Barca’s midnight kickoff: Ronaldinho, gazpacho and a party

West Bromwich Albion's derby match against Wolverhampton Wanderers in the FA Cup this weekend (stream all matches live on ESPN+) will begin Sunday at an unusually early hour, at 11:45 a.m. “Early?” Barcelona could answer that. “Hold my gazpacho.”

That's because it's the earliest possible kickoff to a professional football game — or should it be the last? — was at the Camp Nou in September 2003 when Barca faced Sevilla in La Liga on a Wednesday at 12:05 a.m.

A festive atmosphere was created. Three headliners performed before the match, KitKats and cups of gazpacho (a cold soup made from mixed vegetables) were offered to the 80,237 fans in attendance and Ronaldinho scored his first ever goal for Barça. The Brazilian, making his home debut after signing from Paris Saint-Germain, collected the ball from his own half and sent it under the bar to make it 1-1 at around 1:30 a.m. local.

But why on earth did all this happen early in the morning, when most people had to wake up for work or school a few hours later?

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Well, the Spanish league had planned for the second round of the season to be played midweek before the September international break, which led to most teams playing from Saturday to Tuesday before their players returned to their countries respective.

However, Barca and Sevilla failed to agree on a slot for their match. Sevilla were unable to move their weekend match, saying tickets had already been printed and shipped for Sunday, and also ruled out playing Monday or Tuesday as it would fall within 48 hours of their previous match.

Sensing the opportunity to face a weakened Barca without their internationals, they also refused to rearrange the match for later in the campaign.

“La Liga had organized the match on a Wednesday, but that meant Ronaldinho would have left to join Brazil,” Sandro Rosell, then Barca vice-president, said in the documentary “The Happiest Man in the World”.

“We thought: 'Ufff, we're going to lose without him,' so we insisted on Tuesday with La Liga. They said no. And then the idea came to us to play on Wednesday five minutes after midnight. It was crazy, but we We think we have to do it because we need Ronaldinho.”

The club checked the sporting statutes and legislation to see if it was possible and, once given the green light, “La Nuit du Gazpacho”, as it is known locally, was born.

“I remember we had a very long nap before because the match started very late,” former Barça player Sergio Santamaría told ESPN. “And also the excitement of doing something at that moment. It was the same as when you were little and you didn't have school because you wore something special.

“It was a bit like that, unusual, that's what it felt like because we were playing after midnight. It was different because it wasn't a normal kick-off time. It was It’s hard to sleep afterwards!”

But not everyone agreed. “I still think it doesn't make any sense,” Joaquín Caparrós, Sevilla's coach from 2000 to 2005, told reporters before the match. “It’s bad for football.”

Fearing that fans would not show up, Barca found different ways to persuade them to come to the match. They kept the club's museum open until midnight, played music from three tenors and handed out 100,000 KitKats, 40,000 cups of gazpacho, 30,000 Actimel yogurts, 25,000 bags of Doritos, bread and jamón ( Ham). The response was a crowd of more than 80,000 people.

But things didn't start well. Ronaldinho was available, but Barca were without their Dutch internationals – Phillip Cocu, Patrick Kluivert, Michael Reiziger, Marc Overmars, Giovanni van Bronckhorst – and quickly fell behind when José Antonio Reyes gave Sevilla the lead at the 10th minute penalty. .

“'mother mom [my mother]“I think so,” Rosell added. “After everything we've done and now we're going to lose.”

But as Ronaldinho joked in the documentary: “Things couldn't go wrong. It's midnight that I take my rights.”

The retired star, now 43, was referring to the headlines he made during his time at Barca for his love of the city's nightlife, but it was a whole other bar than he attended early in the morning on this occasion. Collecting the ball just inside his own half, he raced past defenders José Luis Martí and Francisco Casquero before launching an unstoppable effort that bounced off the bar and over the line well after midnight.

“He dribbled, dribbled, dribbled and then boom,” remembers Toni Juanmartí, a journalist from Diario Sport who was present at the match. “It was an incredible night and moment. I still vividly remember the explosion after the goal. When he shot, it was one of those where you ask yourself: 'What the hell? what you're doing…' And then it's chaos.”

There will be no free pies or chocolate at The Hawthorns on Sunday morning. However, there is a chance for someone to write their name in the Black Country derby history books as the two old rivals meet for the first time since 2021.