Suitcases and wooden spoons

In the middle of Oviedo stands a statue of a man in a long overcoat and a trilby, with an umbrella and a mountain of old-fashioned luggage. Officially, it’s called The Return of William B. Warrensberg, but everyone knows it’s actually ‘Suitcaseman” — a man whose suitcases are even great enough to also put in a solo appearance at Madrid’s Atocha station, down by the turtles on the concourse.

Now, some sad sacks try to uncover all sorts of metaphorical meaning and artistic intent, but everyone knows that Suitcaseman is, in fact, a tribute to the star of the final weeks of the Spanish football season. Every year, as teams with nothing to play for face teams with rather a lot to play for — or, more to the point, opponents of teams with rather a lot to play for — the infamous maletin (suitcase) makes a sneaky appearance or five, despite being banned by the Spanish Football Association.

‘They are,” moaned pro-Real newspaper AS last weekend, as if the suitcases only ever went against their protégés, ‘something Madrid have to grin and bear.”

Supplied by an interested third party, the suitcases are there to encourage teams to try a little harder. A suitcase full of jamon serrano here, a few hundred bottles of wine there, and even a consignment of horribly phallic-looking white asparagus. Which makes sense — after all, if anything’s going to make, say, Murcia, try their best against Valladolid it’s a year’s supply of a flaccid, tasteless vegetable that’s advertised in a truly revolting slide-down-the-throat sort of way.

Just as often, the suitcases contain the promise of more tangible, cash rewards — rather like an e-mail from the pseudo-son of a late Nigerian dictator. Barcelona’s poisoned dwarf ex-president Josep Lluis Nunez once said of the two successive leagues that Barca won on the last day (thanks to Madrid screwing up at nothing-to-play-for Tenerife): ‘If I hadn’t intervened, I hate to think what would have happened.”

In 1996/97, then Barca translator Jose Mourinho claimed that Madrid had paid Hercules to make a bit more of an effort — a Herculean effort, in fact. And in 1979/80 there were payments for the entire Betis squad, including the masseur and the kit man.

And this weekend brought the latest accusations as Real Madrid, a point behind league leaders Valencia, travelled to La Coruna to play Deportivo.

The Galicians played in the Champions League semi on Tuesday and have already secured fourth, so they weren’t expected to make much effort, thus playing into Madrid’s hands. Indeed, AS’s rabid and increasingly desperate Madridista columnist, Tomas Roncero, dedicated one particularly pathetic offering, entitled ‘Depor, this isn’t your war”, to making sure that exactly that happened.

He encouraged Depor not to bust a gut, arguing that their enemies are not Madrid, but Valencia — the team who, ‘paid off by Barca” (well, obviously), robbed them of the league in the last minute of the 1993/94 season. And, Roncero concluded, hinting heavily: if Depor try against Madrid it means they are cheats.

So too Valencia. For on Friday morning, AS reported that Depor had been offered a €12 000 per player bonus to beat Madrid. The offer, they said, came from Valencia. And, they added, ‘next week, [already relegated] Murcia [who play Madrid] will get one too.”

Both sides denied the story. In Valencia, where they are growing rather paranoid about AS (which certainly doesn’t mean AS is not out to get them), it was howlingly dismissed as a scandalous bit of wooden spooning. Meanwhile, Depor full-back Lionel Scaloni, who clearly trusts his teammates as much as this column trusts that late Nigerian dictator’s son, claimed: ‘It’s rubbish, unless the lads are hiding something from me. I don’t need extra motivation to face Madrid.”

And especially not to face David Beckham, who grabbed his crotch the last time they met — that’s his own crotch in a ‘disrespectful” gesture, rather than rummaging about in Scaloni’s shorts, by the way.

Besides, while Depor were bound to rest first-teamers, the Riazor crowd was never going to let them give Madrid an easy ride — even if a group of girls did hold up banners saying ‘Beckham we lav you” and ‘Beckham, you are a sweet” (sic and sick). For, however much Roncero pleads for them to think otherwise, they hate Madrid most.

And, as in Barcelona, the most hated Madrid man was serial scowler Luis Figo — this time because he had last week’s red card overturned by the appeals committee, thus releasing him from a suspension that would have meant missing the match. It was a pretty incredible decision, one that had the Depor fans booing his every touch and Valencia president Jaime Orti fuming. Again.

‘It’s an abuse of power,” he raved, ‘it’s the most unjust thing that I have seen in my life — and I’ve seen some pretty unjust things!”

That just added yet more fuel to the fire, as the finger pointing, wild theorising, implausible plot-thickening and mutual suspicion built up like Death on the Nile (only without that woman and her hideous accent, or a Belgian with a silly moustache).

‘We might as well just give Madrid the bloody league now,” cried Valencia captain David Albelda.

Presumably he’s changed his mind now. You see, with Madrid hitting the post three times, and Zinedine Zidane being sent off for what one genius called ‘daft twattery”, the galacticos were beaten 2-0 in La Coruna. Then, the following night, Valencia beat Betis 2-0 to go four points clear with three games left.

Madrid had better stuff some suitcases — and fast. —