Thing is I remember they used to be everyones favorite second club around the late 90s and early-mid 2000s. Pretty much anyone who didn't like Real Madrid - which was/is a very sizeable number - would have Barça down as their number two by default. As a kid, a Barça shirt was the only non-LFC shirt I owned (it had Figo on the back, just before he left for Madrid
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Who can honestly say that about Barcelona now? Within those 20 years they gained a supreme arrogance and exceptionalism and have acted as indistiguishable from Madrid. OF course, there is a difference between the club hierarchy and the fans. I live here now so I know plenty of sound Barça fans. But even they talk about Liverpool like it was a second-tier club, until I sit them down and remind them we had four European Cups before they'd even won one.
Ultimately, the main thing I've realised, is that football just doesn't mean as much here as it does in Liverpool. It is far less baked into the fabric of daily life. The way they interact with football is also a bit different. It's like they fancy themselves cannoiseurs of fine football. If Barça play well, it's expected rather than something to be excited about They don't have the songs. And if they play badly, or simply not successfully, you just switch off. Supporting Barça is more of a mandatory extension of a wider Catalan identity, rather than a driver of it.
You can walk through the city during El Clasico and not have a clue it's on (you'd also be surprised by the amount of Real Madrid fans who've been born and raised here). All that said, they do have a great local/barrio club scene here.
