My experience at Camp Nou: Intimidation, trophies, and Lionel Messi

In the summer of 2022, I visited Camp Nou.

As part of a general holiday in Spain after leaving my job earlier that summer, I visited the city of Barcelona for five days, touring the Catalan capital like any true British tourist would; and of course, as an avid fan of football, I had to visit and go on a tour of Camp Nou.

Now, as a football club, I don’t actually like Barcelona that much – I have to say, I’m not much of a fan of any Spanish football clubs. But that does not stop me from recognising that the players who have passed through La Liga are of course some of the best there ever was and ever will be – Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Karim Benzema as modern examples, but also players of the past such as Ronaldo Nazário, Ronaldinho, and Zinedine Zidane.

Don’t worry, I am fully aware that I’ve missed dozens of names.

Growing up as youngster, these names were the calibre of player that I looked up to, much like almost every 20-something-year-old football addict. They and the sides that played in La Liga, namely Barcelona and Real Madrid, shaped significant portions of my childhood; from sitting and watching Madrid and Barcelona Champions League finals to marvelling at the brilliant 2008-12 dominance of the Spanish national side at an international level.

Before this tour, I had never stepped foot in a football stadium outside of the UK, so when it was suggested by one of my friends (who had accompanied me to the city) that we should pay €35 for a basic tour of the stadium, it was a no-brainer.

Now, the summer of 2022 contained the three-month long saga between Barcelona, Frenkie de Jong, and Manchester United. At the time of me visiting the stadium, I was completely convinced that the Dutch midfielder was going to join Erik ten Hag at United, so as I walked into the concourse and underneath the gigantic Spotify sign plastered onto the side of Camp Nou, I quietly felt quite smug.

However, what was actually more on my mind while I travelled to the stadium was the financial situation surrounding and continues to plague Barcelona. To be totally honest, I don’t know much in the way of actual details in relation to what is actually happening at the club; something to do with “levers” and TV rights and deferred wages… All I know is that it’s not a good situation to find yourself in.

As we walked into the main entrance for the tour, there must have been around 20 staff members manning the tills to accept tickets for around 35 people, with one of my friends joking that the reason the club was in such a financial crisis was that they had too many staff members.

We had our (what felt compulsory) photo taken, with myself begrudgingly holding up a Barcelona scarf, and the staff member operating the camera giving me a ticket, telling me in Spanish that I could buy the photo off them using that ticket at the end of the tour – a photo I later found out would have costed me €20. Then, we entered the history room.

I had no idea just how much of a bizarre and intriguing history FC Barcelona had. From standing up against the Monarchy to assassinated presidents, walking around the room and learning about the foundations of the world-renowned club was quite a unique experience; and I have to say, born out of my previous ignorance, my respect for Barcelona as more than just a football club grew ten-fold – they were and still are an entire social movement.

Looking back, I probably should have been able to guess that considering the events that surrounded the Catalan independence referendum in 2017 – but I guess it’s better late than never to learn about this kind of stuff.

Next up on the tour was the trophy wall… or, more specifically, the trophy WALLS. It was crazy. There were SO many trophies in that room; and in the centre of them all were the five famed Champions League trophies.

Now, I don’t know if they are the genuine trophies handed to the club or if they made replicas of each one for display purposes (logic suggests the latter), but they did have videos of the winning goals of each trophy on replay below them, with myself avoiding the 2009 and 2011 videos since they were against Manchester United, which, if you haven’t guessed by now, is the club that constantly tears my heartstrings.

One continuous theme that followed you around the entire room was Lionel Messi. He was everywhere – even when reading about past club heroes and iconic players, they were referred to as “Barcelona’s first Lionel Messi”. It makes sense, considering that Messi is without doubt the greatest player to ever don a Barcelona shirt, and potentially any football shirt for that matter, but I never previously understood just how much the little Argentinian was worshiped at the club.

Even around the city in a more general sense, Messi was simply everywhere. When I visited the Sagrada Familia, I must have spotted at least 30 people walking round in Messi shirts, two years after he left the club for PSG. This is a slight tangent, but I don’t think I will ever get over seeing the Sagrada Familia for the first time. I had never previously seen a photo of it, but when I walked round the corner and saw this behemoth of a Cathedral in front of me, I must have stopped and just stared at it for five minutes without moving. It was stunning.

Anyway, back to the football.

Lionel Messi’s seven Ballon D’ors (well, I assume replicas of them), were all in cased in glass and on display, where people could take photos next to them. Ironically, it was while I was standing next to Lionel Messi’s greatest achievements that I saw news break that Cristiano Ronaldo wanted to leave Manchester United in search of Champions League football.

After these rooms, it was time for the main attraction – stepping out into the stands.

When Manchester United players walk out of that tunnel on Thursday evening, they will enter into what feels like the bottom of a cauldron. Now, when I walked out, the stadium was obviously mostly empty – but even then, part of me felt very intimidated. Unlike in Britain, there are no obvious roofs for the stands on three sides of the stadium; it’s just a steep and almost endless set of thousands of seats and then sudden bright blue sky.

It feels almost as if nothing else on the planet exists – it is football, and football only: a mentality that resonates throughout Barcelona’s fanbase, and it’s easy to tell why.

I felt intimidated and incredibly insignificant just walking onto the pitch on a nice and sunny day towards the beginning of June – I cannot even begin to imagine how it’s going to feel for those Manchester United players when they step onto the field and have almost 100,000 actively hating you and wishing you to fail at every move. But then again, this is one reason why they are professional footballers and I instead write about them – they will be trained to handle the press.

Of course, some of the United players have played at Camp Nou before. Casemiro and Raphael Varane have played there almost 10 times each as part of El Clasico games, and will no doubt know how to deal with it. Others such as Marcus Rashford, David de Gea and Fred will remember starting there back in the 2019 Champions League quarter-finals, with Lionel Messi scoring twice and Philippe Coutinho once as Barcelona ran out 3-0 victors.

I also, much to my journalistic intrigue, visited the press box, where the likes of Laurie Whitwell, Samuel Luckhurst, and Chris Wheeler will likely have the pleasure of covering the fixture from. In my opinion, the press box was terrifying.

Situated right at the top of the stadium, the actual box in which the press will be hangs off a ceiling, supported by metal girders that keep the box in place from below. The windows of the box are also slanted at an angle facing downwards, which adds to the slightly terrifying nature of the box.

As someone who suffers from vertigo, just writing about the thought of being sat in that box for a number of hours makes me anxious.

Manchester United’s history at Camp Nou is not much of a fun one beyond one very specific and historic moment – the last five minutes of the 1999 Champions League final. Only two players have ever scored at the ground against Barcelona while playing for Manchester United.

While I was sat in the stands, taking in and marvelling at the fascinating stadium, I was envisioning how Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s goals would have looked from where I was sat. It is strange to think that such a significant part of a club’s history took place at someone else’s ground; but in some ways, that is what makes the moment so unique.

They had their backs against the wall in a foreign country at an unfamiliar stadium, with almost no time left on the clock, yet Manchester United still managed to emerge victorious and cement themselves in history as one of only a handful of clubs to win a treble.

After reflecting thoroughly on my visit to Camp Nou, I’ve concluded that although this fixture is taking place on a Thursday evening in a knock-out play-off round of Europe’s second-tier competition between two teams who have struggled immensely to live up to their respective names in the last five years rather than in the famed Champions League (a mouthful to read), it is not any drop less special.

It’s Manchester United against Barcelona, for crying out loud.