Sports
White Sox might break record for losses. How should the 1962 Mets feel about it?
NEW YORK — Craig Anderson pauses the phone call. He’s got to get his notes.
He returns with a sheet of paper he’s had for 62 years — the day-by-day performance of the 1962 New York Mets.
“Somebody gave this to me at the end of the ’62 season,” he says. “I’ve kept it all these years.”
The ledger documents the misfortunes of the losingest team in baseball history — a team on the cusp of one more loss: its place in history.
While nine members of ’62 are still alive, Anderson and fellow pitcher Jay Hook are the only two who spent the entire season with the big-league club. Few people know the burden of history, the burden of ignominious history, like Anderson. The high point of the rookie reliever’s season came May 12, when he earned the win in both games of a doubleheader sweep.
Those would be the last wins he’d ever record in the major leagues, and he set a record by dropping his next 19 decisions. It stood for 29 years, until another Met, Anthony Young, broke it in 1993.
“I didn’t want him to break my record. I didn’t want to wish it on him or anyone,” Anderson says. “That’s the way I felt then and that’s the way I feel now.”
On the phone now, he is matching up the current date — “the Mets started a 13-game losing streak right now,” he notes — while comparing it to the current record for the White Sox.
“I don’t want them to break it,” he says. “I want them to win at least 12 more games. I hope they do, for their sake.”
The Mets visit the south side of Chicago this weekend in the midst of a playoff chase. The White Sox enter the series chasing something grander: history.
The 1962 Mets set the modern-era record for losses in a season with 120. With an even month left in the season, Chicago has lost 104 games, three losses ahead even of the ’62 Mets’ pace for the season. It is easily the most sustained challenge to that team’s record since the 2003 Detroit Tigers needed five wins in their last six games to avoid it.
The White Sox need to go 12-15 to avoid tying the record. They haven’t done that over a 27-game stretch since May. At the moment, they’ve lost 37 of their past 41 contests.
There are not many players who can relate to what that kind of season feels like. Anderson and Hook are two of them.
“It’s shattering when it’s happening to you,” Hook said, his matter-of-fact tone over the phone belying that choice of adjective, “and I’m sure the White Sox are feeling that right now. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. You don’t like to go through life thinking you were part of the worst team of whatever you did.”
To understand the ’62 Mets, you have to understand Marv Throneberry. Excuse me, Marvelous Marv Throneberry.
The Mets acquired Throneberry, a 28-year-old first baseman, from the Orioles in early May for a player to be named later. (A month later, that player was named as Hobie Landrith, who’d been New York’s first selection in the expansion draft. Landrith had played for the Mets between the trade and the announcement, meaning the two players traded for one another played together for a month.)
Throneberry acquired his ironic moniker with a penchant for misadventure. He mucked up rundowns. He faceplanted racing for the bag. He missed first base — and maybe second, too, the story goes — on a triple. He won a boat he didn’t want in a season-long contest — not much use for a boat in southwest Tennessee, he said — and had to declare it on his taxes.
“Things just sort of keep on happening to me,” he said at one point.
“Marvelous Marv does more than just play first base for the Mets,” wrote Jimmy Breslin in “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?: The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year.” “He is the Mets.”
Marv Throneberry made 17 errors in 97 games at first base for the Mets in 1962. (Associated Press)
Throneberry, who retained his sense of humor throughout that disastrous season, serves as the stand-in for the Mets’ status as lovable losers. They balked in runs. They misplayed fly balls. They allowed nearly one unearned run per game — to go along with more than five earned runs per contest. On average, their games took 15 minutes longer than everyone else’s, which caused one to be declared a tie because it went past curfew. (“Curfew” here was dictated by the Mets’ flight back to New York from Houston.)
Thing is, Anderson and Hook thought the team could be pretty good. A year earlier, the expansion Angels had won 70 games, and the Mets had brought in some big names — Gil Hodges and Roger Craig in the expansion draft, Richie Ashburn in a deal with the Cubs.
