Category Archives: Football
La Roja- Its not over yet
Just days after Rafa Nadal lifted the Roland Garros trophy in Paris, declaring Prefiero morir siendo valiente( ‘ I would rather die being brave’) , Spain’s national football team –the defending World Champions- capitulated without passion or glory to a Dutch team that played with fury and style. Nothing perhaps summed up the sheer humiliation of Friday’s game than the utterly dejected, almost haunted face of Iker Casillas after letting through the fifth Dutch goal in the most crushing defeat suffered by La Roja since breaking with decades of underachievement …
El buen fútbol , el Papa Francisco y Dios
El autor Vargas Llosa hace algunos años escribió que un partido de fútbol carecía de las cualidades estéticas de una pieza clásica de la música , sobre todo en lo que afecta a la inteligencia , la imaginación , el corazón y el alma. Como amante de la buena música y el buen fútbol se me ocurren sinfonías y canciones cuyo eco en mi subconsciente me traen lágrimas de alegría o tristeza , y algo mas inexplicable, así como partidos memorables, no porque mi equipo ganó , pero porque …
On Football, Pope Francis & God
The author Vargas Llosa some years back wrote that a football match lacked the enduring uplifting, aesthetic qualities of a classical piece of music, not least in what affects intellect, imagination, heart and soul. As a music lover and football fan I can think of symphonies and songs whose echo in my subconscious bring me to tears of joy or sadness, as well as matches memorable not because my team won, but because I saw football played nobly and creatively, turned into art form-poetry in motion- and because of …
Barca needs to rediscover good football
Atletico de Madrid are through to the Champions League semi final because their defence held out brilliantly, they were magificent in attack, have a solid team spirit, and a manager that has motivated team and fans and is a good tactician. FC Barcelona by contrast lacked all these qualities and were justly beaten on the night. But this not an end of an era. Barca remains a team with quality players although psychologically it is finding it hard to not take its own past success for granted. It has a …
Pensando en el Mundial
Al final de esta semana sabremos la lista dejugadores que iran a Brazil este verano para defender la corona de la Selección Español. El periódico Londinense hispano El Iberico me ha entrevistado sobre el tema. Aquí van mis respuestas. Brasil, por su historia futbolera y por el hecho de ser el anfitrión, tiene toda las ganas de proclamarse el nuevo Campeón del Mundo. Perder sería no solamente un desastre en términos futboleros sino que provocaría una crisis política en un contexto en el cual la inversión y la organización …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
