If you didn’t get to watch, nor haven’t heard the news, the world did not end Monday night in Barcelona–although no doubt there are a good number of people in Madrid who would disagree, as the result was almost as surprising and devastating as the apocalypse itself. 5-0 for Barcelona. Yes, 5-0.
We’ll be back up in here with additional commentary. For now, we give you some video highlights (down below at the bottom), and direct you once again to read Sid Lowe (who provides the best commentary in English on La Liga, at least that we’ve come across). His column this morning in the Guardian is headlined “Barcelona, the ‘Orgasm Team’, win another epoch-defining clásico” (you’ll have to read all the way to the bottom of the column for the orgasm allusion), with subhead: “It was not that they thrashed Madrid 5-0, defeated Mourinho and his unbeaten €292m team. It was that they did it their way.” And his first five paragraphs are devoted to explaining la manita:
Eric Abidal raised his hand. Gerard Piqué raised his. And the crowd that engulfed Jeffren Suárez raised theirs. Víctor Valdés raised his hand, latex glistening in the light. Soon the Camp Nou raised its hands. So did the fans that gathered down the Ramblas – palms open, fingers outstretched as if willing the nails to grow. Not far away, a hand was raised on the front cover of Sport. On the back, their cartoonist was taking the easy way out. “Today, instead of drawing,” he wrote, “I have decided to scan my hand.” So he did.
El Mundo Deportivo: "Super Manita!"
Meanwhile, right about the time Andrés Iniesta was posting pictures in his pants, in a warehouse somewhere they were already rushing off a batch of T-shirts to go with the Barça tupperware, Barça knives and Barça tool set. Blue and yellow and yours for just €9.95. On the back it reads: “great theatre”. On the front it doesn’t read anything much. Just the dateline and the score from last night’s clásico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid: Camp Nou, 29/11/2010. 5-0. And, above that, a giant yellow hand.
Jeffren’s late goal made little difference, but it made all the difference. Madrid were already being humiliated. José Mourinho, already suffering his worst ever defeat as a coach, felt “impotent”, barely moving as fans chanted for him to “come out the dugout! José, come out the dugout!” It was already 4-0 and into additional time and Almería’s Henok Goitom,thrashed 8-0 by Barcelona last weekend, had long-since noted: “I know how you feel: you just want the game to finish.” But the game had not finished, not yet. The fifth goal had to arrive and when it did, it mattered. It turned a baño – a bath, a drubbing – into a manita, a little hand. A goal for every finger. The most perfect of beatings.
Especially for Barcelona. Because if manitas are symbolic in Spain – and even fans of Racing Santander have their T-shirt – in Barcelona there’s something even more emblematic about them. If Abidal didn’t know exactly what the gesture meant, Piqué, son of a Barça director and asoci from birth, certainly does. Last week, after that win in Almería, Cristiano Ronaldo had shrugged: “I’d like to see them get eight on Monday.” They could have done and eight would have been great, but somehow five, while fewer, feels more fitting today.
When El Mundo Deportivo called it a Super Manita, everyone in Catalunya knew what they were measuring it against. This was the fifth time Barcelona had defeated Real Madrid 5-0. Beyond 1934-35 and 1944-45, two linger in the memory: the 1973 team led by Johan Cruyff the player and the 1994-95 Dream Team led by Cruyff the coach. No one could watch last night and not recall Cruyff. Or Romário. Just in case, television programmes drew on the archive. Last night two epoch-defining victories became three.
See below for the best video clip we’ve found so far on footytube. At least you get to see all five goals, although not much more, and with commentary in German. Hopefully we’ll find some more extensive game film, and break down how exactly Barça was able to tiki-taka it’s way to la manita.
UPDATE: Via footytube, a 26min highlight reel from the French Canal+, hosted by the somewhat sketchy-seeming rutube.ru:
We find it useful to have full squad lists in front of us while watching a match. Find below Real Madrid’s and Barcelona’s, pulled from Wikipedia (with links conveniently preserved, so that you can click thru to each player’s entry), as well as each team’s starting XIs for today’s El Clasico.
