Voltron

5-nil over Cultural Leonesa.

The team was pretty unstoppable. Messi looked super focused. Everybody pulled their weight and got goals from a few different players, with only Bojan standing out clearly among the lucky and gifted squad.

He put the first one in off a sharp center from Jefrens, and then made a classic goal not long after. Sliced it just right through to the net's wall from a skinny angle to the left.

These kid's have talent.



There're not going to be any more club games until the 22nd, when the team start their three game week with Bilbao followed by Internazionale, and finally, Real Madrid.

In the meantime Brazil will be playing England, which should be culturally interesting. English Football is great to watch. Generally, I think the bar is higher there than in La Liga. Arsenal, man. That team is looking tough to beat right now.

And later on tomorrow, Spain and Argentina will be going at it. It should be a little weird to watch Messi play against his Barça team mates as he wears the colors of his country. Plus, with Mike Tyson recently being jailed for fighting at the airport, Maradona will be hatching some nefarious stunt to cement his place as the world's craziest sportsman.

Wake me when it's over...

Barça is playing Cultural Leonesa right now. The team looks to be the second stringers. No Ibra, Messi, or Henry. The goalie is the dude with the long hair that's braided. What is weirdest of all, is the absence of Carles Puyol. The ever-mean mugging team captain is not on the field.

They've already scored thanks to a goal from Pedro, but my heart isn't in it. Who are these guys?

They don't play with the hypnotic strategy of my team. They don't carry the weight like the starters.

These guys look intimidated of being burned by the torch their carrying. The flame that said "fuck you" to the Franco regime. Rather than rightful heirs to their team's glory, they seem to be knowingly temporary custodians. That's cool. If anything I would rather hang out with these dudes than the superstars. But to watch the game, I need the drama that is accessible only to the most ego-driven.

On a similar note, Real Madrid got de-pantsed by a small club, 4-nil yesterday. They were without the benefit of their two biggest stars, Ronaldo and Kaka. For any Barça fan, this inspires the sweetest Schadenfreude. Their shoddy performance against a Bad News Bears team is like the proverbial stone being thrown at the brass statue with feet of clay. They spent hundreds of millions in the last summer to create a sensational team that would get spanked by some minimum wage players. Happy Happy, Joy Joy!

At least there was some drama in their defenestration (for the record, a Defenestration takes place when a team loses 4-nil). The fabulous hubris of the team--of Franco's team--made their humiliation exciting.

But Barça is winning this game prosaically, and there seems to be little distinguishing this game from any of the others that have already been played today. Almost surely, they'll win, but it will be without the sneaky master-play that I've come to expect from my side. For a solitary dude nine time-zones away, it doesn't feel much like victory.