I spent twelve hours sorting through the clichés and evasions trying to get to the truth, only to realize that the truth was in the cliché. Early in the first half, maybe even before the game started, Phil Schoen said Pellegrini would be fired if Madrid lost, because “right or wrong, that’s just how Madrid do business.” After the match (this is where my mind was: I watched the press conferences), someone asked Pellegrini whether he’d be back next year, and he said, “As far as coming back, that’s not up to me.” Then they asked him whether he deserved to come back, and he said, “As far as deserving, that’s not up to me.” Which was a cold dose of theology for that hour on an April night.
The match itself was what you saw; there’s not a lot of need for analysis. Guardiola’s weird tactics in the first half (Dani Alves as a quasi-winger, Puyol as a right back) seemed to throw Madrid off not so much because they reconfigured Barça’s attack as because the Madrid players were never sure who was coming at them from what angle defensively, with the result that most of their breakaways ended with them cunningly dribbling right into the space a defender was closing in on. Barcelona’s midfield dominated the entire game (Xavi had 60% of the possession by himself, stop the presses) in part because Madrid attacked a three-man Barça unit with Xabi Alonso and Gago, who would have been outnumbered against a two-man Barça unit. Diarra—I mean Lassana, but I’m embarrassed to call him Lass—stayed on the bench, where his ability to win the ball was relatively useless. Thus: Barça hoarding possession and building unhurried attacks; Madrid, that is, Ronaldo, blaring down the field into nothingness.
A lot of obvious points that made up a clever, efficient win for Barcelona and that, by themselves, don’t say much about why this match took on an air of unwholesome doom or why it melted my Twitter account. That was something else, and not just “Spanish Bombs” or the usual brisk telemetry of this rivalry. These two teams became the crux of all conflict in world football this year not because they’re historic rivals or because Real Madrid were the only obstacle standing between Barcelona and lasting greatness (at the moment they aren’t even standing between Lyon and lasting greatness) but because the logic of their rivalry has locked them into a deliberate, accelerated, exaggerated polarization of meanings that goes far beyond the usual contained enmities of a derby clash.
Yes, the Civil War stuff is part of that, as how could it not be, but it has just as much to do with the procedural realities of being a soccer club every day. That black sword hanging over Pellegrini, who’s so in thrall to the power of Pérez that he can’t even judge what he deserves, isn’t just “how Madrid do business,” it’s how they do business in response to how Barça do business. It’s been that way for years, of course, but Madrid’s reaction to Barça’s rise to prominence over the last few seasons took the contrast out of all restraint. If Barça were going to hire an untested young coach, a beloved former player for the club, and shower him with faith and support, Madrid were going to hire a successful outsider and keep him beholden and terrified. If Barça were going to build a team carefully around a specific, articulated style of play, Madrid were going to build a team by devouring superstars and foaming in a sea of money. If Barça were going to make themselves a joyful superpower, dedicated to openness and beauty and everything else Més que un club is supposed to represent, Madrid were going to abandon all pretense of valuing anything but crushing their opponents at soccer. How do you say “only a club” in Spanish? Barcelona gave up $100 million to donate their shirt sponsorship to a children’s charity. Madrid spent $100 million on Kaká, then chopped down a lilac tree and slit the throat of a new faun in public.
Again, this isn’t only a media narrative. It’s how the clubs have actually acted. You can take your pick between them—it’s certainly possible to find Barcelona cloying and prefer the frankness of Madrid’s designs, i.e. “they’re exactly the same, only Madrid are honest about it”—but you can’t deny that the contrast is real or that, for the moment, it’s crystallized the possibilities for meaning in top-level soccer. It’s a cliché to say that a game is about “more than the result,” but when Messi and Xavi calmly link up down the spine of the Bernabéu, they’re saying something about the game as much as about this game. It’s a cliché for a manager to declare that the future isn’t up to him, but when Pellegrini declares that Pérez controls what he deserves as well as what he receives, he’s saying something about the massive granite ministry of justice at the heart of not only Real Madrid but a lot of big clubs besides.
Barcelona fans like to talk about how lucky we are to be able to watch their team play. “Just enjoy it, man,” Ray Hudson said to Phil and the world on GolTV last night. But the truth is that we’re lucky to have both sides of this rivalry, if for no other reason than that the extreme contrast between them tells us more about each side than we could tell from that side alone. The more they lock in on each other, the more they explain themselves. Madrid’s ruthlessless clarifies Barcelona’s commitment to style: Barcelona’s style becomes not just a style but an anti-ruthlessness, which in turn raises its stakes as a style. And Barça’s flair and jubilance, particularly in the amazing ascendancy they’ve enjoyed these last two seasons, draws out and intensifies Madrid’s ambition by giving it a taunting, maddening, elusive, frustrating target, one that Madrid will spend insane sums of money and burn miles of bridges to catch.
Watching the game, I kept thinking of Seamus Heaney’s line about Goya’s Fight with Cudgels, “that holmgang / Where two berserks club each other to death / For honour’s sake, greaved in a bog, and sinking.” That’s what this rivalry feels like right now. Only one side isn’t sinking.
