From September 6 to September 15, we will be sharing with you a series of birthday celebration posts from the team at totalBarca to celebrate the site’s 2-year anniversary.  We hope that you will enjoy each post leading up to totalBarca’s 2nd birthday and join us in celebrating this wonderful occasion.  September 15, 2011 – totalBarca turns 2 years old!!

In this first edition, we’ll start with the ladies of totalBarça that find themselves at the beginning of the alphabet: Alexandra and Amanda.

Alexandra

Writer based in Malmö, Sweden

Well I’m an 18 year old with two big interests, football and writing. At the moment I’m playing football for Swedish division 3 side BK Vången and studying to become a journalist. Since the age of 11 I’ve been in love with FC Barcelona. The first time I saw Barça play was when my childhood hero Henrik Larsson made his debut for the club in a game against Racing Santander in 2004. Since that day I’ve been hooked. With every passing day my love for this club grows even bigger. At the age of 14, I visited the city of Barcelona for the first time, and it was also then that I decided that it would one day be my home. In total, I have now been to Barcelona 4 times, watching Barça play at Camp Nou 3 times (At.Madrid 07, Real Madrid 08, AC Milan 10) and the B-team at the Mini Estadi once. I did also take the opportunity to watch the team when they came to Copenhagen (Denmark) to play during last year’s Champions League campaign as it’s only 30 minutes away from where I live.

I came across totalBarça over a year ago when a friend told me about the site and it didn’t take long before it was my home page. As I still have to learn fluent Spanish (working on it), a site like totalBarça was something I had missed. In June 2010 I was lucky to become a writer for tB and a member of this fantastic staff. For me writing at totalBarça was and still is a huge opportunity to develop as a journalist. I love writing for totalBarça and our amazing readers and there is a lot I have to thank this site for. It sure have given me a lot to take with me later in life, when I will make my way as a journalist. But what I’m most thankful for is all the unbelievable wonderful people I’ve gotten to know through my work here. Getting to know this staff and its readers is the absolute best thing with this job!

Recommended reading: There have been a lot of great posts on tB the last two years so for me it’s impossible to choose one as my favourite. The Crackovia videos are always extremely fun to watch, then I’ve always loved opinion pieces and I must say there have been a lot of really good opinion pieces here. But every post at tB is great, and as my Spanish isn’t the best, I’m really thankful for the translations made of some really good pieces. Of my own posts, I’m most proud of the two exclusive interviews I’ve managed to get with Henok Goitom and Patrik Andersson. It was a great experience, really fun and I think the end result was pretty decent. Then, as I love opinion pieces, that’s also my favourite thing to write and some of them I’m pretty proud of as well.

This is a 2-year-old with a great future ahead, what we have already in the archives is fantastic!

I’m extremely proud to be a culé and a part of totalBarça!

Amanda

Writer, editor, and content manager based in Washington, DC, United States

Compared to most of our readers and team members here at totalBarça, I’m a football novice, having only discovered the joys of the beautiful game in 2006, and the magic of the blaugrana in 2008. At loose ends in the summer of 2008 (and finally with a working television), I was swept away by Spain in the Euros. Scouring the internet, I discovered that three of my favourite players for Spain -Xavi, Iniesta, and Puyol- all played for the same club side, FC Barcelona, and that was that. Since then I’ve tried to find ways to become a proactive fan (becoming a member of the Club, taking Catalan classes, joining the DC Penya, visiting Barcelona for the first time in February). But the apex of my immersion into cule-dom came when I discovered totalBarça in the winter of 2009, thanks to links to tB shared via another football website, and when I joined the team as an editor early in 2010. It’s been a wild and amazing ride since then, and couldn’t have happened without each and every one of my colleagues (past and present) and the huge effort they have made every day to keep the site going. But of course totalBarça would be nothing without those that read, comment, and share. I didn’t truly feel a part of FC Barcelona until I started working here. So, from the very bottom of my heart, thank you all for being part of this community.

Recommended reading: This is one of the first pieces I remember reading on the site. BarcaFanDallas’ translation from El Mundo Deportivo of 12 examples why Guardiola is a “great professional and an even better person.” Another great series of posts was the translation of the Xavi/Iniesta episodes of Informe Robinson.

Watch out for the next part tomorrow.