On the eve of el Gran Clásico, totalBarça wants to know the answer, so we can unite our support and cheer on our boys as a collective team throughout the world. Who are you, Culé?

Why do you love Football Club Barcelona, over other ‘giants’ of the sport, such as Manchester United, Inter Milan, or even el enemigo (Real Madrid)?  Are you a long-time supporter or a new fan?

The fact that you are reading a website published in English would seem to indicate that the reason is NOT because you were born and raised in Catalunya, speak Spanish and/or Catalán, and have blaugrana blood via heredity. With the exception of a couple of the wonderful translators/writers actually born in Spain, we here are all aficionados who – at some point in the history of the club, be it recently or years ago, and despite the fact that we most likely have leagues of our own in our home countries — have discovered that football IS Barcelona. Period.

As for me, I fell in love with Fútbol Club Barcelona last year, right around this time, in March/April of 2009. In fact, I had never ever seen them play before until I watched them play against FC Bayern in the Champions League quarterfinals. What’s more, I had never seen a Champions League match — or had any idea what UEFA, the Champions League, la Liga, the Premiership, Serie A (and so on) were before the year 2007 (the year in which my then-ten-year-old daughter got a poster of Kaká from our local soccer store, and so we started watching AC Milan, because they actually show Serie A in English over here in Texas, USA).

And that, of course, is the real reason it took me so long to discover that when ‘soccer’ is called the beautiful game, they really mean the football played by FC Barcelona.

Growing up in the state of Ohio, in the USA, my only exposure to ‘soccer’ was when some of the World Cup games were broadcast on TV every four years; otherwise, this is the land where American sports rule, and fútbol is seen by many as ‘foreign.’ So my evolution was slow, to say the least. However, when a local MLS club called the Dallas Burn (of whom I’d paid no attention to the entire time we had lived in Texas because, well . . . we never heard about them in the mainstream local news . . .) moved to Frisco, Texas, in 2006 and rebranded themselves as FC Dallas, we thought it might be fun to take our daughter’s recreational team to see a professional soccer game.  Because, if you did not know it before, let me tell you that soccer is probably now the most popular youth sport played in the United States, ESPECIALLY in the state of Texas. But professional soccer is still viewed as a niche sport. And FC Dallas has close to the worst attendance in MLS these days.

Go figure. It makes no sense to me, either.

So the first ever real live professional soccer match that I saw was an FC Dallas Major League Soccer game.  And do you know what?  It was FUN being there, cheering on the home team. And, of course, I had nothing with which to compare it — except our experience going to Major League Baseball games. Yawn. No comparison! I immediately liked the fast-paced, nonstop action of the soccer game, even if I understood basically nothing, except a goal was scored by kicking the ball into the opponent’s net and a player could not use their hands.

That was 2006. Let’s call it fate, too, because I did watch the World Cup final, at least, to see Italy become World Champions that year. And being a Spanish teacher, I did play Ricky Martin’s la Copa de la Vida in my classes back in 1998. And perhaps the earliest clue of what was to come in the future? The one time I have actually been to Spain was in February of 1982, as part of an exchange program when I was in high school, and while we never went to Barcelona, I DID bring home a t-shirt that said Barcelona, Copa Mundial ’82.

So while I’m not a native Spanish speaker, part of the culture has been with me all along, nurtured as I learned about the language and the cultures of Spain and the Latino countries of the world. And it did not take long to discover that the Italian soccer on the cable TV channel was far better than our local league (and it didn’t hurt that 2007 was the year that Kaká and AC Milan won the Champions League — that poster is still on my daughter’s wall, by the way, sadly out of date). By 2008, I wanted to watch more fútbol, but the only way to do that was to subscribe to the Spanish TV cable package, which we did in December, 2008 — mainly to watch FC Bayern on GolTV, because my spouse spent time when he was growing up living in Germany (so HE has understood football all along).

And thus, I first saw FC Barcelona play FC Bayern Munchen last year — as a Bayern fan. But I knew — I KNEW — the moment I saw Barcelona, that they were a special team.  Having evolved from MLS to Serie A to the Bundesliga, I had learned along the way what I enjoyed watching (skilled ball control and sharp passing) and what I did not enjoy (50-50 long balls and ugly, physical play), so when Barcelona knocked Bayern out of the Champions League with THE best football that I had ever seen, I continued to follow their progress. I didn’t watch the first leg against Chelsea, but I did watch the second. I did not yet know these players, but I was enthralled with their style. So when Iniesta blasted in his goal to equalize the game, I cheered for them, because that moment was so electrifying that I could almost physically feel the passion.

And that was that. Nothing compares. Getting to know who all these players and their wonderful coach are — not to mention this amazing player named Lionel Messi — has simply cemented the feeling. Football IS FC Barcelona.

So, finally, I ask again, what is YOUR story?