Read More: Barcelona, Real Madrid
by Brian Phillips · April 11, 2010
The Simplest Game Community
Ace review, Brian. My hopeless man crush on Xavi just went to DEFCON 1. More proof of the greatness of Guardiola too, even if Alves was woeful in that advanced position.
There was no trace of teamwork in Madrid’s play. Ronaldo was impressive intermittently but mostly childish. His body language compared to Messi’s… says it all.
And what a player Pedro is becoming.
the run of play: the internet’s premier source for soccer commentary by seamus heaney.
@stowe Well, we once sent Yeats to a Newcastle game, so I guess it’s just the logical next step.
Xavi, Messi, Guardiola / Odysseus, Achilles, Old King Nestor : Homer would have been so lucky to use the cast of warriors engaged in last night’s Clasico. Barça are certainly the Greek ἀρίστοι, showing their ἀρετή (to steal back from the blind bard).
Again, fantastic writing, Brian. I look forward to your honest and artistic take on this beautiful game.
@Brian Phillips “And coming up next week on the Run of Play, Nobel Laureate Dario Fo debuts a series of short monolgues which explore Roberto Di Matteo’s chances of keeping West Brom in the top flight next season.”
Spot on, Brian.
If we recall last years match at the Nou Camp, where Real were beaten 2-o, the thing was hailed as something of a victory in Madrid.
Why? Because Real had proven that they had a heart, a soul and thus could live to fight another day.
This match however proved that Real sold their heart to make room for Florentino Perez. They have nothing. The Merengues are becoming more and more invisible.
PS: Is our love of Messi increased by the hate we have of Ronaldo?
@Joao Jorge – mine certainly is. Watching Messi pop up after a foul, quickly re-start and take off on a run to create the first goal, I thought to myself, “It’s not that CR9 can’t do that–it’s that he doesn’t.”
“Madrid spent $100 million on Kaká, then chopped down a lilac tree and slit the throat of a new faun in public.”
Sure, but who can forget the totally unscripted moment at Kaká’s unveiling when that adorable local boy toddled over to play with the still twitching faun?
I know I’m a huge nerd, but reading the end of the first section, all I could think about was New Genesis and Apokolips in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga.
“how do you say ‘only a club’ in spanish?” that’s brilliant. and i agree with the crux of this article, but barca isn’t exactly pure altruism. don’t forget that they got mr. ibrahimovic for a total value of 69 euros. he didn’t exactly come up from their youth system. excess is excess.
ibra really ruins barca for me. i hate the guy. they were much easier for me to enjoy when they had eto’o.
er…69 million euros
@stowe sounds like a great idea for a guest post! I’m on it….
As for Brian’s slightly different Madrid bashing is not media hype – media angle, I remain unconvinced. Everybody forgets the Quinta del Buitre when Madrid dominated La Liga in the 80s with homegrown players. Has the youth scouting system fallen into shambles? Yes. But Ibrahimovic did not exactly grow up speaking Catalan and attending cultural activities at La Masia
@Elliott But who’s talking about youth systems? I love Ibrahimović at Barça. It’s silly to think that top clubs in this climate are going to win trophies with players who grew up in the shadow of the stadium; the question is how you spend your money and what priorities you reveal. And Ibra sends a very different signal from Cristiano Ronaldo.
yeah, i’m not an all-out madrid apologist, but they even have a reasonable amount of home grown talent on their team now. guti, raul, casillas. i mean, guti and raul are on their last legs, but they’ve been there for years, with raul even being their all-time leading scorer.
right now, though, madrid certainly are going about doing things the wrong way. although, the galacticos aren’t failures yet. before the season everyone was saying, ‘be patient, it’ll take a year to get things comfortable.’ and then it seemed like madrid was surpassing expectations by gelling at all, so failure became not an option somewhat prematurely.
@Brian Phillips the youth systems aren’t a part of this article, but it’s definitely a big part of the barca myth. ‘we grow our players. madrid just buys them.’ they even had a little quip about it at the beginning of the telecast.
i also agree that it’s the message that the money sends, but frankly, they just bought ibra because he scored a goal every single game for inter, so it’s reasonable to expect him to score goals anywhere.
I watched this game with my brother and a new friend (a Roma supporter from Sweden) and to be honest, I found it a little boring. Perhaps I expected more after spending a good hour the previous day explaining the ferocity of the rivalry between Barcelona and Madrid to a female friend interested in the passion of football culture, but I though it fell a bit flat.
In saying that, there were two things that I learnt from this game that I wouldn’t have known unless I watched it, so I am happy.
The first was that Leo Messi, for all his depiction as some sort of perfect angel that cannot do a thing wrong, can play street football for the best of them. I wouldn’t call any of what he did gamesmanship but he certainly milked a couple of fouls and the way he quickly restarted play after exaggerating contact for the first goal showed his incredible desire to win. In a funny way that was an more beautiful than watching him go on one of his hyperactive runs.
The second was that Pep Guardiola is quite the tactician. What an utterly bizarre formation and it worked superbly. He might have a brilliant team at his disposal but the best managers are the ones that are proactive rather than reactive and he certainly displayed some real genius.
