Author Archives: Jimmy Burns

The night Barca recovered its self-esteem at The Etihad

  As someone who lived through FC Barcelona’s drubbing  last season  at the hands of Bayern Munich, one thought above all dominated my  expectations  of last night’s match against Man City at the Etihad stadium:  Would Barca get beaten by Pellegrini ‘s  Premier League Galacticos, thus  losing not to  a team of star players but also more important boasting of a style that, encouraged by the ex-Barca executives,  on a good day, evokes the glory days of Guardiola under Laporta. As things turned out, Barca’s 2-0 victory was achieved in …

Read on >


Luis Aragones: The Wise Man from Hortaleza

  Former Spanish national football coach Luis Aragones has died at the age of 75. Eulogies  have poured in from football enthusiasts around the world  for the man who ended La Roja’s 44-year wait for a major international trophy by winning Euro 2008 with exciting style of play.At the weekend  FC Barcelona and Atletico Madrid fans and players were among those who paid tribute to the tough but wise Castilian . This is an abridged extract from my book on Spanish football La Roja (published in the UK by Simon …

Read on >


Pedro J. : Story of a resignation foretold

  The influential founding editor of Spain’s second-biggest newspaper, El Mundo, stepped down last Thursday after a decline in circulation and a series of revelations of alleged corruption in Spain’s Partido Popular governing party. Love him or hate him-and, as a former colleague,  I fall into  no-man’s land- the Spanish journalist Pedro.J Ramirez has earned a deserving place as a significant figure not just of the Spanish political and cultural scene, but as a  notable member of the international media fraternity. His resignation from El Mundo, the newspaper he has …

Read on >


The competing claims on Barca

  Watching FC Barcelona these days certain things seem evident to me. Firstly, the circumstances surrounding the resignation of club president Sandro Rosell (see earlier blog)have fuelled a sense of political and administrative uncertainty, despite the remaining governing junta trying to carry on as if nothing had really happened. The fact is that it is unusual for the president of any major corporation or government to resign without giving more of an explanation that one suggesting an unspecified conspiracy against him. Meanwhile the  fiscal and judicial investigation  into the Neymar …

Read on >


The Rosell resignation: Is Barca more than a club?

  More than thirty years of journalism, much of it investigative, with one of the most respected newspapers in the world- The Financial Times- taught me to be mindful of  two of the contradictory threads  in human nature: there is often more cock-up than conspiracy, while there is seldom smoke without fire.   In the absence of the full facts of the case being in the open, and  pending the outcome of an ongoing judicial enquiry , I am  reluctant to jump  too quickly to  any conclusions about the current …

Read on >


Atletico Madrid throws Barca the gauntlet

  Nothing like a walk on my favourite beach in Sitges, to rediscover in some spontaneous beach football involving Catalans, other Spaniards and Latin Americans the game in its all its elemental joy, natural talent and skill. That the Camp Nou is but a short train ride and quick metro hop away gives Sitges’s inhabitants the added privilege of living within the radius and aura of one of the greatest sporting clubs in the world, FC Barcelona , that commands a loyalty only wholly understood not just in terms of …

Read on >


My Christmas Carol

  a.       Verse One Just now I watched my football team FC Barcelona finish off their year playing a beautiful game of football-poetic in its creation, selfless in its delivery. The team played without their two non-Spanish superstars-Messi and Neymar- and yet had Pedro (born in the Canaries) and Cesc (a Catalan) scoring some sublime goals, and Jordi Alba (a Catalan) and Iniesta (a Castilian) in perfect harmony down the left-hand side and in the middle. Barca’s manager, Tata Martino likes to rotate his players (several of them Spanish internationals) …

Read on >


Neymar’s night at the Nou Camp

  Celtic dismally failed to live up to their brave heart image last night, but their gutless performance at the Nou Camp should not detract from the fact that this was a FC Barcelona victory worthy of note. Above all,  this will be remembered as the match in which Neymar showed what he is capable of as a playmaker, on and off the ball, assisting, delivering, and scoring goals-his Champion’s League drought transformed into a flowing hat rick. And to have Neymar showing his true talent, and visibly enjoying himself, …

Read on >


La mal imagen de Argentina

  El ejemplo de Nelson Mandela, y también del Papa Francisco (un argentino) nos recuerda que  el liderazgo, el compromiso, la misericordia y reconciliación, son los pilares de una política humana y capaz de transformación.   Algo de esto se vivió en Argentina en Diciembre de 1983 al asumir la presidencia Raúl Alfonsín, un político social demócrata de talla Europea que supo en su mejor momento romper las divisiones tribales y clasistas de un país, para después dejar desperdiciar lo conseguido, atrapado por lo peor de su pais. De los …

Read on >


La Roja’s Brazilian challenge

  To mark  today’s draw for next summer’s World Cup, let me offer you a bit of interesting history, and some preliminary thoughts on who might win.  As I relate in my latest book ‘La Roja’ (now published in English (UK & US editions), Spanish – ‘De Rio Tinto a La Roja’, and German) https://www.jimmy-burns.com/books/ the world of football was in a different place back in 1950 when Brazil hosted  her last football World Cup. It was the first such tournament to be staged anywhere in the world since 1938 …

Read on >