A boy who would not reach 10 years old, stuffed in an eighties shirt of Diego Armando Maradona of Napoli with the publicity of Buitoni, asked his father to carry it on his shoulders as soon as possible. The man, who passed through the door of the Hilton hotel in Barcelona, obeyed without question before the verbena that was mounted there. Hundreds of teenagers armed with their mobile phones huddled against a fence. Just ahead, six motorcycles of the Mossos d'Esquadra were preparing to escort a coach that a few minutes later would make its way to the Camp Nou avoiding a hornet's nest. The tumult in nothing envied that of the great days of football of the Champions League. "Are you waiting for Barça?" the Italian tourist asked those present while holding his son's legs tightly so that no one would throw him to the ground. The response of his shoulder neighbor, a twenty-year-old with a pink scarf with the inscription "Porcinos" as a motto, left him frozen: "What a Barça! These are the teams in the Kings League!"

What Jota de Los Planetas, epitome of the old modernity, called "football league" in an interview with this newspaper, has become a social phenomenon in which the spectacle deconstructs the sport, and in which streamers show the new norms of popularity to footballers. A crossroads that saw clear the former Barça Gerard Pique to make sense of his retirement, and that found its zenith this Sunday in the Final Four of the Kings League, with some 92,000 spectators embedded in the old Camp Nou willing to practice an exorcism to the industry.

Pique arrived at the esplanade of the stadium by helicopter and while a video was broadcast in which he simulated a kidnapping by his friend Neymar. The striker, after a new collapse in the Qatar World Cup, and injured again at PSG, has decided to command the landing of the Kings League in Brazil, and it was the particular way to announce it. In those, Piqué entered the field on the mobile stretcher as a Messiah and with the trophy of the first split as an offering before an audience in a trance.

The pull of content generators turned into totems and who have served as presidents of the 12 football-7 teams of the Kings League -Ibai Llanos with Porcinos, DjMaRiiO with Ultimate Móstoles, TheGrefg with Saiyans, Perxitaa with Los Troncos, Gerard Romero with Jijantes, or the Colombian naturalized Mexican Juan Guarnizo with Annihilators-allowed since January averages each day of 500,000 spectators in the matches that were played in a pavilion of the Zona Franca of Barcelona. Iker Casillas and Kun Agüero were also involved in his presidential work at the head of 1K FC and Kunisports. On February 26, with Ronaldinho beyond all physical and emotional twilight as a guest star, up to 2.1 million devices went live online. Figures that the organizers aspired to overcome this Sunday, adding Twitch and the channels of the different streamers.

Mass officiated by Cristinini

In a mass officiated by Cristinini, and with Joan Laporta in the bowels of the stadium -Barça was left with a percentage of the box office with prices ranging between 10 and 50 euros, costing 300 euros for VIPs-, the spectators found a great audiovisual display. Two complementary screens were nailed to the backgrounds because they had to make sense of both the deployment of cameras that pointed to the cut field of play – even the referee wears one on his chest – and the reactions of the content generators, sitting in white seats on the sidelines and prepared to intervene when necessary.

Because in the Kings League each team has a random card for each game with different actions, such as the president taking a penalty – Perxitaa missed his for Los Troncos in the first semifinal lost to Annihilators (2-2, 3-2 in a penalty shootout launched in a race from the center of the field) – until one player is taken from the other. Although nothing like that given that is thrown in the 18th minute of each game – they are 20 minutes per part – and in which the number that comes out delimits the players per team who must play until the break. El Barrio and Saiyans played the other semifinal.

The laws of football are twisted before a fan base and an audience that demands immediate pleasure and entertainment. Whether it is provided by Gerard Romero, who left the conventional media to make his fortune and create a huge community by choreographing a haka or making the passage of the fregaíto -also at the Camp Nou-; or a striker in whom nobody noticed the UE Sants of the Third Federation, Edgar Álvaro, now turned into a star with Los Troncos despite the tears shed after losing their semifinal. He wears a shaved head and an islet of hair on his forehead. A la Ronaldo Nazario in the World Cup in Korea and Japan, but in blue.

Because before is a reference, but perhaps it is no longer useful.

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