Category Archives: Blog
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 …
Why I am not thankful to Edward Snowden
Sometimes, very rarely I grant you, it is not a Sun headline but a front-page in the Guardian-my breakfast newspaper of choice-that makes me almost choke on my corn flakes. The Guardian is unsurprisingly on a roll having first broken the story that has been subsequently covered widely by the media internationally , and stirred a political debate on both sides of the Atlantic. But while this story has , as they put in hack parlance ‘legs’, the direction of it seems somewhat one-sided thus far. Today’s Guardian devotes …
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 …
Mourinho was not so special in Spain
I can think of several coaches deserving a noble place in Spanish football history, but Jose Mourinho is not one of them. Cowardice dictated his red card in the King’s Cup final, his verbal outburst the cheap shot of a bad loser. He had promised more than he could deliver and knew it but rather than stick around and fight to the end with his players, he chose escape. It was a game in which Simeone’s street bruisers had found their perfect counterpart in Mourinho, and beat him at his …
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 …
Barca after Munich
Having travelled with and sat and stood among the couple of thousand-odd Barca fans at last night’s Champions League semi-final away match tie between their team and Bayern Munich, it is hard not to share in the feeling of desolation provoked by its outcome. The majority of these visiting fans in the huge impressive Allianz Arena stadium were in their twenties, part of a generation that has grown up finding in the success of their club and the respect for it worldwide one of the few genuinely positive aspects …
Football and Pope Francis
The gift of a shirt of Spain’s national football team-signed by all its star players- given this week to Pope Francis by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is the latest reminder of the links that bind the beautiful game to the Vatican. Pope Francis is himself a self-declared football fan, with a dedication from his childhood days to San Lorenzo, the local club of the neighbourhood of Almagro in Buenos Aires where he was born. It is a club which owes its origins to the Catholic Church and which …
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, …
Pope Francis can do without Mrs Fernandez
Trust Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez to use her first audience with Pope Francis to press her country’s claim over the Falklands Islands. With the demagoguery that has has marked her time in office,Fernandez has seized the opportunity to try and restore her own dwindling popularity by raising a cause that Argentines have historically rallied around. This is the same President that has viewed Jorge Bergoglio as an opponent when he served as Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires and has allowed her allies in the Argentine media to try and wreck …
