Madrid the puppets in Barca’s hands

Something is rotten in the kingdom of Spain. Two days after the Madrid-Barca derbi and everyone actually agrees. (Well, everyone who’s not completely blind, or stupid, or both). No matter where you look people are saying the same thing. That Real Madrid are rubbish, while FC Barcelona are the hostia, the holy host, the body of Christ in bread — the dog’s dingly-danglies to the non-Catholics among you.

Something’s not right. It’s not supposed to be this way: Barca-Madrid matches are supposed to be followed by recriminations and rants about refs, mutual stirring and point scoring. Not this time. This time, the whole world is singing from the same song sheet. And it’s not Placido Domingo’s operatic, pompous Hala Madrid but Barca’s classic club anthem. For, on Saturday night everyone could see that Barcelona are, quite simply, much, much better than their bitter rivals.

It wasn’t just that they defeated Madrid 3-0, it was that had they not eased off, the scoreline could have been scandalous; that they were superior in everything; that Madrid couldn’t get near them. It was that, as Guti put it, the psychological blow was as important as the points; that as one columnist claimed, ‘Madrid were like puppets in Barca’s hands”; that the Catalan daily Sport could justly talk of a historic thrashing, grinning ‘Take that, Madrid!”.

It was all of that and more. It was the fact that there was something in the air around the Camp Nou on Saturday night, a sense that Barca fans knew they were going to win, that power has shifted.

The derbi, lamented AS, proved ‘the end of an era: we wondered if the two teams were at the same point, only with one on the way up and one on the way down. We discovered that, no, they are not.” Marca called it the ‘beginning of the end” (although, quite frankly, you could see the beginning of the end three years ago, whatever the Bernabeu stooges say). And El Mundo Deportivo shouted ‘Change!”, cheering that ‘Ronaldinho is a galactico, but has his whole career ahead of him, unlike Madrid’s supposed stars.”

Everyone else agreed. Even Bruno, Real Madrid’s resident loon, has deserted them, refusing to await his heroes’ return to Madrid on Saturday night. Which, much as it came as a relief to the players, was a telling statement. As was Joan Laporta’s: ‘Our journey across the desert is over,” said the Barca president, arriving in Damascus just as Madrid were setting off across the sand. He wasn’t wrong: while a seven-point lead is far from insurmountable, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there is something more lasting about the result and, above all, the performance.

Barca’s first goal summed things up; painting a picture of Madrid’s individualistic self-importance, lack of commitment, and heavy-legged, ageing tiredness against Barcelona’s pace, hunger and collective fluidity. Roberto Carlos, growing larger and slower by the day, ambled to a halt and let in Samuel Eto’o, racing through, to run the ball into the net. And, if that was telling, so was the fact that — as usual — Carlos blamed someone else, claiming that goalkeeper Iker Casillas called for it. Privately furious, Casillas maintained a discreet silence but didn’t agree.

‘Barca are a great side with some of the best players in the world and are very united,” David Beckham said after the loss. That ‘united” screamed at you, just as the way Barca celebrated their goals together was striking, just as the role played by the immense Deco illustrated so much of what’s going right for Barca; free at Porto, he now controls the midfield from a deeper position, intelligently moving the ball and sacrificing his own satisfaction for that of his team.

The contrast could hardly be more stark. At Madrid, one player revealed, ‘everyone fights their own wars”. ‘Barca run like devils,” added another, saying rather more than he intended. ‘Madrid move one by one, like chess; Barca move all at once like West Side Story,” moaned AS.

The fact that the scorer was Eto’o hurt Madrid even more — and served to illustrate how far their problems are of their own making. Club president Florentine Perez’s galactico policy has created an old, unbalanced squad with little hunger and even less togetherness, divided by wages and marketability. One where certain players know that whatever they do they won’t get a game and others know that whatever they do they will. One where, dominated by untouchable players, there have been four managers in three years. One whose stars have won it all, but might well win nothing more. And Perez, as the Eto’o and Ronaldinho cases show, has done little to rectify his mistakes.

Last year Madrid passed up the genius of Ronaldinho because, as one (fortunately anonymous) director put it, ‘he’s too ugly; he’d sink us as a brand, while David Beckham makes the whole of Asia want to sleep with us”.

A year on and everyone bows at Dinho’s brilliant feet, while queuing up to attack Beckham: ‘it’s not enough to be pretty at the Camp Nou”, ‘vulgar”, ‘not good enough” and ‘unworthy of his place” all spewed from this weekend’s press while first-team players admitted to Marca that ‘we desperately need a real central midfielder”.

This year, Madrid did it again, letting Eto’o go to Barca. Piqued with his treatment in the capital, some Madrid fans feared that Eto’o’s character as much as his talent would come back to haunt them. It has. The embodiment of the hunger, pace, youth and passion that Madrid lack, Eto’o is the league’s top scorer on 10 goals.

‘Selling Eto’o was like selling your little lived-in flat on the cheap so that you could get your hands on a luxury house — all you do in the end is lose money and allow someone else to inherit your happiness. Why did you do it, presidente?” appealed AS’s Tomas Roncero.

Why indeed? But if letting so brilliant a player slip away was bad enough, Perez compounded the misery; buying Michael Owen, who can’t get a game however many goals he scores, and allowing the rest of the squad to grow older. Even finally buying a couple of defenders hasn’t helped. ‘Watching Xavi is like watching the Matrix, watching Zidane, like watching Pathé news,” wrote Marca.

‘Damn age, that’s Madrid’s problem. For Barcelona, this is the beginning of a new era; for Madrid the end of the galactic era. The difference between the two sides is no longer measured in points but in years,” added AS’s Juanma Trueba. ‘Madrid are ending up like Elvis in his final years, with the spangles and tent-like trousers.”

Maybe. But while Madrid, like Elvis, have become hideously bloated and are slowly ambling towards the end, there’s less chance of them dying on the throne. Any throne. —