Spain's Starting XI - World Cup 2010 (Casillas, Iniesta, Villa, Xavi, Puyol; Pedro, Busquets, Ramos, Xabi Alonso, Capdevila, Pique
Spain obviously dominates the squads–but Barcelona’s much more than Madrid’s. In fact, Barcelona’s starting lineup consists of the core of Spain’s World Cup winning lineup (Pique, Puyol, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Pedro Villa), with a couple wingbacks slotted in (Dani Alves certainly; and either Abidal, Maxwell or Adriano on the other side)–plus Messi front and center.
The other Spanish starters start for Madrid: Iker Casillas, Xabi Alonso, Sergio Ramos. (Well, 7+3=10; the one missing Spanish starter from this match is Joan Capdevila, who plays for Villareal.) The rest of Madrid’s starting lineup is pulled from Portugal (Cristiano Ronaldo, Ricardo Carvalho, Pepe), Germany (Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira), Argentina (Gonzalo Higuain, Angel di Maria) and Brazil (Marcelo). Although today we get Benzema (France) starting in place of Higuain due to injury.
It’s no wonder that Sid Lowe saw the need to talk us down from all the El Clásico hype–before talking it up:
Contrary to what you might have heard, the world will not end on Monday night. The sun will rise on Tuesday morning. And there is life beyond the clásico. It’s just that right now, it doesn’t feel like it — it feels like nothing else matters, like no other games exist, like no other teams do. Every year Barcelona versus Madrid, already the biggest club game in world soccer, seems to get bigger. Even the old title seems worthless now. Derby? No thanks, this is the clásico. It’s even moved on from that. Now it’s the Super Clásico. Carry on like this and soon we’ll run out of superlatives.
And it’s certainly superlative. It’s almost ridiculous….Whichever way you look at it, this is probably the most extraordinary club match there has ever been. Until the next time, at least.
In terms of talent per square meter, you could argue that there has never been a game like it. It is possible that no two teams have ever dominated the planet’s talent like Barcelona and Madrid do now.
To get a better idea of how all that talent will matchup on the field today, take a look at this, which lists five key matchups to watch (1. Carles Puyol/Daniel Alves vs Cristiano Ronaldo/Ángel Di Maria; 2. Javier Mascherano or Sergio Busquets vs Mesut Ozil; 3. Ricardo Carvalho/Pepe versus David Villa; 4. Sami Khedira vs Xavi Hernández; 5. José Mourinho vs Pep Guardiola); or this, which gives a longer and largely different list of matchups–but closes with the same managerial matchup:
"Por que tu es un canalla"
José Mourinho vs. Pep Guardiola from the sidelines, in the locker rooms, in front of the press, and on the training pitch. The Special One is the best in the world outside of Pep or Sir Alex at this point in time. But, it’s hard to pick a clear favorite here being that Mourinho won a Treble last year, while Guardiola won six trophies the season before. Last year, Mourinho won-out eliminating Barcelona from the Champions League. Has Guardiola learned from that lesson? I think he has. However, I see this coaching-bout being a draw between Emperor Mourinho Palpatine and Pep Skywalker Guardiola.
That latter preview also mentions each side’s most-used formations (4-2-3-1 for Real Madrid, 4-3-3 for Barcelona’sand For more on tactics, see Zonal Marking’s detailed tactical preview, which includes the probable starting lineups shown below. For squad statistics, play around with Marca.com’s nice interactive graphic.
Not only is the dislike between the two clubs an interesting phenomenon in sporting terms, it also has implications that stray deeply into the sociology and politics of the country. It might not be going too far to say that the strife and struggles between the two clubs from 1905 onwards accurately mirror the very essence of twentieth-century Spanish history. The two cities have always been moving in different directions, partly through bloody-mindedness, partly through political allegiance, but mainly through clear cultural differences.
A supporter of Real Madrid seems a very distinct creature from a supporter of Barcelona, a fact that cannot be attributed wholly to the fact that they probably talk about football in a different language. Madrid is a bourgeois, grand, rather suffocating sort of city on first acquaintance. The surrounding countryside is bleak and bare, – suggestive of some harshness in the citizens. To an outsider it is not a welcoming city – its taxi drivers grumpy and sullen, its waiters coldly efficient, its shops too self-consciously trendy. Madrid was built on and is sustained by the notion of centralisation – in this century exemplified by Franco’s obsessive opposition to regional nationalism, which he regarded as one of the principal reasons for the turmoil of Spain’s ill-fated second republic.