“I looked at the roster and thought, ‘Man, that’s a pretty dynamic list,’” said Hook, who was drafted away from the reigning pennant-winner in Cincinnati. “Casey Stengel is the manager and he’d had great success. I really looked at it optimistically. I thought we could be a decent team.”
“I thought we were going to at least be competitive,” Anderson said.
The nine-game losing streak to start the season quelled that optimism. When a 9-3 mark over two weeks in May threatened to restore it, the Mets responded by losing those 17 in a row.
“That was where I started to think that maybe we had some problems,” said Anderson.
One player after the season told Breslin, “Forty games is about all we could win. After all, we were playing against teams that had all major leaguers on them.”
The Mets were still beloved. They drew nearly a million fans to the Polo Grounds, finishing in the middle of the league in attendance — more than Red Sox and Phillies teams around .500.
“The New York fans are true baseball fans,” Anderson said. “I won’t say they forgave us, but they never gave up on us.”
“You see,” Breslin wrote of the city’s affection for the team, “the Mets are losers, just like nearly everybody else in life. This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?”
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that a certain feeling gets expressed a lot by those invested in the Mets’ history.
The 2024 White Sox are not worthy of breaking the Mets’ record.
The Mets had no choice but to be bad. Stricter rules in the expansion draft — because the AL’s expansion teams had done better in 1961 — left New York with little to choose from. The amateur draft wasn’t around yet, let alone free agency. The Mets had to build through scouting and trading. The White Sox, on the other hand, are three years removed from consecutive playoff appearances that were supposed to herald a stretch of sustained contention. It’s all collapsed since.
Evan Roberts is the drivetime cohost for WFAN and author of “My Mets Bible: Scoring 30 Years of Baseball Fandom.”
“It’s not life and death, BUT I’d prefer they not break it,” he said via direct message. “I grew up with legendary stories about how bad and hilarious the 1962 Mets were, and I would ideally not want to see a team pass the 120 losses.”
Devin Gordon is the author of “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazing True Story of the New York Mets — the Best Worst Team in Sports.”
“I suppose I should feel like it’s some kind of albatross around the franchise’s neck and that I should be relieved at the prospect of it finally getting lifted. But I don’t,” he wrote in an email. “That team was a storybook team in its own unique way, and I like that it’s enshrined in history. It’s also the perfect narrative bookend for what happened seven years later with the World Series win in 1969. It’s part of a much larger, more cinematic story for us in a way that one random catastrophic season by another team will never be.”
Indeed, the Mets’ championship in 1969 has retroactively uplifted that ’62 team as well.
“To have won a world championship seven years later provides the perfect bookend with the historic futility,” said Mets broadcaster Howie Rose, who was eight years old watching the Mets’ debut season. “It all ties together. It’s all part of the heritage. ’69 is sweeter because of ’62. It’s just a nice piece of perverse symmetry.”
“To never have finished above ninth place and then to win it all in 1969, that narrative is a very heroic and comforting one for Mets fans,” said Gary Cohen, New York’s television broadcaster. “The White Sox breaking that record wouldn’t change that. However, I don’t want to see anybody lose 121 games because that’s a horrible thing for their franchise.”
Dave Bagdade wrote “A Year in Mudville: The Full Story of Casey Stengel and the Original Mets” about the ’62 Mets. He also happens to be a lifelong White Sox fan.
“I don’t want to see their record eclipsed,” Bagdade wrote in an email. “I love the idea that they were the worst baseball team of the modern era, but that they lost with personality and humor and that they remain one of the most loved teams of any era despite (or possibly because of) their record. The ’24 Sox are just a steaming pile of baseball ineptitude. They don’t lose with personality and humor. They just lose. I don’t want anything about this Sox team to be enshrined in baseball immortality.”
In response to an informal poll on X, which obviously skews younger, about three in four Mets fans did want the White Sox to break the record. Younger fans feel little pride in 120 losses.
