The latest exhibit from the football club badge collection represents FC Barcelona, another of the clubs to register early on the radar, during the course of a losing 1974-75 European Cup semi final against Leeds United, not least because they were sporting a rather interesting dark blue & dark red kit, with striped shirts & hooped socks.
The following season, Barca again lost a semi-final to English opposition, this time against Liverpool in the UEFA Cup, thus establishing a pattern of bridesmaidship that obviously elicited a certain sympathy which grew into affection over the years through various successes, mostly in the Cup-Winners’ Cup, & near-misses, the latter infamously including the abject penalty-kicks defeat to Steaua Bucharest in the 1986 European Cup Final under the stewardship of ‘El Tel’.
It’s instructive to consider how football fortunes can ebb & flow, in the midst of the current delightful team’s domestic & continental pre-eminence over the last 7 or 8 years, that Barcelona won La Liga only twice between 1960 & 1991 (once each in the 70s & 80s), & didn’t actually triumph in the European Cup until 1992 & then not again until beating Arsenal in the 2006 now-Champions’ League Final: whatever, they’ve long been one of TOoT’s particular favourites of the high-profile teams, not least for that aesthetic combination of red & blue, along with the Catalan flag, as represented on the crest, upon the badge, which is a suitably colourful addition to the lapel.
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