Barça reminds the world that football should be fun.

At some point, having fun with football has become a sin, a piper thing; we didn't come to this life to enjoy ourselves. It's a consequence of the rather toxic identity-based posturing that drives social media, and it's also a great excuse when your team is a bore. Having a good time and the result don't matter; it's only when you win. If you lose, what matters is that we're different, despite the fact that it's proven that all fans are the same. Do you know how I know this? Because absolutely all of them boast about not being like the rest. Not one of them fails.

I was thinking about this while I was happy watching Barça win La Liga against Real Madrid and lose the Champions League to Inter. Not because of the result—which was also the case in the first case, I'm not going to lie—but because they were memorable matches. It turns out I like football, and I had forgotten. Many of us have. Hansi Flick 's team isn't the best I've seen, but it is the most fun. And fun is what drew us to football before adult misery made us mean.

Since I must have been a serial killer in another life, and karma is paying me back, I watched the Clásico with 14 11-year-olds invading my living room. They spent the entire match screaming, celebrating goals in each other's faces, and laughing. They had a great time. After it was over, they congratulated each other or cheered each other on and continued destroying my house in love and company, while I gave virtual thumbs-up to my Real Madrid friends. The disease doesn't come naturally; we catch it through zingers and memes .

The apostles of football as a religion, not a game, will tell me that I enjoy it so much because I'm not a Barça fan, that conceding seven goals in a Champions League semifinal is an aberration, and that if I were a Barça fan, I'd spend every game on the verge of a stroke. The latter is likely, but I haven't seen Barça fans so proud of their team since Pep Guardiola . And it makes me envious.

I envy them when they go onto the pitch knowing that anything can happen, that a 0-2 scoreline is nothing, that football is played to win without fear of losing, that the laughter of those damn children is an indicator of happiness to aspire to, and my daughter suffers like a scoundrel trying to make it to the 60th minute without falling asleep when she watches Atleti . Winning is tacky, but having fun... Having fun is the only truly important thing in football. Or it should be.