Category Archives: Football
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 …
Lo poco y lo mucho que tiene que cambiar La Roja de Don Vicente
Vicente Del Bosque es un hombre con sensibilidad política y una buena memoria. Sabe que la mayoría de los españoles no ven al futbol como la solución a su crisis, pero si miran hacia él y su selección- con su colaboración de catalanes, vascos, y otros españoles, como una inspiración que contrasta con la intolerancia, división, y fallos institucionales y de liderazgos que la ciudadanía tiene que sufrir. Sabe el largo y difícil camino que llevo a que España por fin fuese respetada como Campeón Europea (2008 y 2012) …
La Roja : What needs to change
Vicente Del Bosque is a man not only with a sensitive and sensible political mind but with an enduring memory. He knows that a huge majority of Spaniards while not seeing football as a solution to their crisis, do look to him and the national team-with its cooperative of Catalans, Basques, and other Spaniards- as an inspiring contrast to the intolerance, division, and leadership and institutional failures that otherwise mark their existence. He knows the long and difficult road that lead to Spain’s finally becoming widely respected European (2008 …
Some home truths behind the Neymar/Barca show
So the Neymar show has come to the Nou Camp and with it a lot of money going into a few pockets and in a way that is about as transparent as the sea off the Costa Brava after a stormy night. Beyond the razzmatazz, only time will tell whether the money spent on this boy from Brazil is worth it. For now, let me say that I have my doubts. I watched him play in last summer’s Olympics and more recently against England at the reopening of the …
The sadness in Barca’s defeat
Reflecting on last night’s game in the Nou Camp in the early light of today’s dawn I wondered what it was that had provoked a feeling of deep melancholy in me. At its most basic, I saw my team in just over a week not just beaten but comprehensively so-twice and with the ultimate humiliation played out on home ground. But then Barca is not any team- for millions of fans around the world it has become an idea of football not just as a sport but as …
Buen ejemplo en La Romareda
On a weekend when Millwall fans trashed each other, Di Canio invoked his mother, and Newcastle fans battled with police , there were more pleasant scenes to be witnessed at Zaragoza’s La Romareda stadium. During the La Liga match between second from the bottom Real Zaragoza and top of the table FC Barcelona, aggression took the form of some taunting Viva Españas and occasional collective protest of contested referee decisions, thought to have been biased in favour of the visitors. In fact Barca showed how good a team it …
Di Canio and the UK: A Response to Simon Kuper
It is a pity that my former colleague Simon Kuper wastes most of his commentary – Football’s little problem on the right-wing’ on the Di Canio saga in today’s FT coverage on the football manager’s political sympathies and the national culture which nourished them. That Di Canio is Italian, a one-time player of one of Italy’s most fascist clubs, and a self-confessed admirer of Mussolini is well tread ground. Far more interesting in my view are the inclinations of certain representatives of English football within their national culture, …
Barca shows that football can be more than just a game
I knew I hadn’t been dreaming when early this morning my local Battersea street flower vendor Steve told me: “You must pleased, mate”, before congratulating Barca on a “master class in football.” You see, Steve is not only football mad, he is a fanatical Chelsea supporter and, as followers of my blogs and specifically of one of my assiduous stalkers Captain Terry will know, I don’t normally get such genial comments from across the river. Steve is of course not alone. Last night’s game at the Nou Camp delivered …
Barca: The challenge of being more than a football club
Next to feeling that things are not going right, there is nothing worse for a football club, as it is for one’s own life, than not knowing quite why, or not being able to find a way of expressing it. For all the club’s historically self-conscious sense of cultural and political identity, this Sunday it’s difficult to find a Barca fan without a deep sense of foreboding. The defeat in Milan, and the two Clasico defeats have left cules struggling to keep faith in a project they had come to …
The pain of being a Barca fan
Watching Barca’s performance last night against AC Milan not only threw me into a bad depressive mode. It made my flu that much worse so all I could think of was going to bed and hoping sleep would come as quickly as possible. This morning the memory of last night was the first thought that came to me so I felt it difficult to get up. A hang-over despite not touching a drop of alcohol since Lent began! Such moods are familiar to football fans the world over but I …
