Mighty Healthy

King Eric shows love

The Clasico in Madrid--the first of two that will in all likelihood decide the winner of the Copa del Rey--was played on Wednesday at the Santiago Bernabeu. Again, Madrid struck early and lead the game by one in the first ten minutes, and again, Barça came back and won the game with deft team play in the second half.

Madrid tried a different tack this time (their Barça playbook is getting well weathered at this point with frustrated strategies...). Last month in Madrid they pressed hard and wore themselves out, this time they stayed back and didn't chase but waited for their opportunities on the counter.

Same result.

The only difference was the return of some of the more egregious fouls and nasty play that we'd seen last year in the Supercopa. They get pissed off like Yosemite Sam and start fouling like assholes (the worst coming from Pepe [as usual] who went so far as to stomp on Messi's fingers as he was on the ground from a hit by Callejon). This kind of behavior comes from the top down and as Mourinho gets relentlessly shut down the only strategy that is left to him is brute force and intimidation.

Fuel for the fire

Though Ronaldo scored against Pinto in a strike that would more likely been stopped by Victor Valdes, the game was won for Barça on the strength of two goals scored by defensive backs: Captain Carles Puyol and Eric Abidal.

By opening up the entire squad to the goal and keeping a versatility in roles and relationships, Barça have had five different scorers for their last five goals against los merengues. Continued Voltron shit.

But even in his traditional role as defensive cleaner, Abidal was brilliant. His performance, in the wake of his re-upping his contract with the team, was jubilant. Let's look back at the last year for King Eric: Get diagnosed with cancer, kick cancer's ass, return to the team and score the winner in Copa del Rey qualifiers against Bilbao, play in the Champion's league final and lift the European Cup, re-sign with the Blaugrana, go to Madrid and score the game winner on Wednesday.

Domino!

The Copa del Rey is not really the priority championship that the teams play for. It is less weighted than Champions League and the League itself, but it was all that Madrid could console themselves with in the last three years (though they dropped it under their team bus while celebrating).

These early months in the calendar year are usually where Barça find themselves in a tricky position, just before they get all cylinders blasting again for the end of the season symphony. Behind by five points in the league, it's time for the superheroes to take charge.


How to foil the evil Professor Frinkle? It's simple really but quite clever.

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

Expensive Beef

Season's over. Barça are Champions of La Liga.

It was the closest title race in the history of the Spanish League. Barça won the title with a total of 99 points. Real Madrid were in second with 96. It basically came down to a single game between the two of them.

99 points in a season is a record for most points earned for a team, not only in Spain but also in all of major European play. That puts Barça's squad at a summit of the very greatest teams to ever play the game.

Still, there is a bitterness there at them losing out on the Champion's League to Inter Milan. What can you do?


Laporta can't ever be satisfied

Since the season ended about a month ago, the business of the team has turned to establishing the drama of the next season. The team has made a formal offer for Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal. Fabregas, of course, came up through the Barça youth system and was pulled away to London at the age of 17. Now he is 23 and the team want to bring him back like the prodigal son.

As the club's president for the last seven years, Joán Laporta has to retire from his post this summer. It's like any presidency-there are term limits. The dudes who are vying to be his successor have all used the courting of Fabregas as a campaign promise to help them secure the position of club president. I never write too much about the larger curious political intricacies of the club that is 'mes que un clúb' [more than a team], because I honestly cannot really follow it. It's a bit ironic, I know. Mostly the club president seems to be the public face of the backers and administration of the team, but to weigh one from another is more difficult to gauge then the efficacy of Ibrahimovic as a striker vs. Eto'o.


David Villa looking Douchey

Though he is on the way out, Laporta has still been a busy CEO for the team. They signed David Villa from Valencia as a striker right after the season drew to a close. Villa is a badass. He scored the second or third most goals in the league and will be a welcome addition to the front line, as Henry is leaving for the bright lights and muddled play of the MLS in New York City for the, cough, Red Bulls.

Who the fuck comes up with these MLS names?? Pathetic. New York City Red Bulls? Really?? Were the Mountain Dews already taken? How about the San Francisco Yoo-Hoos? Too on the nose? Whatever. I can't blame him for going. The money is bound to be retarded-good, and who wouldn't want to play in one of the world's greatest cities at the end of his career? An ultimate cash-out for a prize fighter.

Though they were nearly unbeatable, too much of the burden of goals fell on the wunderkind, Leo Messi. Now with Villa there will be another go-to guy with golden boots. What is more tricky to figure is just how the team will be able to adjust to Fabregas in the line-up. After all, he is a mid-fielder where the team has a surplus of vital players in Iniesta and Xavi. The line-up will have to shift in ways that remain mysterious. Of course, the team's initial offer of 35€M has been rejected by Arsenal and they may have to go up to 50€M to bring him back to Barça.

Why would the team go so hard for another superstar signing? It rivals the spending of Real Madrid a year ago in their cash-makes-right buying spree that netted them Kaka and C. Ronaldo. The answer is clearly because although they edged out Real Madrid for the titles this year, they just barely did it and La Merengue decided to hire Jose Mourinho from Inter Milan--the team that served as the thorn in Barça's side just a month ago. The stumbling block in their quest to be clearly recognized as history's greatest.


Mourinho being a prick when Inter beat Barça

This year was the most competitive ever in Spanish football--at least between the two top teams--and Real Madrid are dying to revenge-fuck Barça for making them settle for second best. The shit is so petty. Mourinho, being a bitter ego-maniacal douche, is thrilled at the possibility of amplifying his personal beef with Barcelona by coaching their arch-rivals against them. Plus, even he couldn't stomach how rife the Italian Serie-A is with corruption and crap vibes.

Before any of that manifests in August with the first pre-season games, there is the World Cup to watch. Lot's of people have "fever" for it, but me? Not so much. In the age of globalism and post-post-colonialism, the rivalries between nations seem less intriguing to me than the shit that's going down between the Catalans and the Castellanos of Spain. Of course, I will still watch with interest, but the nationalism inherent in the event puts me off somehow. Who even thinks about Canada, much less argues with them?

Still, I am eager to see if Maradona will go batshit on the sidelines as he coaches Argentina. If Messi will deliver in national play as he does for his club. If Henry will redeem his misguided tricky handball that helped to knock Ireland out a few months back with some beautiful goal that I had given up hope for from him. I want to see how bad England will be derailed by their personal soap-operas and injuries.

World Cup is more like NASCAR for me: I only really watch for the crashes.