Curse of the Monkey Paw

It has been a mixed bag for the club in the last few weeks, though most of it has been good.

Barça played Santos in the FIFA World Club Cup final in Yokohama to win the curious title of best club team on Earth. FIFA sets this up by pitting the continental champions from all over the world against each other. It was pitted as a match-up between Leo and the mercurial young upstart, Neymar.

...a couple of Silver Spoons

Before the game, as the two sides were lined up in preparation to take the field, it was something to see how the two stars reacted to each other: Neymar nervously looking towards Messi, trying to not look too hard and retain some semblance of cool, while Leo kept his head largely down in an inscrutable passivity.

But then they started playing and there was no trace of passivity. Barça shut down Santos 4-0. The first goal was a deft piece of play set in motion by Messi, as he doubled back away from the goal, only to turn around and dart up field setting up a triangle give-and-go with Cesc and Xavi back for his charge to the goal.

So the cup went back to Catalunya, but David Villa caught a bad one and sustained a nasty injury that will keep him out of play for some six months. Broken bone in the lower leg. Afelay is still mending from his early autumn surgery. The revolving door of injured players keeps spinning...

After the holiday break the team went on to play for the Copa del Rey against Osasuna, and handedly beat them, but then came the Catalan derby with Espanyol.

Espanyol, the Barcelona city neighbors, have a reputation for a fan base that is decidedly less diplomatic than their celebrated big brothers. Racism looms large in their stadium, as their own black keeper was subject to monkey chants for years. Their own goalie...It shouldn't be unexpected, then, that they gave monkey chants to Dani Alves every time he touched the ball.

The game was very tight and hard-wrought. Most teams tend to bring their most competitive spirit to the pitch against Barça, after all, the teams are then being seem by a global audience that quadruples (on average) from their usual broadcast draw. It was in the last few minutes of the game that Espanyol tied up at 1 and that was how the scoreline stood when the last whistle blew.

Are you fuckin' kidding me?

The result put Barcelona five points behind Madrid for first. This is a tough spot for the team, forcing them to not drop any more points for the entirety of the season, and beat Madrid, and hope that Madrid drops points as well.

It can happen, but it is not going to be easy and what's worse, it won't entirely be in their own hands.

On a better note for the team, Monday night saw them receive yet more accolades, as Messi was named FIFA world player of the year, and Pep named as the coach of the year. During his acceptance speech Pep thanked the thousands of people to have been involved in the club's history and dedicated it to his right hand, Tito Vilanova.

Tito underwent surgery to remove cancer from the salivary gland this year only a short while after getting his eye gouged by Mourinho in the Supercopa. He is clearly the supreme confidant of Pep at the club. That he was acknowledged as such was pure class. Though the league may not be in our own hands entirely anymore, either way that dignity will sustain us.

Tito and Pep

Offseason

The 10-11' season is over and the books have been written on the outcome.

It has been an obvious high-water mark for FC Barcelona, and perhaps football in general as people have lined up to sing the praises of their particular style of apparently, selfless play.

The team has also gone through the measures of shoring up their squad with contracts designed to keep their nucleus largely intact for the next four years. Pedro recently re-upped his along with Thiago, as Busquets, Alves, Xavi, Messi, Iniesta and others (almost all of them, actually) are committed until at least 2015.

The only familiar dudes that seem to be candidates for inevitable trade are Bojan and Gabby Milito. Neither one of them has had a remarkable season in a few years. Milito has been injury-ridden and showed himself to be less than up-to-task in filling the gaping holes in their defense last season.

Bojan is a more tricky issue: He is a second generation player on the team who showed real flashes of brilliance while still in his teens. He was almost like a Messi-alternative for a short while.



But then it seemed like his touch stopped settling and in the key final moments, his shots would fly awry. I felt that he may have been sent a bit off course by his feeling an urge to replicate Messi's jaw-dropping improvisations, rather than keeping a holding pattern that would allow him to clean up on second chance strikes as Pedro has done so effectively. Now he is rumored to be a bargaining chip to be moved to Italy and help alleviate some of the team's 500 million Euro debt.

Speaking of debt, distinctive chinks in the superman armor seem to be showing under the weight of the bank balance. After years bearing only the mark of UNICEF on their chest, Barça will begin featuring the label of the Qatar Foundation--a group that seems to be a broad consortium of scientific, industrial and educational interests that are designed to advance the oil-filthy-rich nation socially. It may not be AIG, but it seems vaguely like a cabal compared to the polio-vaccinating and baby feeding peacemakers of UNICEF.

The £125m price of selling the front jersey real estate, while moving UNICEF to the back as a tramp-stamp, will make some progress in making the world's most dazzling team more economically viable, but it looks a little nefarious.

Elsewhere, there is still talk about signing Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal--this makes two summers in a row that have had the rumour blazing. Arsenal is a mess. He should move, but I still don't see a sure place for him in the lineup, at least until Xavi or Iniesta leave (knock-knock). Even then, they just signed Afelay like six months ago and he will be such a great fit with the team in the season to come. Cesc, just stay in England.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid have been signing a ton of defensive midfielders and look to be scrambling to meet the needs of Jose Mourinho after a season that saw them finish in second place for the third straight year. Next year they will most likely be even more competitive, as all Mourinho teams tend to take a year to warm before really getting rolling. Current speculation links Brazilian striking phenomenon Neymar to Madrid. That kid's one of these Justin Bieber dudes...


Neymar warms up

There is already a match scheduled for the numbers one and two teams to meet twice in August for the Spanish Super Cup, where the Copa del Rey winners meet la Liga's champions.

In the meantime, some players are getting a break, while others from the western hemisphere are playing in the Copa America. Even for those who've got to play in July for their home country, the feeling looks to be pretty post-orgasmic. The real heavy dream lifting has been accomplished back in Catalunya, and what comes now are just gravy contests to please the die-hards and show the folks back home a taste of the jedi lessons that have been learned in the Camp Nou.

If there is darkness on the horizon, it is still distant.

My senses haven't returned to me just yet.