Football without Flags
I’ve lived the most memorable moments of my life just watching my team-FC Bacelona- playing great football-the kind that is so magical that it has even fans of its historic rivals rise to their feet and applaud.
This is football experienced not just as an act of sublime creativity, but as a moment of solidarity, that transcends the terrible prejudices and misunderstandings and shortsightedeness that plague our daily lives, with only a few genuinely good men and women occasionally showing us the light of what it truly means to be human.
As a Barca fan I remember Real Madrid fans applauding Ronaldino one year and Messi another , just as some had once declared Cruyff the best player since Di Stefano. And what an example I felt was set by Vicente Del Bosque the day he acknowledged how important Barca as well as Real Madrid players was to forming the backbone of his his European and World Cup wining teams, and how he wished -he told me this- that La Roja might be allowed to play at the Nou Camp and win the applause of all fans there regardless of region or nation simply by playing well.
I also remember, less happily, at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, club games in Scotland where Irish Republican flags and Union Jacks caused huge distress, anger and violence which had nothing to do with the football many wanted to watch in peace, with their children and grandchildren. Almost as bad has been the intolerance provoked in one camp or the other, by individuals claiming to be the true followers of FC Barcelona or Real Madrid.
Not so long ago, I witnessed one such group of Barca fans carrying a Catalan independence flag attacking two Barca fans from Andalucia who had travelled to the Celtic stadium in Glasgow with a Barca club flag and a Spanish flag.
Such memories have led me to the view that nationalist flags, like other potentially explosive materials, should best be kept out of stadiums not least when groups of people go to a game not to enjoy good football- and let the best team win- but to make a political statement against the other where there can be no respect.
If reason and good sense and indeed the word compromise existed in Spanish and Catalan politics then we would all be able to enjoy Sunday’s King’s Cup final between Sevilla and FC Barcelona without Spanish national or Catalan independence flags , just club emblems which speak a more universal language of sporting competiveness than that reduced to political bigotry and provocation. Instead the final has been turned into a political football at the expense of those who enjoy their football without politics..
