced the footballers to run into the changing room tunnel. With the final whistle they began to celebrate the title in the center of the Espanyol field, but then dozens of fans jumped onto the pitch, which led to the intervention of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
Xavi triumph and celebration in Canaletas
In this way, Barça wins the League, the first for Xavi Hernández as culé coach. This puts an end to the dominance of foreign coaches in the three previous seasons, when Real Madrid players Zinedine Zidane and Carlo Ancelotti and Atlético Diego Pablo Simeone lifted the title.
The Barça team had not won LaLiga Santander since Ernesto Valverde took over as the bench: then they were crowned consecutive champions in the 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons.
Some 2,000 fans, according to the Urban Police, came tonight to the Fuente de Canaletas, the traditional meeting point for Barcelona’s victories, to celebrate LaLiga.
Four years after the last League, the culés once again flocked to the Ramblas dressed in Barça shirts, scarves and flags and with ‘senyeras’ shouting “champions, champions!”.
There was no shortage of the classic cheering songs from the Barcelona fans, amid the smoke from flares, and the eternal memory of Leo Messi, whose name resounded again, asking for his return, after the first League won without the Argentine star in the squad.
This Monday the club will organize a parade through the streets of the Catalan capital to celebrate the league title for both the men’s and women’s teams. The event will start at 6:00 p.m. from the Spotify Camp Nou.
Barça’s season, marked by Negreira
The 2022-23 League conquered by Barcelona has been marked by the Negreira scandal, because regardless of what the courts end up ruling, the case has been present on all sports or court pages since mid-February.
When at noon on February 15, from the microphones of the SER channel in Barcelona it was announced that “the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating a company of a former vice president of the referees who received payments from Barça while he was in this position…”, the trial had just started. tsunami ‘Negreira’, a case that has monopolized sports information..
In the following days, more details became known, until it was determined that the Catalan entity had paid 7.3 million euros to the former vice president of the Referee Technical Committee (CTA), José María Enríquez Negreira, between 2001 and 2018, for arbitration reports. The investigation continues its course and is in court.