Looking ahead to this weekend, I’m curious: Do you as a Mets fan want the White Sox to break the ’62 team’s record for most losses in a season?
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) August 28, 2024
Greg Prince, who pens the popular blog “Faith and Fear in Flushing” and has written four books about the Mets, ultimately agrees with the majority.
“I’ve been charmed by all that went into creating 40-120 my entire rooting life,” Prince wrote in an email. “The legend of the 1962 club will endure no matter who holds the record. All that being said, hell yes, let somebody else lose more than my team. Plus, you know, history. Somebody setting a mark like this while we’re here to witness it is worth a dozen Danny Jansens facing off against another dozen Danny Jansens.”
Jay Hook, shown here on June 2, 1962, recalls looking at the roster and thinking, “Man, that’s a pretty dynamic list.” (Harry Harris / Associated Press)
There’s one other reason Hook and Anderson don’t want the record to be broken. Playing for the 1962 Mets is a part — a significant part — of their personal legacies in baseball.
Hook recorded the first win in Mets history; there’s a ball displayed prominently at Citi Field with his name written on it in large letters. Anderson signs almost all his autographs with “Original Met.”
“If you’d asked me this back in the mid-60s, I would have said I was so happy to get it over with and get out of there,” Anderson said. “But after 62 years now …”
Hook thought back to the Old Timers’ Day the Mets held in 2022. The club had asked him if he wanted to pitch, and the then-85-year-old suggested a first pitch instead. He worked out for weeks to get himself in shape, and then, in front of more than two dozen members of his family, he fired it to Mike Piazza on the fly.
“They had the best weekend going to New York and being at Citi Field,” he said of his family. “I’ve had more publicity because I was on that team. That’s survived.”
It will survive even if the White Sox fail to win 12 games over the final month of the season. If the ’62 Mets cede their long-held pedestal in the sport, their legacy, one that’s grown in fondness with each passing year, is secure.
“With the passage of time, it has become increasingly difficult to accurately portray who and what those Mets were and what they represented,” Rose said. “For those not of age when the Mets came about, they could not possibly understand what their impact was not only on baseball fans in New York but around the country.”
(Top photo from the Polo Grounds on June 20, 1962: Associated Press file)
Sports
Wife of Johnny Gaudreau shares heartfelt tribute after NHL player and brother are killed by drunk driver
Meredith Gaudreau, the wife of Columbus Blue Jackets star Johnny Gaudreau, broke her silence on social media with a touching tribute to her husband after he and his brother, Matthew, were tragically killed when they were struck by a suspected drunk driver on the eve of their sister’s wedding.
Meredith shared two posts on Instagram that included a series of pictures that depicted their relationship over the years.
Johnny, 31, and Meredith Gaudreau shared two children together, two-year-old Noa and six-month old Johnny. (Meredith Gaudreau/ Instagram)
“Thank you for the best years of my life. Despite losing you, I am still the luckiest girl in the world to have been yours,” she wrote.
“I love you so so much. You were perfect. Some days it felt too good to [be] true. I love every single thing about you. You are my forever and I can’t wait to be with you again. I love you so much forever and ever.”
Meredith shared a second post dedicated to Gaudreau being the “absolute best dad in the world.”
The couple shared two children together, two-year-old Noa and six-month old Johnny.
Meredith shared a second post dedicated to Gaudreau being the “absolute best dad in the world.” (Meredith Gaudreau/ Instagram)
WEDDING OF JOHNNY GAUDREAU’S SISTER CANCELED AFTER BROTHERS’ TRAGIC DEATHS: REPORT
“The absolute best dad in the world. So caring and loving. The best partner to go through parenthood with. John never missed a single appointment,” She wrote. “Was the best at putting the baby to sleep and the Apple of Noa’s eye. I love how much she looks like him. We are going to make you proud. We love you so so so much daddy.”
The Gaudreau family suffered an unimaginable loss when, on Thursday night, the day before Katie Gaudreau’s wedding, 43-year-old Sean Higgins struck the brothers on a rural road in New Jersey as they were cycling.
