Category Archives: Blog
Clemente at the Camp Nou
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 …
Poetry vs play station
It felt like a nice tonic seeing Barca play as they did last night-creativity, goals, and much presence of La Cantera –not least Messi who was in overdrive. Only hours earlier I had to suffer two cule friends of mine moaning till the early hours about how this Barca was tired and had run out of ideas and that we could be reaching the end of a cycle i.e over to you Real Madrid. I watched Messi , pure poetry in motion, while thinking of what Vicente Del Bosque told me …
Football’s wise senor
It was a privilege to accompany Vicente del Bosque on his 24 hour visit to London yesterday when he flew the flag for his country at the Spanish tourist office, at a Q &A session at the Lumiere Cinema, and much later at Abel Lusa’s ever welcoming and excellent Cambio de Tercio restaurant on the Old Brompton Road. The fact that he is one of the most successful managers in football history has not gone to his head. On the contrary he remains understated and modest, insisting that he would …
Bruisers in the Camp Nou
Tonight’s second-leg King’s Cup tie between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona at the Camp Nou had a a rough edge to it that almost left a nasty taste. But edge-of-the-seat stuff nonetheless. Who said El Clasico was beginning to get too regular and boring? – I didn’t. This was a reprise performance for both sides with clear echoes of last year’s encounter in which the game was reduced by the thuggery of Real Madrid on one side, and the theatrics of FC Barcelona on the other. That said the game …
Barca’s beauty: A view from the Gods
I have to admit that sometimes I thank God I can watch certain matches in the comfort of my sitting room. This is not because I am a couch potato by nature, or that Madrid is cold and wet at this time of year (as is Bar & Co, the boat on the Thames where I sometimes gather with fellow cules) , but because sometimes TV gives you a perspective on a match which you simply cannot capture sitting or standing in the cheapest seat you can get in …
Rick Stein’s Spain
In case you missed it, try and pick up somewhere, sometime on Rick Stein’s Spanish Christmas shown last night on BBC 2. Rick, in my view, is the most human of ‘celebrity’ cooks, with a genuine interest in Spain’s culinary habits, and a deep respect for and understanding of how food and wine –in its varied manifestations-go to the heart of the country’s soul. As someone born in Spain to a Spanish mother and with many years of experience of living and working in the country, I felt privileged to …
Havel and a spy who came in from the cold
If I’d read the character in some spy novel, I would have thought him a figment of the writer’s imagination-so unlike he was from anything I had encountered thus far. It was in the early 1990’s and I was in Oxford attending a weekend conference on the changing post-Cold war intelligence landscape when a friend suggested there was someone among the foreign delegates I might be interested in meeting in a more relaxed atmosphere. I arrived one saturday evening at one of the town’s quieter pubs to find my friend …
Barca rules the World
On June 12th 1963, thousands packed the Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona play Santos FC of Brazil in a friendly , and in particular one player called Edson Arantes do Nascimento Pelé. A year earlier, Santos had won the Brazil Cup, the Campeonato Paulista, the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup.The Brazilian national side won the World Cup that same year. In the following season, Santos went on to win the Copa Brazil, the Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup once again.At the Camp Nou, Barca won 2-0 and yet …
A Personal Tribute to Christopher Hitchens
The last time I spent any time with Christopher Hitchens was in the early summer of 2006. I was house-sitting in Georgetown researching a new book and he, with instinctive generosity towards a friend, insisted I’d come over to his apartment for supper ‘a deux’. I can’t remember what we ate. But I do remember we drank not insubstantial amounts of alcohol and consumed countless cigarettes as we talked into the early hours about God- he was writing his book against him at the time, and he wanted to know …
A better Europe with Pep
I have a suggestion to make in the hope that we might just end up the year with some hope for the next one: let’s appoint Pep Guardiola EU supremo for solidarity and the common good. But first let me eat half my hat. In recent days I have been warning that Real Madrid was a much stronger team than last season’s while suggesting that FC Barcelona, looking tired and demotivated, would find it hard to prevail at the first Classico of the season, at the Bernabeu. Last night I …
