June 14, 2003
Piensan que todo se hubiese acabado
Barçablog presents: A brief course in the language of the bullring
Picador: Fighter who goes in at the start to weaken the bull.
Banderillas: Barbed darts on coloured shafts placed into the bull's shoulders. These considerably weaken the bull's strength.
Capote: The bright red cape that is ceremoniously pulled away from the bull's back to signify the complete mastery of the matador.
Muleta: The sword with which the matador will finish off the bull.
Then the floor gets swept of the blood and it all begins again.
Despite the wishes of the 94,339 registered voters who go to the polls in Barcelona tomorrow, David Beckham is not going to come to the Nou Camp. Shame really, as there's going to be a room in my flat going soon and, though a bit of a squeeze, I'm sure he and the family would have fitted in just fine.
I'm sorry to break it to everyone here, but no matter what happens in the barça presidential elections tomorrow, he ain't coming until the next Real away game, because, as ever, the dice are loaded in Madrid's favour and there's nothing that Catalunya can do about it.
Football here is of course metaphorical. Not for nothing is El barça's motto "more than a club" - players at Football Club Barcelona are Catalunya's foot soldiers and when facing Madrid, whether in transfer gossip, the newspapers or (heaven forbid) actually in a stadium, it's war. And, as with every time in history that Catalunya has fought Madrid, it inevitably loses.
For instance, Real Madrid (Athletico has always been the poor cousin) was given its Real (=Royal) title by Alfonso XIII, the playboy monarch of the 1920s. When the revolution came, Franco kept its unrepublican name and made it his favourite team, heavily subsidising it towards European success as proof that his regime produced winners. Meanwhile, the Nou Camp ("new ground" in Catalan) and its predecessor remained the only places where people could openly speak Catalan, Franco's police correctly guessing that trying to halt every instance in a crowd of more than 100,000 might take a while to sort out.
Football Club Barcelona (yes it is in English - and the famous claret and blue colours are from an Old Boy's rugby team of Merchant Taylor's School, chosen as a tribute to the Englishmen who helped found the club in 1899) had its president shot by Franco at the start of the war, and was given a succession of pro-fascist officials during the dictator's regime to lead it into obscurity.
It all got a bit silly - when Barca tried to sign Columbian wizard Alberto de Stefano, Franco immediately passed a law banning all foreign footballers from entering the country unless the clubs shared them with Madrid. De Stefano went on to be one of Madrid's greatest ever players as barça gave in to the inevitable. Referees were told to favour Real at all times, and at one point, when barça was 3-0 up against Real after the first leg in the Generalissimo's Cup, the Director of State Security came unannounced into the barça dressing-room minutes before the second leg - and barça promptly lost 11-1.
It was at the Nou Camp that the first display of Catalan nationalism occurred after Franco's death. It was there, at the last game v Madrid, that Figo - who left the Nou Camp for Real as a result of their last Presidential election - went to take a corner, only to be pelted by coins, bottles and, impressively, the head of a roast suckling pig. The game was halted for ten minutes and the Nou Camp closed for three games as punishment. There was barely a fan who didn't think it worth the effort.
It's Real v barça that gets more than 100,000 fans into the stadia. It's Real v barça that the fans and newspapers focus on weeks in advance. There may be more fights at Boca vs River but when it comes to historical grudges, there's nowhere like the Nou.
And of course the playing field still isn't level. Barcelona may not quite be the "provincial Spanish town" that the Guardian inexplicably labelled it a few days ago as proof as to why Beckham wouldn't come (it's a darn site less provincial than Manchester for a start) but the club just doesn't have the same connections. When Madrid was struggling to remain solvent a few years ago, a multimillionaire fan stepped in to purchase its crumbling training ground for 360m under dubious circumstances - soon followed by the generous gift of an enormous new and better one by the city council. Problem solved.
No such luck for the Catalans. For sure, FC barça is an enormous franchise - handball and basketball teams also play under its banner (sidenote: one of their leading basketball players is called Gregor Fucka) and there are also B and C FC Barcelona teams playing in the third and fourth divisions here.