New Jersey State Police said that Higgins, who was suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, had attempted to pass two other vehicles on the right and struck the Gaudreau brothers from behind.
Brothers Johnny Gaudreau, #13, and Matthew Gaudreau, #21 of the Boston College Eagles, celebrate after the Eagles beat the Northeastern University Huskies to win their fifth Beanpot Championship in a row in NCAA hockey action in the championship game of the annual Beanpot Hockey Tournament at TD Garden on February 10, 2014, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)
Higgins was arrested and charged. Police said he failed a field sobriety test and also admitted to a responding officer to having consumed five or six beers before the accident. He also admitted to having consumed alcohol while driving, police added.
After his death, it was reported that Matthew Gaudreau, 29, was expecting his first child with his wife, Madeline. An online registry for the couple revealed that baby Tripp is due at the end of December.
Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
The two teams stared at each other from across the East Room of the White House, each waiting for its photo op, each convinced it belonged there more than the other. But both USC and Louisiana State technically had been named college football’s national champions after the 2003 season — LSU by the Bowl Championship Series computers and USC by the Associated Press voters — so both had been invited to meet with President George W. Bush at the White House in March 2004.
Later, as he congratulated both teams, President Bush joked the two should decide a champion right then and there.
“The South Lawn is pretty good sized,” Bush quipped.
No football was played that afternoon on the White House lawn. Nor would the two college football powers play at any point in the ensuing 20 years.
But two decades after their shared title, that finally changes Sunday, as USC will face LSU in Las Vegas in one of the marquee matchups of college football’s opening weekend and one of the biggest games on the Trojans’ schedule. Their meeting may not decide the true champion of 2003 — many of the players in this year’s matchup weren’t even born yet — but the stakes still are high for USC and LSU, given the gauntlet awaiting them in the coming weeks.
Both teams enter the opener under strikingly similar circumstances, basically the football version of the Spider-Man pointing meme. Their coaches, USC’s Lincoln Riley and LSU’s Brian Kelly, both are starting a critical Year 3 at their schools, with sky-high expectations and mounting pressure to deliver on them. Both are replacing Heisman winners at quarterback with longtime backups who waited their turn. And both hired new coordinators, with new schemes, to fix two of the worst defenses in college football.
For two teams with far more questions than answers on both sides of the ball, Sunday’s matchup should say a lot about where they stand. Which is precisely why they probably would prefer not to play each other in Week 1.
With their schedules packed with new power conference teams, both coaches wondered aloud recently if it’s worth scheduling marquee nonconference matchups in the future. This game even might have been canceled, Kelly said recently, had the schools not been so far into planning it.
“Our schedules are already going to be so good, at some point you’re like, all right, is the juice worth the squeeze in terms of playing these games?” Riley said at Big Ten media day.
Considering how much is new and uncertain for USC and LSU, it remains to be seen. But looking at the matchup, it’s startling just how similarly the schools stack up on paper.
New quarterbacks
USC quarterback Miller Moss will kick off his first season as the Trojans’ starter when the team faces LSU Sunday.
(Denis Poroy / Associated Press)
It’s as if their stories were lifted from the same cliche sports movie, onetime top quarterback recruits who both waited their turn behind Heisman winners, two exemplary cases of patience in the transfer portal era finally getting their long-awaited shot.
Neither Miller Moss nor Garrett Nussmeier should be expected to fill the shoes of the dynamic passers they’re replacing. The sports movie plot only goes so far in the real world, right? But they should be capable caretakers, at the very least. Both were top-20 quarterbacks in the class of 2021, according to 247Sports.com, and both have three years of seasoning at their schools. Even their measurables are similar — both are 6 feet 2 and weigh between 201 and 205.
What they don’t have is much tape for opposing defenses to study. How much can either team learn from the opposing quarterback’s single start in a meaningless bowl game?
