The Sword of Doom

Who started it?

The Supercopa has been played and since the Spanish Liga is in the midst of a labour dispute, it looks like we will not get much more football for a while. The season will be delayed a week or more. Perhaps til' the middle of September.

It is a good thing that the two-game series did not disappoint at all. The series saw a Barcelona team that had not played together in months and shown only a thin shadow of their champion form over the course of their three or four pre-season games, meeting a Real Madrid squad that has never looked tougher.

Madrid was physically imposing and looked ready to run up mountains. The scot commentator described them as "fit as butcher's dogs." Additionally, Mourinho had changed their style of play from the knee-breaking defensive vice, to a barrage of attacks and pressing for every ball at all parts of the pitch. They utilized their offensive force in a way that was more dynamic than they have shown before. As I said, Mourinho teams take a year to warm up before really getting into stride, and this one looks fit to be a demon.

In Sunday's game at Madrid, los Merengues outnumbered Barça in shots 20-3. It was also the first game in the three full seasons that Pep Guardiola has coached that Barça did not keep a majority of possession on the ball. While they usually get up to 70% of it, at the Bernabeu stadium they had to settle for chasing the action around and scoring on the break--much like Mourinho had coached his previous teams (Chelsea, Inter and last season's R. Madrid) to do against Barça. The shoe was on the other foot.

In spite of that bizarro-world flip-flop, Sunday's first leg score was 2-2. Madrid could not capitalize on their abundant opportunities. Valdes was a phenomenon in the goal, and Dani Alves performed admirably on defense.

It's funny, but though Alves is ostensibly a back, we get so used to seeing him break up the wing to get crosses in to the attackers that he looks almost out of place in his actual 'position.' Nonetheless, he showed that his defensive instincts are really unbeatable (at least if you're Cristiano Ronaldo...).

The games were a total tug of war with each team answering the other's goal through the course of it's three hours, ratcheting the drama tighter and tauter. The signing of Cesc Fabregas between the two meetings just pressurized the environment, as it became the major piece of sporting news on the continent and shored the attention of the football world on the cup Clasico. The Supercopa is usually regarded as a pretty minor championship, but these Madrid/Barça Clasico meetings always take on a lot of symbolic weight.


Who's gonna take the weight?

Messi, who had gone back home to Argentina to play in Copa de America only to return to Spain empty handed and salty, performed like the world's greatest player. He scored or assisted every goal that they marked over the two games. His first assist on Wednesday to Iniesta, who was clear to break free and chip the ball past Casillas, was brilliant. His play with the pass is the sure reason that he is the best.

As Madrid equalized to bring the score to two after Kaka had been brought in late in the second half Wednesday, the game looked set to go to extra time. But Fabregas' substitution (in his first adult moments on the pitch as a member of his boyhood squad) changed the energy substantially. First he collided with Pique to inadvertently gum up a break to the goal in front of Casillas' box. His first touch wasn't with the ball, but with his teammate who was looking to score. But then he redeemed himself by meeting up with Adriano who dished back to Messi for the game winner in the 88th minute.

It was at this point that Madrid, after so nearly beating their opponent at their own game, fell apart. In the extra time Marcelo sent a scissor kick tackle to Cesc to bring him down right in front of the coaches.


Marcelo gets down and dirty on Cesc

It was an outright red-card, and a clear reflection of the frustration that the team of the crown felt at still not being able to beat their rivals--who were weaker than ever and yet again managed to pull rabbits from their hats. The benches cleared and everyone started fighting.


Same as it ever was

Right away, the brilliant two games of play--probably among the best examples of football I've ever seen--are reduced to battles in the same dirty war that has gone on so long. In the ensuing scrum Mourinho walks over behind Barça's assistant coach Tito Vilanova and flicks his finger in his eye. In the 95th minute of the second leg of the Supercopa, three players get red carded-two of them (Özil and Villa) aren't even playing.

There are sure to be sanctions imposed by la Liga for the mud that was kicked up. The complete collapse of Madrid in the closing moments of the contest has resparked the spring's debate over the ill-temper of Mourinho and the rivalry. Is it worth all of the acrimony and nasty vibes? Will the anger on the pitch spill over into the streets and be played out by the team's supporters as proxies?

Pique has come out and declared that Jose Mourinho is "...destroying Spanish football. It's not the first time and it's always a number of players and the same ones so there has to be some way of stopping them. I hope they adopt the necessary sanctions because every game cannot end this way."

Yet almost all of them do.


One last thing

In the classic Okamoto film, The Sword of Doom, Toshiro Mifune is attacked by a group of assassins that mistakenly target him. He delivers all of them to their miserable snowy end, then scolds their ringleader. "An evil soul; an evil sword. Learn the soul to learn the sword."

As the conduct of Madrid's leadership has become so bitter and cynical, the games cannot help but devolve into static. The figures in Madrid's Olympus pavilion of elder statesman are displeased with the brutal character their squad has come to personify, but they are largely tied to the mast of their Ahab. As Madrid had tried to beat their nemesis by out-hustling instead of brutality and still came up short they are left with all their tactics frustrated.

They know there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all.


the scrum