Madrid was symbolically in the geographical centre of the country, put there by Felipe II in the mid-sixteenth century. It is part and parcel of the Madrid-Barcelona morbo that the latter seems to inhabit a different planet. Despite the fact that Madrid has the Prado, the seat of government and the royal family, according to John Hopper’s book The New Spaniards almost all the ideas that have shaped Spain’s modern history – republicanism, federalism, anarchism, syndicalism and communism – have found their way into Spain by way of Catalonia.
We’re back once again with our recommendations on when exactly you should plant yourself on your couch or local pub stool this weekend. Again using SoccerInsider’s full TV listing as a reference, here we go, with some notes from various members of the CultFootball collective:
Saturday Oct 30
Striker, Goal Scorer, Contortionist
Manchester United-Spurs 12:30 p.m. FSC: a matchup of the 3rd and 5th place teams in the EPL table, with goal-scoring players in form on both sides (Chicharito and Nani for Man U, Gareth Bale and Rafael van der Vaart for Spurs)
Barcelona-Sevilla 4 p.m. ESPN Deportes: One of the more challenging La Liga games for Barca, especially since Sevilla seems to finally coming into form (6th in the table) after a slow start, and their Brazilian WC2010 star Luis Fabiano back in the lineup and finding the back of the net.
Those are the two matches to make time for, but if you need a couple additional matches to fill out your day:
Hercules-Real Madrid 2 p.m. GolTV: It’ll be interesting to see if Real Madrid can keep up their recent dominating form (well, last week’s scoreless draw against 3rd division Murcia in a Copa del Rey game excepted), or conversely whether Hércules can pull off another upset.
AC Milan-Juventus 2:30 p.m. FSC: AC Milan is 2nd in the Serie A table, and has an exciting set of big names in attack: Ronaldhino, Pato, Robinho, Ibrahimovic, Seedorf, while Juve is in 5th. See Goal.com’s rundown of key individual matchups here.
And since the MLS playoffs have started, a Saturday night special…
San Jose-New York 10 p.m. Telefutura: Sounds like Thierry Henry will miss this match due to an injury, but the Red Bulls have a number of players to watch: Rafa Marquez, the Mexican international recently arrived from Barcelona; Estonian Joel Lindpere; Jamaican Dane Richards; and Senegalese-American goalkeeper Bouna Coundoul (see this NY Daily News article about his journey from Senegal to the Bronx to high school in Manhattan, and eventually to the MLS).
Sunday Oct 31
Palermo-Lazio 7:30 a.m. FSP: Roman side Lazio sits atop Serie A, while Palermo is in 8th. We’ll refer you to Goal.com for eachside‘s rosters, recent team news, and standard formations.
Stan Cummins (sunderland) 1980's tyne-wear derby
Newcastle-Sunderland 9:30 a.m. FSP: The Tyne-Wear derby. Overlooked step-sister Sunderland have held their own against Newcastle on the pitch over the years, if not in international fame. Always good to share your name with a tasty brew.
Bolton-Liverpool noon FSC: Liverpool played well last week, and Fernando Torres finally scored, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can build on that—and work their way up in the table.
And one more—another MLS playoff game, featuring the star-studded Galaxy:
Matchday 2.2 - Wed Sept 29Yesterday was UEFA Champions LeagueMatchday 2.1, with 8 matches all across the continent. There were games in the west–highly touted Real Madrid going into Auxerre (Burgundy, Franc) and escaping with a 1-0 win–and games in the east–Shaktar Donetsk (eastern Ukraine) hosting and destroying Braga of Portugl (score: 3-0).
Matchday 2.2 is today, with 8 more matches featuring the other 16 teams. All of them kick off at 2:45pm ET, except for one: FC Barcelona goes even further east, to play FK Rubin Kazan on their home field (Kazan being the 6th largest city in Russia, and the capital of Tatarstan (see below the fixture list):
Wednesday, September 29
Group A
Internazionale v Werder Bremen @ Giuseppe Meazza (Milan, ITA)
Tottenham Hotspur v Twente Enschede @ White Hart Lane (London, ENG)
Group B
Hapoel Tel Aviv v Lyon @ Ramat Gan Stadium (Tel Aviv, ISR)
Schalke 04 v BenficaB @ Veltins-Arena (Gelsenkirchen, GER)
Group C
Rangers v Bursaspor @ Ibrox Stadium (Glasgow, SCO)
Valencia v Manchester United @ Mestalla (Valencia, ESP) – FSC & FSE @ 2:45pmET
Group D
FK Rubin Kazan v Barcelona @ Central Stadium Kazan (Kazan, RUS) – FSC & FSE @ 12:30pmET
Panathinaikos v FC Copenhagen @ Athens Olympic Stadium (Athens, GRE)
It was an interesting weekend in Europe, filled with unexpected results–the big dogs all across the continent came up short. Chelsea, Arsenal, Inter Milan, and Bayern Munich all suffered ignominious defeats, while Manchester United and Real Madrid could only manage disappointing draws. The only power that didn’t disappoint their supporters was Barcelona, which won convincingly. (Question: Are there other European club sides that rank with these six?)