“You’re taking a lot of what they did in the bowl game because they had some time to really settle in on what they felt his comfort level was,” Kelly said of Moss last week. “He’s grown since then, so there will be more to the offense, but you’re going to take what Coach Riley has been successful with and you’re going to look at their offensive structure and begin to build your defensive plan accordingly.”
Watching what he can of Nussmeier, USC defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn said the 22-year-old doesn’t play like he’s short on experience.
“He can make every pass on the field,” Lynn said. “He plays with a lot of poise, he handles himself well in the pocket, he extends plays well, he’s always looking to keep the play alive throwing the ball downfield. So he presents a lot of issues.”
New defenses
USC coach Lincoln Riley says defensive lineman Bear Alexander (90) is still a relatively young player. The Trojans need him to develop quickly as they face a formidable LSU team in the season opener.
(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)
Even less is known about the direction both teams have taken on defense, as they break in new schemes and new coordinators. But it’s safe to say, there’s plenty of room for improvement over last season.
USC finished 121st in points given up, while LSU finished 81st. Both finished in the bottom 25 in yards given up (119th and 108th, respectively), largely because of the staggering number of explosive plays they gave up. USC gave up 71 plays of 20-plus yards — an average of 5.5 per game — while LSU gave up 68.
LSU’s new defensive coordinator, Blake Baker, brings an aggressive, blitz-heavy scheme with him from Missouri, where his defense had a sack rate above 9%, ninth best in the nation. And at LSU, he’ll have one of the most talented pass rushers in Harold Perkins Jr. at his disposal, making it essential that USC gets the ball out as quickly as possible.
If it does, there will be explosive plays for the taking downfield. Not only is LSU thin on experience in the secondary, but also Baker’s defense struggled with explosive plays last season as a result of its aggressive approach. Missouri was 97th in giving up plays of 20-plus yards, nearly as bad as LSU.
For USC and its new defense, the most pressing question will be whether it can hold its own at the line of scrimmage. LSU boasts one of the best offensive lines, with two top tackle prospects in Will Campbell and Emery Jones and two returning guards with years of starting experience.
Lynn worked some developmental magic in his one season as UCLA’s coordinator, turning the Bruins into the No. 2 defense against the run as well as a top-10 pass-rushing unit. He said this month that he believes USC is deeper up front than the group he worked with last season.
That seems hard to believe, considering the personnel. The interior is relying a great deal on progress from defensive tackle Bear Alexander, whom Riley described Thursday as “still very young in football.” USC also desperately needs a pass rusher to emerge from a group that boasts just 15 career sacks.
“We’ve got some guys that have the ability to win in different ways,” Riley said.
Third-year coaches
USC coach Lincoln Riley surprised when first took the job leading the Trojans and had a strong first season, but he’s now feeling more pressure to compete for a conference championship.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Hours before Riley shocked the college football world, rumors swirled about him becoming LSU’s next coach. He shut them down that night, saying plainly he wasn’t going to coach the Tigers. The next day he was named the Trojans’ coach.
Kelly, like Riley, picked up and left an established blue-blood program, Notre Dame, for another. Both led their teams to the conference title game — and lost — in their first seasons, and both fell short of returning in their second.
Now entering their third seasons, the pressure is mounting to make a much larger playoff field. Neither starts on the hot seat, but both coaches could use a win in this marquee matchup.
The coaches, at least, believe in each other. Years ago, when Riley still was a coordinator at East Carolina, the two talked about a job for Riley on Notre Dame’s staff, and Riley’s respect for his counterpart shows.
“He’s obviously done a great job everywhere he’s been,” Riley said of Kelly. “He’s been a really good program-builder, he’s had success at different levels. So, I think he’s done a great job. Somebody I’ve admired for a long time.”
Game notes
Junior defensive back Jaylin Smith, who has started at nickel and safety for USC, will open the season as one of the Trojans’ two outside cornerbacks. … Georgia Southern transfer Michael Lantz will be USC’s starting kicker and kickoff specialist. … USC listed both Alani Noa and Amos Talalele as starters at right guard, and it’s unclear who will get the nod, though clues from fall camp all point to Noa.
