Robert Chalmers doesn't like... Real Madrid
This month, Robert Chalmers blows the whistle on the gluttonous Galácticos, talent plunderers and truly fearsome right wingers who have muddied the famed white shirt
Who else could sport an immaculate white outfit with quite such dignity and ease? A dental hygienist? The Pope? A virgin bride? There's a certain irony in
Real Madrid's association with the colour of innocence and purity, a strip so dazzlingly impractical that it is avoided by most amateur teams, even if it's the only one you ever see laundered in a detergent commercial. The trouble is that Madrid (even more than the infamous Leeds United side of the Sixties, who copied the kit) proved that there are some stains you can never quite wash out.
Enjoy watching Real Madrid? Welcome to your team, and their vicious history of fascism, bullying and arrogance, whose echoes endure to this day. Franco's boys, whose colour is also evocative of the "White Terror", in which the Generalissimo, butcher of Guernica, killed hundreds of thousands of people between 1936 and 1945. And whose stadium is named after Santiago Bernabéu, who served Franco under General Grandes (subsequently a commander of the general's Blue Division, who fought with the Nazis).
It would be unthinkable for a player with an awareness of political injustice ever to have worn the white jersey. Johan Cruyff, who laid the foundations of the current Barcelona side, said in 1973 that he could never even have contemplated joining "a team associated with Franco".
Real Madrid is the natural home for pampered mercenaries with salaries inflated by absurd TV revenue (Real Madrid and
Barcelona each receive almost 20 times more than their smaller rivals; ten times the differential in England). They are a club where the manager,
José Mourinho, can poke a finger into the eye of an opposing coach and escape with a fine of €600. In the Bernabéu, as recently as eight years ago, the fascist-saluting Ultras Sur had a room where they stored their regalia: part of the litany of shame recounted in undercover reporter Antonio Salas' book
Diario De Un Skin [
Diary Of A Skinhead, 2003]. The Ultras refer to Catalans as the "Jews of Spain" and, after games, roam the streets looking to attack blacks, prostitutes and gays.
In 2001, the then club president, Florentino Pérez, wiped out all debt by selling Real's training ground to Madrid council, run by the right-wing Partido Popular, whose leader, José María Aznar, was Spanish prime minister and a loyal supporter. The purchase price of €480m was seen as generous.
With Madrid... there's a kind of toxic hubris that passes from generation to generation, like a bad gene
No wealthy club is free of allegations of dubious practice and unpalatable supporters (in Barcelona's case, the psychopathic Boixos Nois). With Madrid though, there's a kind of toxic hubris that passes from generation to generation, like a bad gene.
I have to declare an interest at this point; I lived in Barcelona for three years. Normally it's hard for an outsider to develop affection for a club, but FC Barcelona, universally welcoming to the newcomer, somehow make it easy. Franco banned all public use of Catalan. The stadium was the only place where residents could speak their language: the principal reason that Barcelona are, as their motto declares, "More than a club".
Comedian Andy Hamilton's ironic confession that, when watching
Chelsea, he is troubled by images of the Stamford Bridge turf "stained with the blood of innocent Russian peasants" might carry some resonance in Barcelona, whose club president, Josep Sunyol, was shot dead in 1936 by Franco supporters.
Real Madrid have never been convicted of bribing or intimidating referees. Certain incidents have, however, raised suspicion in some quarters. In 1943, before a cup semifinal in Barcelona, Franco's feared director of state security entered the Catalans' dressing room and gave a team talk. Madrid won 11-1.
In 1966, when Real Madrid played Barcelona at the Bernabéu, with the score at 0-0, referee Ortiz de Mendíbil played eleven minutes of time-added-on, until Madrid scored. The official claimed his watch had stopped. In a 1970 game between the old enemies, Madrid were beneficiaries of bizarre decisions from referee Emilio Guruceta who, months later, owned a
BMW. (In 1977, the president of Anderlecht admitted having bribed Guruceta before a UEFA Cup semifinal against Nottingham Forest.)
Spain's self-styled "Gentlemen's Club" are probably the worst losers in the world
Franco died in 1975. Does it really matter now that Madrid robbed Barcelona of Alfredo Di Stéfano - the Argentine genius who had already moved to Barcelona and played two matches in the Catalan team's shirt, before an unsavoury manoeuvre co-ordinated by Franco's favourite, General Moscardó, forced a move to the Bernabéu? Yes, because Di Stéfano was the pivotal figure in the legendary Madrid team of Francisco Gento and Ferenc Puskás. The procurement of Di Stéfano was a complex process explained in Phil Ball's superbly definitive book Morbo [new edition 2010]. A pragmatic approach to transfers endures.
"One of the obnoxious things about Real Madrid," a well-known commentator told me, "is their pursuit of top players. Tap him up; destabilise him, then offer to help the selling club off-load an 'unsettled employee'." In the closed season of 2009 alone, Madrid spent £225m on Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká, Karim Benzema, Xabi Alonso and Raúl Albiol.
Spain's self-styled "Gentlemen's Club" are probably the worst losers in the world. Wealth and connections are not always enough, even if an institution like Real Madrid, historically prepared to employ almost any means to achieve success, are always likely to get at least some of what they want. But then, as the legendary writer Arthur Hopcraft once observed, in another context, "there are ways and ways of winning. But if the opportunity for victory in a sport is not even - if things are not on a level footing - that's when a reasonable person starts to ask themselves the question: 'What's the point?'"
من بازی رو ندیدم و نمیتونم نظری راجع به بازی بدم. فقط یدونه عکس توی FB دیدم که گذاشتم و خواستم نظر دوستان رو بدونم. باز هم برد رو به دوست داران رءال تبریک میگم.
