The “butterfly effect” which Barcelona president Joan Laporta imagined when he mortgaged chunks of the club’s future so he could immediately invest a couple of hundred million euros in transfer fees and wages, was that of an isolated, unattractive footballing larva transforming into a beautiful, colourful, much-admired creature. However, the impact which the brutal injuries suffered by Ronald Araujo and Jules Kounde on international duty threatens to have is the infamous kind: where the flap of even the smallest set of insect wings, at the wrong time in the wrong place, can cause catastrophic, ever-expanding consequences.
Sometimes also called “chaos theory,” the butterfly effect proposes that while in literal terms the flapping of tiny, multicoloured wings can’t cause a storm on the other side of the planet, apparently small events can nevertheless catalyse a chain reaction for things to go disastrously awry in non-linear, complex systems.
Do you see the parallels with Barcelona now?
Barcelona have Gerard Pique, Andreas Christensen, Marcos Alonso, Hector Bellerin, Eric Garcia and Frenkie de Jong, in particular, to cover for the absences, likely to be at least a month in Kounde’s case and until late December or early January for Araujo, who is to be operated on. Most clubs would kneel down in grateful prayer to have such resources at their disposal. Let’s be clear about that. No need for anyone to take out the world’s smallest violin and play it in mock sympathy for the Camp Nou club.
However, in terms of causal connection, these injuries definitely have the capacity to see Barcelona eliminated from the Champions League at group stage for the second consecutive year (something they’ve not suffered for 21 years); to thus cost the club up to €100m in lost revenue; to derail their LaLiga campaign via defeat in the imminent Clasico against Real Madrid and the knock-on damage to morale and form if the Champions League group spirals out of control; to vastly damage Barcelona’s intended financial recuperation (they recently posted profits of €98 million for the 2021-22 campaign and predicted another €271m in the current season); and to leave them still further manacled by LaLiga’s Financial Fair Play rules over the next two or three transfer markets.
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All those threats can be classified as near and present danger. One further side effect, depending wholly on how Xavi Hernandez decides to play his cards, could be Pique announcing his retirement from professional football. Equally, in this chaos theory there’s the potential for Barcelona to somehow punch their way out of this tight corner; to absolutely revitalise their self-respect and confidence; even for Pique to be called to the rescue, to shine, to re-declare his availability for Spain and, who knows, give Luis Enrique some food for thought before he names his World Cup squad in November.
Bear with me, all will be explained.
The first sequence that the flapping butterfly wings can directly and negatively affect (for those who care about the Blaugrana at least) is Barcelona’s next five games, three of which are against Inter Milan (away, then home) and Real Madrid (a Clasico at the Bernabeu.) Pretty brutal. Do Barcelona retain the capacity to take five points from those matches — drawing the two away tests and winning against the Nerazzuri at Camp Nou? Potentially.