@Andrew Weber. ..beautifully bizarre
pity me who missed the lineup announcement and had to sleuth the formation. I determined it was either a 5-4-3, 4-5-3, 5-5-2 depeding on where Dani, Carles and their respective doppelgangers were positioned.
@Brian Phillips …please don’t get blog-injured or traded to an upperdivision literary outlet. Visca RunOfPlay.
Valdes, Puyol, Pique, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Pedro. Eight players of Barca’s first team are homegrown. What would you expect, 11 out of 11? That’s childish. When Pep decided he wanted someone else instead of Eto’o, there were only 3 choices: Forlan, Villa and Ibrahimovic. Forlan was way too expensive considering his age so the choice had to be made between Villa and Ibra. Barca offered 45 million euros + Keirrison but Valencia wanted over 50 million and Laporta said “no” because if he bought Villa than Eto’o would have stayed another year and Barca would have lost 20 million euros. So he opted for Ibrahimovic, paying 49 million and Eto’o (also saving his salary for a year). Very good call IMO because Barca needed one of the best attackers to replace Sammy. Ibra is one of the best in the world and altough he had a hard time adjusting to the football played in Spain, he has scored 20 goals this season. Plus, he also has 8 assists. Messi benefits when Ibra is on the pitch because the Swede creates more spaces for Leo. I love this Barca with Ibra up front.
This reminded me of your penultimate paragraph:
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
@Evan I always thought the Eto’o-Ibra deal made tons more sense that what…well, everyone, gave it credit for. It wasn’t a 79 million outlay, as someone wrote here previously, it was the sensible thing to do given Eto’o's (that was weird to type) reluctance to re-up his contract which would run out this summer. Offering him as balance to Inter actually saved them (Barca) money, rather than waste it.
When you write, I feel compelled to read it out loud, slow and near-monotone. I feel compelled to say “Seamus” and “anti-ruthlessness” with a deliberate weight.
@Jay *afraid to ask whether that’s a good thing*
gotta feel sorry for Pellegrini, how can you coach with that kind of pressure. It’s interesting that in both games this season, both teams have been missing major stars from their line-ups.
sweet use of goya… it made me think of a piece on the opposite wall of the prado (not far from the bernabeu, really) which i think works as a nice lyrical portrait of mr. perez: http://theabysmal.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/saturn.jpg
@Georgian Florentino, devourer of managers? Not quite in my book. He’s more of a sower of gold coins, visually a cross between Van Gogh and Rembrandt (Dutchmen, you see). And more of a chucker than a sower, if truth be told.
While the Barca socio in me would like to see nothing better than the blaugrana lifting the cup with large ears in the home of the evil empire, I cannot deny that there would be a certain poetic justice in the final being contested by teams led by Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder.
…and hows about the wink from The Messi to The Foookin’ Winker? Brill..
@ursus arctos If only we could get Huntelaar in there, right? *ducks*
@ursus arctos I was thinking of the ones being devoured as the fresh, pure talents (kaka, benzema) swept into the bosom of the beast, who now seem both set adrift and spiritually sullied by the experience… although stories of sneijder and robben provide the hope of escape, rebirth, and cleansing.
@Georgian Ah, I see that a bit more than the devourer of managers meme, though I do wonder if you may be taking Kaka’s t-shirts a bit too literally; he began to go off the boil during his last season at Milan. And Benzema strikes me as undigestible for even the hardened omnivore. On the other hand, Brian’s suggestion of Huntelaar may be something to work with; he certainly has been playing as if he was headless since he left the Bernabeu.
And I know that I am taking all this much too literally, but there’s also the question of Saturn’s hairstyle, which is much more Hugo Gatti than Florentino or Valdano. If we had had photoshop during Gatti’s pomp, someone would have re-done Saturn in a Boca kit, with a powerless River player in his grasp.
@Brian Phillips Charles Bukowski worked at a pickle factory, but his words mean more when you speak them out loud, even if you’re the only one to hear them. It’s a complement.
Interesting take, I thought the game was a little flat to be honest. Some good football in flashes from both sides though it can’t be denied that Barcelona deserved to win the game.
When I first started watching Spanish football, 1988 roughly, Real had the likes of Butragueno, Hugo Sanchez, Michel et al and played superb football. They were fantastic to watch back then, they seem to have spent twenty years buying into the press perpetuated celebrity that is ruining the game throughout Europe. For all their beautiful passing and intricate triangles, the thing that impresses me the most about Barcelona is the team ethic they have created. The pursuit of individual glory is always second to collective success. They press teams as a unit, play simple balls into space and follow their mantra of pass, offer, receive – I read a fantastic interview with Iniesta recently.
The difference outside La Masia and Barcelona in general is that there is very little selflessness in football now. Players are pandered to from the age of 14 or so, concessions made for their every whim if they have any talent whatsoever. Once they buy into the hype, once they believe they are better than the people who pay their wages, that’s when they seem to lose their hunger for the game in favour of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, rant over.
Guess you’re a Madrid fan Brian?