In England, previously perfect Chelsea lost to Manchester City 1-0, the lone goal coming off a tremendous individual effort by Man City’s dogged and talented Argentine captain, Carlos Tevez. (Keep scrolling down for video of Tevez’s goal, among others.)
But the two sides chasing Chelsea in the standings failed to capitalize: Man U had to come from behind twice to salvage a 2-2 draw against Bolton. That was far better than Arsenal, who were shockingly down 3-0 against unheralded West Brom late in the 2nd half. Two late strikes by the young Frenchman Samir Nasri (a replay of one of which is included below) made the score a more respectable-looking 3-2, but Arsenal came off their home pitch with many more questions than points.
Meanwhile, on the Continent, Inter Milan and Bayern Munich, last season’s Champions League finalists, and the clear favorites to win their respective domestic leagues, both lost as well. Bayern lost 2-1 to minnows Mainz, while Inter went down 1-0 to AS Roma–a club with a rich history, but this year’s edition had struggled at the start of this season.
But last year’s Champions League finalists and their respective pursuits of finishing atop Serie A or the Bundes Liga are secondary compared to the annual epic struggle between Barcelona and Real Madrid for the La Liga title. The drama d’Espana is especially intense this year, as Real Madrid have of course brought in The Special One, whose tasks are to win the Champions League and La Liga–any less will be considered a failure by the demanding Madridistas–and by Mourinho himself. But Mourinho’s Madrid failed to bring the flair, being held to a very surprising scoreless draw against Levante. Meanwhile, Barcelona beat Athletic Bilbao 3-1, slipping ahead of Real Madrid in the table, though still second to surprising Valencia.
For more on these matches, check the links below–and the videos.
What is arguably the World Cup of club soccer starts later today–the UEFA Champions League. Like the World Cup, it features most of the top players in the world, and consists of 32 teams that will compete in a group stage to advance to a knockout phase. Unlike the World Cup, however, it’s an annual affair–and stretches over 8 months, with this year’s final to be played on Saturday May 28, on the storied pitch of Wembley Stadium.
The group phase starts today, with “Matchday 1” consisting of 8 matches today (Tuesday Sept 14): 2 games in each in Groups and 8 matches tomorrow (Wednesday Sept 15). Today’s 8 matches feature the 16 teams in Groups A, B, C, and D, with tomorrow’s from the other 4 groups (E, F, G, and H).
Looking ahead, the group stage consists of 6 Tuesday-Wednesday “Matchdays” to allow for home-and-away round robin within in each group (each team needs to play the other 3 teams in its group twice–hence 6 matches): Sept 14-15, Sept 28-29, Oct 19-20, Nov 2-3, Nov 23-24, and Dec 7-8. The top two teams in each group will advance to the knockout phase, with the Round of 16 matches February 15-23 and March 8-16 in the new year; the quarterfinals April 5-6 and April 12-13; the semifinals April 26-27 and May 3-4; and the final on May 28.
We’ve got full details on the Matchday 1 fixtures below, but here’s what jumps out at us among today’s 8 matches (and what to watch):
(1) Defending champion Inter Milan starts its campaign for two in a row today against Dutch side Twente Enschede; this match is on Fox Soccer Channel (FSC; and like all of today’s and tomorrow’s matches, kicks off at 2:45pm ET). Ironically, Inter is led on the field by Dutch midfielder and World Cup star Wes Sneijder; but unlike last year, they won’t be led by manager Jose Mourinho (called by some “the special one”), who has moved to Real Madrid, in an attempt to try to repeat his managing success there. See here for some coverage of how Mourinho has taken to some sniping at his successor at Inter, Rafa Benitez.