If you have visited Barcelona recently, you might have noticed something unusual going on.
Since the early summer, central hotspots such as La Rambla and neighbourhoods such as Gracia and Parc Guell have featured graffiti with the words “Tourists go home”. It’s all part of the same picture. Barcelona locals have been protesting against mass tourism.
On July 6, a demonstration was held in which (according to organisers) between 10,000 and 15,000 people took to the streets (police estimates put the figure at around 3,000). Some even targeted individual tourists, spraying them with water pistols as they drank coffee or ate lunch and cordoning off hotels and restaurants with red tape as they ‘reclaimed’ territory for themselves.
It drew international attention to a problem that has been on the minds of many residents for years. Now, with a consolidated movement raising awareness and taking action, Barcelona’s politics and daily life are beginning to reflect this new perspective — and the city’s most famous football club is watching with interest.
Barcelona start every season with a home friendly when they contest the Joan Gamper Trophy. The tradition dates back to the mid-1960s and pays homage to Gamper, one of the club’s founders back in 1899.
The match is always played in early August, so there are plenty of foreigners among the attendees. This year, Monaco were the visitors (and they beat Barca 3-0 — though any sore feeling over that result has been forgotten in Barca’s strong start to the new league season).
On the route up to Barca’s temporary home on Montjuic (they have been playing at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys since the start of last season while extensive renovations are made to the Camp Nou), leaving from Plaza Espana and taking advantage of the escalators that help you reach the stadium, several tourists spoke with The Athletic about their experience in the city.
Stuart, a 34-year-old from England, said he thought tourists were being treated “unfairly”. He said he “understood the anger and frustration of residents” but thought it was “being misdirected” because “the problem lies with the government and they need to find a solution”.
Another was Giulia, a 34-year-old Italian who has lived in Barcelona for a few years.
“When I first saw the graffiti it made me feel like I wasn’t welcome,” she said. “But I understand that people are p**sed off because I am, too.
“There are always drunk people, normally from England or Germany, screaming without their shirts on. Would you go out in the street in your home town like that? This is not Disneyland. People live here.”
Street graffiti in Barcelona – Guiri is a colloquial term for a badly behaved or obnoxious tourist (Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Marti Cuso has been involved in organising the demonstrations through his role with a residents’ association representing Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, a central area of the city extremely popular with visitors.
“The responsible party is not the tourist who comes to Barcelona and who wants to go to see a Barca game,” he says. “The responsible party is the whole economic system.
“What we have been denouncing for years is the ‘touristification’ of the economy. Tourism has a very strong negative impact on the lives of residents. It leads to housing shortages with flats turned over to holiday lets, rising prices, degradation of heritage, pollution and the erosion of labour rights. A change must be proposed to reduce the weight of tourism in the city’s economy.
“Flight prices are increasing and the low-cost airlines will disappear. When oil becomes scarce in 20 or 30 years, what will happen to international mobility? We have a city that depends on 30million visitors. We have to generate economic alternatives and do it in a planned way.
“The graffiti alone does not help to make people understand this, although it’s true that it has contributed to the mediatisation of the problem. But some take it very personally, as if we were attacking them. The least you ask of the tourist is that they know that there is a conflict with this, but you should never point directly to them as being responsible.”
Tourists find themselves caught up in the July 6 protest in Barcelona (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)
Tourism is extremely important to Barca. There are many other reasons to visit Barcelona — for the food, the climate, the architecture, art and beaches — but among the many who do come here, its world-famous football club also ranks highly on the to-do list.
Barca’s museum is the most visited in Catalonia and the third most visited in Spain. Club sources — who, like all those cited here, preferred to speak anonymously to protect relationships — told The Athletic that on average 52 per cent of match tickets are sold to people from outside Spain. Over their most recent season at the Camp Nou (2022-23), their ticketing revenue was €71.6million (£60.3m; $79.3m at current rates), of which €37.3m came from tickets sold to tourists. All of this made the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic especially destructive.
