Music of choice to go with the article: la mano de dios
With FC Barcelona-Real Madrid scheduled four times in a row this spring and with municipal and regional elections due on 22 May, Spanish football has taken on political dimensions. Thanks in large part to the transcending impact of football south of the Pyrenees, the outcome of the series might very well determine the election results.
In Northern countries, football is seen as an activity ultimately governed by chance. The better team usually wins, but when a match is in the balance anything can happen, including fatal mistakes by the referee, and this fact is accepted as one of the game’s more charming characteristics. You win some, you lose some. That’s football for you. Fair play to all. The ball is round. While managers set up their teams in ways to minimise the impact of fate, when it comes to analysing the result those age old clichés are still considered bearers of a higher truth. Chin up, old man, tomorrow is another day.
In Spain, I have learned, all this is different. In Spanish football luck and chance do not exist, at least not in the minds of the millions of close followers of the game, beginning with those who shape public opinion with their match reports. According to the country’s football reporters a result is always just or else unavoidable, one team’s desire to win always greater than the other one’s. The press take pride in reading the game and they enjoy presenting round stories of last night‘s matches, rich with language and metaphor and always featuring a satisfying conclusion. It had to be like it was, any other result would have been unthinkable.
The harbinger of this logic is no other than the high priest of on-the-pitch events, the referee. In most countries a referee tries to be impartial and if he fails he will be suspended. In Spain the man in black is considered to be bestowed with the authority of God and, as an extension, of state. The game needs a story and a story needs its dramatic moments and who else but the referee can provide these? They are his eyes who see the foul and read intent, his deliberations which balance previous actions. It is in this view the referee’s responsibility that justice will be done. Yellow cards, red cards, penalty kicks, off-sides, disallowed goals, while elsewhere they are the consequence of how players are approaching a game, in Spain these game changers belong to the referee‘s toolkit for writing the story of the match he was appointed to lead. I cannot remember I ever saw so many matches being decided by ridiculous decisions as I have in my years watching football here. I can, in fact, hardly recall a single televised match in which the referee did not in more or less decisive ways try to influence the game.
Let’s take a typical league match as an example, with one team coming from the heartland and the other from one of those coastal regions where minds will never stop dreaming of independence. Being of the belief that Spain is a glorious unified nation rather than a loose congregation of separate cultures, tonight’s referee opts for a heartland win, the fact that the coastal team so far has shown superior strength regarded not so much as a reality but rather a challenge to his matchmaking abilities. A professional, the referee makes sure his very first decision clearly points to where his loyalties lie. A heartland foul is waved away and the ensuing protest by the victim immediately rewarded a yellow card. Fifteen minutes later the first big decision is due and it comes by way of a very light penalty, replay suggesting there wasn’t any contact at all. Heartland happily convert and the coast are facing an uphill battle with one goal down, two men on yellow and a referee who is consistently whistling every challenge in the heartland’s favour. When in the second half coastal pressure on the heartland goal is mounting the referee quickly sends off their forward for protesting a yellow card for diving, replay showing it was a full blood spot kick. A last gasp equaliser is always possible of course, but with twenty minutes left the coast winning it seems pretty far off. The referee starts feeling proud of himself and it shows in the smirk on his face every time he waves away the growing despair of the coast team. Another highly disruptive coast success has been obstructed.
To balance the sheets - a very important display of good faith in this country which never seems at ease with itself - a similar story can be written in favour of a coastal team. Lavishly praised for its attacking play, this particular coast club is expected to score heavily by both the crowd and the press and indeed the referee, and when things aren’t going their way the man in black eagerly helps out with an off-side goal and a string of lightly given free kicks around the box, two of them converted late into the match.
For many years I wondered who he did it for, our referee, why all of them have their preferences. I first thought they were instructed and perhaps paid for, but then I learned it has to do with politics. Not those of the corrupt variety but the ones of an honest belief in one’s personal views. Your typical self-styled Spanish arrogance. In the first example above the referee as a moral person feels no public event should endanger the Castilian project and as a guide he consciously uses his power to further these means, always the gentleman but never going to give in to the tiniest of claims. In the second it is perhaps the idea that beautiful football should prevail which guides the referee’s decisions.
Interestingly, there is little resistance against this powerful role of the referee. Although the losing side will always denounce unjust proceedings and sometimes even the winning side, in general there is not much objection to the idea the referee rules. He is perhaps an instrument in higher hands, and anyone in his place would have dealt the same divine providence. It was bound to happen. As idiotic as many decisions at first glance seem, there’s always a replay or else a pundit get-together to convince the public of the referee’s vision. In Spain, it seems people don’t like being wrong on hindsight.
Let us now see how all this is working out in the Madrid-Barça test series. For those trying to stay unaware, over a period of two and a half weeks FC Barcelona and Real Madrid will have met four times, first for the league, then the Spanish cup final and finally twice in the semi finals of the champions league, the cup with the big ears which Madrid won nine times and Barça so far three times. Barcelona play a fluent passing game based on continuous possession while Madrid under their current coach José Mourinho are basically out to destroy - firstly the match, then the opponent and finally the culture of football as a family friendly spectacle - all for the sake of seeing their name engraved in a piece of silverware. Elegance against vengeance, ballet against the boot, beauty against the beast - while until recently many viewers expected Barça to continue their dominance of the game, away from the spotlights the stage has been set for a change of course, nicely coinciding with new political realities.
With Barça eight points ahead, the league game was mostly a warm up for things to come, with the post match mood more important than the actual result. But the cup final was a wholly different affair. It is the spring of 2011 and an era is coming to its conclusion. Soon PP will destroy PSOE in the nationwide municipal elections and calls for ZP to step down will replace all urgent matters until he has given in to the greater good of the glorious nation and PP can once again exercise its rule of contempt for individual liberties and personal well-being. In the same vein Barcelona’s frivolous attitude towards football must be replaced by a more serious type of dominance. In PP’s strongly centralised vision of the country only Real Madrid can be the team to deliver such governance. A cup win, especially when followed by champions league success, thus might be the perfect step up towards securing a landslide victory on 22 May.
Mind you, this is no conspiracy of a few influential men, it is simply what many people think and one of them happened to be the referee, being of the persuasion that the Castilian project etc. So he allowed Madrid applying its tactics of intimidation and aggression to keep Barça at bay and when they did come through he arrogantly denied them a clean cut goal. Madrid went on to win it in extra time and the nation sighed with relief. Finally those moronic Catalans had been taught a good lesson. Bring on the election campaign!
A truly corrupt institution, by the way, is football’s governing body UEFA under Michel Platini. Over the last couple of years in the latter stages of both European cup tournaments referees have been carefully assigned to enhance preferred outcomes. In 2009 Barça was helped to the final and last year it was Internazionale’s turn. Whatever the result of Barça-Madrid, I have a feeling it is time again for ManU to lift the cup. Watch out for some ridiculous whistle blowing!
For a comprehensive overview of recent Barça-Madrid rivalries, watch this