(2) Tottenham Hotspur squeezed into the competition a couple weeks ago, by eliminating Young Boys of Switzerland in qualifying; see John Lally’s preview of that game for some idea of what it means for Spurs to be back in Europe. They’ll visit Werder Bremen today; you can watch that one when it’s rebroadcast on Fox Sports Espanol at 5pm ET.
(3) Manchester United stays at home, hosting Scottish side Rangers. The story line here is Wayne Rooney, who returns to the field after Sir Alex Ferguson kept him on the bench this past Saturday against Everton (the club that signed him at the age of 10!)–ostensibly to spare him what would have been graphic but creative verbal abuse, following Rooney’s domination of the English tabloids last week (see here if you missed that story!). That game is being televised live on Fox Sports Net (FSN; as they say, check your local listings), but will be rebroadcast on Fox Sports Espanol (FSE) at 7pm ET.
(4) Finally, the match we’ll likely be watching at CultFootball HQ this afternoon: Barcelona vs. Panathinaikos at the Camp Nou, live on FSE. Barcelona was the favorite to win the Champions League last year, only to be foiled in the semifinals by Mourinho’s Milanese defense. They’re coming off a shocking home loss over the weekend, so it will be interesting to see how they fare today.
See below for the full list of today’s and tomorrow’s fixtures.
The shocking result from this past weekend’s La Liga fixtures was Barcelona losing on the Camp Nou to newly promoted Hércules by a score of 2-0, with Paraguayan international Nelson Valdez scoring both goals. It was certainly an unexpected result, as Sid Lowe writes in the the Guardian:
Barcelona are the league champions; Herculés are making their first appearance in the first division since 1997 – in fact, they’ve spent just two of the last 26 years in the top flight. Hell, they’ve spent half of the last decade in the regionalised, four group, eighty-team Second Division B. And Barcelona had not been beaten by a newly promoted side for a decade.
Barcelona had won 17 out of 18 at home last season, drawing the other. They had not lost a league game at home for 16 months – and that didn’t really count, what with it being a who-cares-we’ve-already-won-the-title defeat against Osasuna. You have to go back to February 2009 for their last ‘real’ defeat at home – and that was a miracle. Since Pep Guardiola made his managerial debut in La Liga they have not once been beaten by two goals in the league. And Valdez, the goalscorer who doesn’t score, was making his La Liga debut. 2-0? To Herculés? With Valdez getting them both? On Catalonia’s official holiday, too? No chance.
Except that the ‘diada’ marks the bloodiest of Catalan defeats. Except that Herculés have a bit of a habit of this. The last time they were in the first division, back in 1996-97, they beat Barcelona twice. 3-2 at Camp Nou and 2-1 at the Rico Pérez – the game that effectively cost Bobby Robson’s side the title, handing it to Fabio Capello’s Madrid. Thirteen years later, history might just have repeated itself. Last night’s saw the two-point advantage over José Mourinho’s Madrid disappear; Barça now trail by a point.
Click thru to read Lowe’s whole essay–starting with an account of Valdez’s journey from Paraguay to Werder Bremen to Borussia Dortmund and now to Hércules.
Here is video of Valdez’s two goals–the first off a scrambling attack on Barca’s goal following a Herculés free kick in the 26th minute, and the 2nd a clinical finish off a rolling cross from the right side in the 59th minute (note how Valdez pulls up his run at the top of the box and hangs in that unmarked space):
Though this more complete highlights reel seems to show that it was Barcelona that dominated play and created many more chances–numerous near misses by the likes of Villa, Pedro, and Pique (coming up from defense for an aerial attack):
Things get even more interesting for Pep Guardiola’s side this coming week: they’ll get no rest, as they’ll be back on the Camp Nou tomorrow, hosting Panathinaikos in the first set of Champions League fixtures; and then they travel to Madrid next weekend, to play the top team in Spain.
No, not the overyhyped and overpaid collection of stars at the Bernabeu (who at least managed to finally score a goal this past weekend, at home against Osasuna), but rather the guys crosstown at Atletico Madrid. Led by Uruguayan star Diego Forlan, Atletico Madrid sits atop the table with two wins after two games (Valencia being the only other side with six points). Forlan has picked up where he left off in South Africa, scoring 3 goals in the first two matches. Atletico Madrid sits atop the table (Valencia being the only other side with six points).