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The importance of tourism to Barca has already caused some tensions among the club’s fans. Last season, they introduced a new policy that penalised season ticket holders who did not release their seats for resale if they were unable to make it to a game. It did not go down well with a section of Barca’s ‘socios’ (club members). For the 2023-24 campaign, just 17,552 of the 80,274 who had season tickets at the Camp Nou decided to take up seats at the Lluis Companys.
Protesters in Barcelona – demonstrations have also taken place in other parts of Spain (Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Barcelona’s City Council has already outlined steps in response to growing pressure on mass tourism.
“Our will and commitment to limit tourist massification and its consequences for the city is firm,” said mayor Jaume Collboni (of Spain’s Socialist Party) after the demonstration in July.
A month earlier, Collboni spoke of plans to eliminate more than 10,000 short-term holiday lets, such as those available on Airbnb, by November 2028, returning them to residential use. Limiting tour groups to 20 people, increasing the tourist tax surcharge to €4 a night and setting up a specific plan for the management of heavily visited sites, such as the area around the Sagrada Familia, are other measures in the works.
Barca sources say the club is keeping a close eye on the situation around recent protests. They said they consider themselves affected by any negative news that might make a tourist decide against travelling to the city.
Cuso and the residents’ association he represents are sceptical on two counts. First, they don’t think the measures outlined by local politicians are far-reaching enough (and they also suggest some may not be achievable given the next municipal elections are scheduled for 2027). Second, they do not think the recent protests and graffiti will have any lasting effects on how many people choose to come to Barcelona.
“Nobody will stop coming because of four water pistols,” says Cuso. “The Spanish and foreign media is generating a discourse of fear and it is something that responds to the desire to discredit the protests and their underlying arguments.”
But he does worry more about the impact of mass tourism for Barca fans.
Eintracht Frankfurt celebrate victory over Barca in April 2022 (David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)
On Apri 14, 2022, Eintracht Frankfurt visited Barca in the second leg of their Europa League quarter-final. Visiting fans were officially granted 5,000 tickets. In the end, about 30,000 supporters from Germany made it into the ground — the attendance was 79,468.
It caused great embarrassment to Barca. Since then, measures have been taken to stop a repeat from happening — such as blocking online ticket sales from foreign IP addresses on European matchdays, or not allowing rival colours to be worn in sections reserved for home fans.
More recently, speaking before last weekend’s La Liga match between Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao at Montjuic, visiting manager Ernesto Valverde was asked what kind of atmosphere he expected. He replied: “It’s summer, there will be a lot of tourists, so I don’t expect anything special.”
It is a point Cuso associates with the wider trends of too much tourism.
“Now when you watch a Barca game, every day you have someone different next to you, someone who doesn’t know the chants and who is more interested in taking photos and recording reels for Instagram than in the match itself. This completely depersonalises the experience and betrays the whole identity of what it was like to go to the Camp Nou in the 1990s or 2000s.
“The club has clearly positioned itself as a global brand and is playing this game. But Barca is not a company, even if it behaves like one. They are an exception in the world of football (in that it is one of several which are member-owned). Now in the reform of Camp Nou, they are including more VIP boxes and lounges, which will surely cost thousands of euros. This is the model towards which everything is moving.”
The new Camp Nou will hold 105,000 people. The stadium is not scheduled to be fully completed until the summer of 2026, but Barca are expected to return there before the end of this year at a reduced capacity of 64,00 — although they say they cannot guarantee an exact timeframe.
An increased capacity should mean good news for the many thousands of people on the waiting list for a season ticket, although Barca sources say it has not been fully decided how many extra will be made available.
But one idea is to reserve a proportion for general ticket sales — with the city’s tourists again firmly in mind.
(Top photo: Getty Images. Visual design by Eamonn Dalton)
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