Slight Return

Last night I dreamt of Madrid again. Not surprising the seemingly never ending wonderful terrace bars, sangria and tapas slipped into the sub-conscious after a return from second short visit in less then two weeks.

I had been to over seventy odd football grounds before my visit to The Santiago Bernabeu on 5 April, and as soon as I had a view of the pitch from up in the Away section on the fifth tier of the North Stand, it was clear this ground was the best of the lot. Now, like buses, two trips have come at once. But the opportunity of having a weekend in Madrid with good company and the aim of going to an El Classico match was too tempting to refuse.

Going to European games as a neutral was more common in the handful of years Spurs missed out on qualifying for European football until 2006; I went to a Milan derby, enjoyed Ajax play, watched a Lazio game at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, as well as going to an El Classico at the Camp Nou in 2004.

The Real Madrid side that day had Figo, Zidane, Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Raul and the original Ronaldo in a team built on the Galactico ideal. But they were put to the sword by a fantastic Barcelona side, who controlled the game with Xavi anchoring midfield, Ronaldinhio looking the best player in the world by some distance (which he was at the time), and Samuel Eto giving them a lethal cutting edge. Managed by Frank Rijkaard, Barca won 3-0 that Saturday night, late in November 2004. The scenes on the streets a couple of hours after the game resembled those you see on television of capital cities when their countries who have won the World Cup. And the City was still buzzing at 4am.

The rivalry of El Classico is of course deep rooted in both political and footballing history and while my allegiance is with Barca, both the game in 2004, and again on the Saturday night just gone, were amazing spectacles in their own right, regardless of the result. The emotion is incomparable when your own club play away in Europe: the highs will never be as high, the lows never as low, and there is not the sense of a large traveling following descending on a town or city. There is no compulsion to be in that number and the pressure is off for these “neutral” games.

The fixture on Saturday was of course the first of four El Classico’s in close succession, a series of fixtures that for many will bring back memories of the epic Tottenham/Wimbledon games in 1999. I was at all five of those games, and perhaps remember at least two of them, maybe three at a push.

One player from that Tottenham side was also in Madrid at the weekend just gone: a few hours before kick-off , while a couple of my amigos had gone to see Getafe v Sevilla as an appetizer, I was with a couple of my other friends from the north who were Man Utd fans; and at the only bar we found showing the Utd-City FA Cup Semi-Final, Darren Anderton was also there watching it. A nice bloke, he was happy to chat. It was his first time in Madrid and there to see El Classico. Like myself he wanted Barca to win, and do themselves justice, as the superior footballing team.

When I got in The Bernabeu later, the view was fantastic, on the front row of the fourth tier (via Tower Block C), level with the byline of the goal Barcelona attacked first-half, in the stand opposite the dug-out. It was worth every penny of the price of the ticket, which was relatively expensive as football tickets go, yet face value. That Real Madrid released the tickets online just the previous day, and we were able to purchase them was very fortunate.

Right from the naming of the teams, when Mourinhio put Pepe in midfield, there was little doubt the he would “park the bus” to coin his own phrase. And from the off, Barca were totally dominant, and the usually loud home fans were pretty much silenced by an impending fear of humiliation on their own patch. By playing Pepe in front of the back four and dropping Ozil, Mourinhio left plenty of space for Barca’s centre backs to come and join the play, which Pique in particular, took every chance to do.

While Kaderia, who was also Real Madrid’s best player at White Hart Lane earlier in the week, played well, Barcelona, with Busquets bossing the centre, were in control from the first whistle. The game looked so one-sided at one-point in the first-half the sides looked leagues apart.

For all their great players though, it is the underlying principle Barca adopt that lies behind this side being considered one of The Great Footballing Club Sides of all-time – when they have the ball they make the pitch as big as can be, and when they don’t have it, they press, and make the pitch as small as can be. On this occasion, particularly in the first-half, when they were a pleasure to watch with the ball, there were no real occasions when they didn’t have the ball, to see how well they compress space as a team when they need to.

Messi, by far the greatest player in the world at the moment, plays a central role, but always comes deep, and interchanges in a fluid passing and moving game. And the way both Barca centre-backs come to the edge of the box either side of Valdes so they can play their way out from goal kicks, while their full-backs take up advanced positions, is just another example of how they have pushed the boundaries with a footballing philosophy that really took shape when Johan Cryuff joined the club in the Seventies.

If Barca have any weaknesses as a club side at the moment, it is they have a slightly small first-team squad who may now show signs of tiring as the season goes on; also, they sometimes seem profligate with their chances, and don’t always have as much cutting edge as they should.

And that is what cost them winning this El Classico, a game they should really have killed off, so far superior were they to Real, and being in a position just five minutes into the second half where they had a man advantage and were a goal-up. David Villa had a bit of “Torres” on Saturday, and the thought that keeps occurring to me is if Barca still had Samuel Eto at their disposal, they would be even greater side than they are now, hard though that is to imagine.

However, Real Madrid should never have been awarded the penalty to equalize, as Alves clearly nicked the ball. Mourinhio may be renowned for having great attention to detail, breeding strong team loyalty, and having tactical nous, but his greatest attribute is luck. It was no surprise before the equalizer that Adebayor came on, and Real looked to play more directly, which did make them look more competitive. They looked a desperate team when they were chasing the home game to Sporting Gijon a couple of weeks earlier, knocking it long at every opportunity, but ultimately it was a poor refereeing decision that got them a point in this game. Even after that, David Villa had a great chance to win the game for Barca, but didn’t take it.

When Barcelona fail to take their chances, there is always a possibility they could lose games, and however negative Mourinhio may want to be when playing Barca over the next few weeks, Real have enough players who can create and take chances. For the good of Football though, it would be great to see Barcelona in the European Cup Final, having overcome Madrid.

While their football team may be in the shadow of Barcelona at the moment, the City itself certainly isn’t. It is first-rate in every sense, and ideally Spurs get Real Madrid in the group stages of the Champions League next season. (Don’t concede a soft goal after five minutes and go down to ten men shortly afterwards, and who knows…)

If there is one downside about the city, from two short stays in Madrid it does seem that tourists are more likely to be targeted for petty crime then in many other major European cities, but that is perhaps not surprising with unemployment at 20% in Spain.

But on the whole Madrid has the feel of being a fiercely liberal city, and not an evidently Franco town. And from the Prado to the parques, and of course all the bars and a great market, there is plenty to see and do. And Madrid has the feel of city that keeps on giving.

A final bonus on the weekend just gone was the live music venue, the Joy Eslava, a cross between The Melkweg in Amsterdam and Norwich UEA - intimate yet still spacious around the many bars. And it was the ex-libertine Pete Docherty who lit the place up on Sunday night with a sincere and interactive performance.

On stage just five minutes after his billed time he started with his modern classic 'Can't Stand Me Now' on an acoustic guitar, the crowd singing Carl Barat's harmonies. And it continued on to be a great gig with ballet dancers, his fans singing on stage, and a bit of football banter after he was handed a Real Betis scarf (he said he wanted nothing to do with it, before dropping in the fact his Spanish team was Deportiva La Coruna).

An exceptional live performance from Peter Doherty, with the heart of his songs coming to fore in an acoustic performance, was a nice unplanned bookend to a couple of great trips to Madrid. An ending fitting for the start.

MG

The full story of my Journey in the Champions League, 2010-11, from a qualifier in Wankdorf in Berne, to the front row at the Final in Wembley, via two trips to Madrid, and the epic series of El Clasicos, is now available to buy from either Amazon or Smashwords.