A couple of years ago, Valencia CF were staring into the depths of an abyss that included foreclosure of their assets and potentially the end of their very existence as a football club. The club’s debts were huge, they had finished out of the Champions League places in sixth, and the departure of their prize players, David Villa and David Silva, looked a certainty. Enter Manuel Llorente, the latest and apparently looniest of a long line of very loopy Valencia presidents. Llorente’s ingenious policy towards tackling Valencia’s money troubles seemed to be to pretend they didn’t exist and hope they would go away. Behold the mysteries of the times we live in, it seems to have worked a … [Read more...] about Stable Valencia dreams of challenging Spain’s top two
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Mourinho’s second coming suggests serious title tilt for Real Madrid
“Por qué?” he asked. “Por qué?” came the question again. It was a moment to define José Mourinho’s first season at the home of Spanish football’s most successful club Real Madrid, where in recent years silverware has been lacking. Coming after the first leg of the Champions League semi-final against their eternal rivals FC Barcelona, his comments were an attack against UEFA and the purported unfair treatment dished out to his players who had seen themselves down to 10 men for the fourth time in as many clashes in El Clásico last season. It was also during a run of games that would see the two teams meet four times over the course of three weeks and this was exactly the reason why the … [Read more...] about Mourinho’s second coming suggests serious title tilt for Real Madrid
Real Madrid’s ‘señor’ status at play as Mourinho takes control
Spanish football is a peculiar beast when placed under a microscope, rather like a petri dish teeming with all the bacteria Fifa is currently trying to scrape from its gilded Zurich halls. There is no fit-and-proper-persons test in La Liga, as Racing Santander is currently being left to rue. Match-fixing was made a criminal offence just six months ago. Clubs are traditionally controlled by wildly unreliable clans like the Gil family at Atlético Madrid and the Ruiz-Mateos' at Rayo Vallecano – currently busily covering their own backsides as their Nueva Rumasa congolmerate goes under for the second time, leaving thousands of investors, and Rayo's players, on the bread line. If your club … [Read more...] about Real Madrid’s ‘señor’ status at play as Mourinho takes control
How police brutality helped Spain’s 15-M protests
In recent days, music fans and political activists in Spain have been remembering Gil Scott-Heron, the singer-songwriter who died last Friday. The ongoing sit-ins and protests that started across Spain in the lead-up to May’s local elections have seen inevitable links being drawn between Scott-Heron’s anthem The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and the 15-M/Democracia Real Ya movement. But the day after Scott-Heron’s death, when the TV showed images of Catalonia’s mossos d’esquadra local police force brutally charging into a crowd of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in Barcelona, it seemed more fitting to think of another seventies cultural touchstone: Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork … [Read more...] about How police brutality helped Spain’s 15-M protests
Where do Mourinho and Guardiola go from here?
La Liga and the Champions League are still to be decided but already pundits and the general public are talking about what will happen when the season comes to an end after the recent series of Barcelona and Real Madrid matches. At the start of April, there was speculation that if things went badly wrong for Real coach José Mourinho, he might leave at the end of the season. Well, apart from lifting the Copa del Rey on April 20, things could hardly have gone worse. The 1-1 draw at the Santiago Bernabéu on April 16 effectively handed the league title to Barcelona and the Catalans could close the issue with a draw in this week's game against Levante or if Real drop points against … [Read more...] about Where do Mourinho and Guardiola go from here?
Barça must cut theatrics if they want to go down in history
There are plenty of skills young players learn at Barcelona’s La Masia youth centre, and which are then refined at senior level at the club. Tight, triangular passing; quick movement off the ball into space; keeping possession of the ball; respect for the great institution they are a part of. And, you might add, after Wednesday’s Champions League semifinal first leg against Real Madrid: writhing on the floor like a hammy actor when tackled by an opponent; clutching their face when a rival’s hand goes anywhere near their upper body; and generally doing everything possible to get the other team’s players booked or sent off. This is the contradiction that Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side … [Read more...] about Barça must cut theatrics if they want to go down in history
Real Madrid, Barcelona, Orwell and the evil conspiracy
Let’s forget, for the moment, the fact that Real Madrid and Barcelona had an absorbing 1-1 draw in their liga meeting on Saturday. Instead, let’s look inside the heads of two of the night’s protagonists: Barça midfielder Xavi Hernández and Real Madrid coach José Mourinho. “Everyone could see that Barça were the better team, that we totally dominated. Although that’s not so great given that it was them that gave us the ball and them that shut down at the back in their own stadium.” This was the verdict of Xavi after the game. He had a point in that Barcelona did dominate possession, during one phase enjoying 79 percent of it (according La Sexta television’s onslaught of statistics). … [Read more...] about Real Madrid, Barcelona, Orwell and the evil conspiracy
Everything’s at stake in Real Madrid and Barcelona’s quadruple clásico
Eighteen days, four games and the spoils of almost an entire season to be fought over. Barcelona and Real Madrid usually play each other twice over the course of a season, in their home and away liga fixtures. But due to a combination of luck and their own good form, the biggest rivalry in European football, with all its sporting, cultural and political undercurrents, will be played out four times in just over two weeks, between April 16 and May 3. There’s so much at stake and yet each encounter is loaded with slightly different significance. Of the three titles that these four games – a league match, the King’s Cup final and a two-legged Champions League semifinal – represent, the league … [Read more...] about Everything’s at stake in Real Madrid and Barcelona’s quadruple clásico
Promise of death in the afternoon keeps bullfighting alive for fans
The bull struck its horn deep into his thigh. Seconds later, the same horn speared his neck. Before thousands of anxious eyes and terrified faces, Luis de Pauloba was rushed out of the bullring and into the infirmary. From there, an ambulance hurried him more than 150 kilometres from Cuenca to Madrid. Even after Pauloba had received four litres of blood transfusions, the doctors weren’t optimistic. “They told me that I was going to die because it had almost touched my brain,” Pauloba says. “It was a very unpleasant wound.” Remarkably, in less than five months, Pauloba was back in the ring. “I always had the mentality that after that wound I was going to bullfight. Physically, of … [Read more...] about Promise of death in the afternoon keeps bullfighting alive for fans
Athletic Bilbao’s local lions belie football’s global trend
Athletic Bilbao’s selection policy is both its strength and an obvious demographic weakness: only players born in the area known as the “historic” Basque Country, encompassing Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, Álava, Navarre and three French regions –or who were schooled in its youth ranks– are strictly eligible to pull on the red-and-white shirt. While this policy has been relaxed just slightly in recent years, the only sides in Spain to operate a policy anywhere near as defined by region are fellow Basques Real Sociedad and Barcelona, which currently fields a number of Catalans but also has players brought into the fold at an early age, such as Andrés Iniesta and Leo Messi. But Barça also has a … [Read more...] about Athletic Bilbao’s local lions belie football’s global trend