While staff at the Spanish Economy Ministry have been telling anyone who will listen for the last few months that “Spain isn’t Greece”, over at the football federation, they’ve had a rather more tricky time of it trying to convince us that “Spain isn’t Scotland”. Scotland in this context means a country with only two teams that ever look remotely like winning the domestic league. And over the last few years, while Real Madrid and Barcelona may not resemble Celtic and Glasgow Rangers in any way on the pitch, each pair of teams seems to enjoy a similarly vice-like duopoly on the silverware. So it was refreshing to see league champion and European powerhouse Barcelona humbled 2-0 by newly … [Read more...] about Hércules’ Italian job on Barça restores Liga intrigue