Author Archives: Jimmy Burns

  There is something sadly somewhat predictable about some English sports page headlines this morning focusing on Lampard’s apparent statement that Chelsea has “some unfinished business” to take care of when it meets FC Barcelona in two weeks time. In fact my recollection is that Lampard was interviewed  by an English TV journalist after the match against Benfica last night who used the phrase in his question, prompting an even  less literate response. But the phrase stands as a necessary myth capable of fuelling the base instinct each previously humiliated …

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  As I savoured the memory of last night’s Barca Champions League victory over AC Milan this  morning’s surf landed me by pure chance on the Italian club’s supporters’ website Forza Rosseneri. It was an old page, now slightly  dated but which nonetheless gave one an insight into the shortcomings of a club that once claimed, not without justification, to be the best in Europe. Alongside  flashing advertisements showing semi-naked models promising that more would be revealed, the club’s CEO Adriano Galliani paid tribute to club owner Silvio Berlusconi- “These 26 …

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Two  images stand out from from last night’s game between FC Barcelona  and Athletic Bilbao whose final score failed to undermine  Real Madrid’s increasingly unassailable leadership at the top of La Liga. The first has the two ‘misters’ Pep Guardiola and Marcelo Bielsa, like the philosophers of football that they are , directing their pupils as if the nature of existence itself was being defined there and then . It is a study in contrasts- Guardiola intense and ephemeral as an El Greco saint, Bielsa ‘El Loco’ , a cross …

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  During his time  as manager of FC Barcelona, Helenio  Herrera made a name for himself for a number of reasons. I would like to name just two. The first was as a very good psychologist. He was disdainful of other managers who failed to engage with their players and to bring about a real change in their attitude to the game. Herrera claimed to be able to look into the  heads  and heart of each of his players, and to be able to turn this to the  team’s best advantage. …

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In his excellent sports column  in Tuesday’s El Pais, the incisive Martin Girard draws on the latest book by Alfredo Relaño  to remind us how the divergent histories of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have forged the identity of both clubs. It a subject close to my heart and I expand on it  at some length in my new  book La Roja: A Journey through Spanish Football  which is due out very soon .  Relaño notes that Carlos Padros, the founder of Real Madrid, was abandoned by his club during the …

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In the Spring of 1984,  one of the ugliest encounters in Spanish football history,  the King’s Cup final between FC Barcelona and Athletic  Bilbao was held at the Bernabeu. The clubs had, respectively, Cesar Menotti and Javier Clemente as managers. Barca still had Maradona as a star player. The season had been characterised by a growing debate between Menotti and Clemente about how football should be played. Menotti claimed to be an admirer of free creative football which he contrasted with the defensive ‘brutal’ play favoured by Clemente. Brutality had …

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