But barça, like the rest of Spanish football except for Real, is heavily in debt. According to the local paper Barcelona Business, the Spanish clubs currently are in debt with the banks to the sum of €1.6bn, which is playing havoc with the economy. Three-quarters of first and second division teams owe their players money and the league's new ruling doesn't help - any club that owes players wages on 30th July is supposed to get relegated automatically. That's going to be 30 clubs dropping from the top two divisions alone, leaving Real a very quiet fixture list next season. Barcelona is reported to be €98m in the red, which makes a lucrative bid for Beckham all the more unlikely.
Whoever wins the surreal election (whose TV showdown led to predictable levels of bickering), barça's leading scorer Patrick Kluivert is sure to go. A few years ago, having lost Figo, rumours put Kluivert as the capital's next target. Unsurprisingly terrified of a lynching, the chairman and manager tripled the Dutchman's salary. He also inserted a clause in his contract saying that he could leave the club for a paltry 1m if they ever tried to cut his wages. So they currently pay him 7.75m a season - quite a lot for a club so deep in the red that you need ultra-violet floodlights to see the games.
The candidates in tomorrow's election are predictably random. Joan Laporta, the man who started all the Beckham fuss, started out a distant fourth in the race. But it's amazing what a Spice Boy can do - at last count, the man whose previous claim to fame was that he's Johan Cruyff's lawyer was a percentage point ahead of the somewhat staid adman Lluis Bassat. Sure, Bassat was the early favourite, knows what he's doing and his proposal to cut players' wages by 22% to begin a rebuilding phase may be very sensible - but when Laporta marches in with Goldenballs, it's hard to reply with statistics.
Officially, there are four others in the race but it was telling that this morning's photocall in the Rambla for local paper La Vanguardia involved all of them together... until rival paper El Periodico showed up and said that all but Laporta and Bassat could go. It's a two horse wacky race and Elterrat.com neatly styles Laporta as Peter Perfect, edging ahead of Bassat Pitstop.
There's only one real story behind it all, of course. Every newspaper both here and in the UK is dominated by the eventual destination of Britain's Mickey Mouse soundalike. Today's El Pais managed to compare him with both Hamlet and Harry Potter in the same article. Even ex-barça favourite Sir Bobby Robson has been drafted into the action, with one paper saying he thinks Becks would like Catalonia while another assures us that he actually called Beckingham Palace personally to beg Victoria to reconsider.
Just to prove that Beckham isn't the only footballer they've heard of, other candidates in the election have tried to whet the appetite with Van Nistlerooy, Christian Vieri and "an unnamed man in white" - ie someone who plays for Real Madrid. But to no avail. Without saying a single word about the fuss, it's St David OBE who'll win it or lose it and prospective British Prime Ministers would do well to take note.
Elsewhere in the manifestos, all the candidates seem to agree that the coach should be Ronald Koeman - despite Ajax refusing even an approach in his direction. However, that hardly matters. It's all, as Spencer Tunick would say, a bunch of arse. They're mostly playing fantasy football, and unlike Real they don't have the chequebook to back it up. But right now, that's hardly the point. So what if Beckham's agent says he won't go to barça? Who cares if Laporta only has a scribbled agreement on the back of a napkin from Manchester United? Who's actually listening to Bassat's whine of "what happens if Laporta wins and Beckham doesn't come? Will he give back the votes?" It's all about voting for the better-sounding dream.
Unfortunately, in the kerfuffle, the current team seems to have been forgotten. The Spanish season still hasn't finished and it's all rather close. If barça wants to qualify for the UEFA Cup, current manager Antic - who clearly has the support of none of the presidential candidates - has to motivate his players, such as his leading scorer who everyone promises to sell, into winning their last two games. Or it's the Intertoto Cup for them, a pointless summer holiday spoiler started in 1961 as a way of giving betting shops business off-season. (Toto is another word for "football pools")
Whoever wins the tomorrow's election - and by the time you read this, you'll probably know - they'd better get their apologies in first. For, when the white-shirted Becks takes his first corner at the Nou Camp, you can bet your totos it won't be Lancashire raindrops falling on his head.
UPDATE: Laporta won. But elsewhere, the fixture list has turned up a quirk. If barça want to qualify for the UEFA Cup, then they have to hope that Madrid win the league by beating Betis in the final game. For a club whose alternative motto may as well be 'anyone but them', which matters more? Spinoza would have a field day.