Into the Fire of Real
“When Beckham Went to Spain” by Jimmy Burns
Sean O'Conor
The prospect of another hagiography of Goldenballs would sink
the hearts of all but the starry-eyed teenager, but this one is
different. What makes this worth reading is the fact that Becks'
celebrity circus has touched down in Spain, a country a world away
from England, and specifically at Real Madrid, a galaxy away from
Manchester United.
Attention on the England captain's transfer to Real Madrid
in 2003 focused on his celebrity and the number of Asian girls who
would exchange their red Man U shirts for white Real ones (the alleged
reason ‘ugly' Ronaldinho was passed over).
But little coverage in England mentioned the fact Spain is a nation
where politics and football are intertwined and where Real Madrid
has attained a mythological symbolism for a nation that has undergone
seismic changes in the twentieth century. In fact, those of us jaded
by the prospect of more Beckhamology will be pleasantly surprised
by the fact Jimmy Burns largely ignores him.
Few are better qualified to write this tale than Burns. Although
his name might suggest a pundit from a Glasgow boozer, Burns is
half Spanish, grew up in Madrid and has published a guide to Spanish
literature as well as working for the FT, BBC & The Economist
amongst others. His two football works, ‘Barça
– A People's Passion' and ‘Hand
of God - The Life of Diego Maradona' were top-drawer football
texts and not Harry Harris-style sycophantic potboilers.
This book weaves between Beckham's celebrity and Spain's
story of Franco, Catalonia, corridas, cojones and futebol. English
football has never had political affiliations hiding behind team
badges and even its hooligan culture, with the exception of the
national team's, has never attached itself to politics like
it has in Spain or Italy.
A trip to a Manchester
United supporters club in London would elicit a somnulent evening
but Burns' trip to a Real club in the Navarre region sounds
like a tale from the days of the French Resistance: “A collective
stare faced me when I walked in, only to break into a warm welcome
when I spoke in a Castillian accent. Some locals seemed to have
suspected I was a supporter of ETA.”
Politics and football fell into bed together because Spain was
socially unstable for all of the 20th Century, drifting between
dreams of lost empire, civil war, dictatorship, isolation and then
a tidal wave of tourism and foreign influence, or, according to
the writer Montalban, ‘between amnesia and memory'.
Football gave a largely poor population a focus and the men of
power were swift to exploit it, alternately placating or mobilizing
the masses, bread and circuses-style. Et plus ça change…The
way Real, backed by General Franco's régime, had engineered
the audacious snatch of Alfredo di Stefano from under Barcelona's
noses in 1953 had distinct echoes fifty years later in the “tortuous,
diversionary and occasionally Machivellian” battle over Beckham's
signature with Juan Laporta claiming it was a done deal for Barça
as a means of getting elected chairman and Florentino Perez of Real
uttering the memorable “Never, never, never” days before
announcing the concluded transfer.
The political weight of the Barça-Real rivalry is easily
overstated though, and the legendary Santiago Bernabeu is aptly
quoted as saying “Me a separatist? What happens is that I
hear a lot of stupid things said that no one stands up to”.
But was he referring to football, politics, cultural and regional
identity or all of the above?
So what is the myth that is Real that we in England have no equivalent
of? Whilst FC Barcelona is as sacred to Catalonians as their flag,
Real is more like a black hole that has sucked up much of Madrid's
and Spain's identity to become a planet and a religion all
its own, the club most loved and hated in equal amount.
In England only Liverpool's magical spell in the ‘70s
and ‘80s came close in terms of creating a cultural-religious
phenomenon or Man Utd's recent successes in terms of mass
popularity. But the Real religion remains unlike any English team's.
Watching greats like Butragueño, Raúl or the Di Stefano-inspired
team that dominated 1950s European football was too much for one
Spanish journalist Chencho Arias, who joyously described his first
Real match in an apparent state of ecstasy akin to the Transfiguration
of Christ: “I was converted…the radiance, the flash
of beauty…in a state of levitation…I live not within
but in an infinity of Sunday afternoons and European nights.”
Beat that, Eduardo Galeano. Whilst Spurs fans allegedly expect elegant
football and Arsenal's prefer substance to style, this is
far from being a religion. Yet Ajax fans are legendary in booing
a 5-0 win because it was not pretty enough and likewise the fans
of Real and Barça.
To be a Real Madrid player demands a working-class passion, the
furia española, and a love of playing. The white shirts may
only be that colour because they were copied from the touring English
amateur side Corinthians by Madrid FC's founding group of
intellectual politico-philosophers aping the Northern European enlightenment,
but the jerseys at the Bernabeu have now taken on a greater significance.
One cannot help thinking how such a big club did not dominate
more throughout the post-war period. Man Utd's lean spell
in the European Cup lasted an agonizing 21 years but Real's
went on for a full 32!
Younger fans may know little beyond Ronaldo, Raul and Roberto Carlos
yet they should learn about the 1950s galácticos who were
every bit as big as today's crop: Kopa, Puskas, Gento and
the greatest of them all, Di Stefano.
Here I must confess I was a little underwhelmed the one time I
visited the famous Bernabéu stadium. Although its towering
stands put Old Trafford's to shame in monumental terms, inside
it did not seem to be one of world football's cauldrons.
It was just too big and too plush to generate the popular fervour
that say Eastern European or Argentinian stadia can on a wintry
night. Large arenas seem to share a lack of fan togetherness and
passionate atmosphere and I was glad Burns admitted this lack of
emperor's clothes too. No doubt Roy Keane would disapprove
of the “thousands (who)…smoked cigars, digested their
brandies, ate large sandwiches, brought their wives and daughters,
sons and in-laws.”
This book is timely because la Primera is currently Europe's
premier league. English football eyes had turned in on themselves
following the Heysel ban of 1985 but after the flamboyant party
of Italia '90 and the subsequent transfers of David Platt
and Paul Gascoigne to Italian clubs, we looked up to Serie A in
the 1990s.
Italy's star, however, began to wane from the mid-‘90s
on when Spanish football, and especially Real Madrid, re-emerged
ascendant. The top stars now choose Spain as first port of call,
including our biggest star.
And what about Beckham? Described by former Argentina star and
now Real's Sporting Director Jorge Valdano as “perfect
because it kept the marketing and sporting departments happy”,
the England captain's signing undoubtedly pleased the former
more and in the world of celebrity all news is good news when promoting
the brand.
The Leytonstone lad is perhaps the most global celebrity de nos
jours, if the fact his name adorned shirts belonging to one of the
Atocha bombers and to a child attacking the fallen Saddam Hussein
statue in Baghdad are anything to go by. These ‘new'
football fans have loyalties to celebrity players and not their
clubs like us oldies.
The world is changing. But Beckham comes across as a tool for Real,
a man of little intrinsic substance who will ultimately not amount
to much. We learn little here we do not already know about Goldenballs
and there is more evidence that the end of his Real days will come
to pass thanks to the increasingly destructive provincial mindset
and xenophobic tantrums of his far from ‘posh' wife
Victoria.
The demise of Real is also a clear and present danger although
I felt Burns did not do enough to assert this. Like Icarus'
tragic flight to the sun, Real's ascent was built on unsteady
foundations.
Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar strutted alongside Bush and Blair during
the Iraq invasion, prematurely acting as if he were an equal statesman
and Spain an equal player on the world stage yet was booted out
swiftly and you cannot help feeling Real's claim to world
domination will suffer a similar hubristic outcome.
Spain is now an apparently modern European nation but the image
is a façade. As recently as the 1980s it suffered an attempted
coup d'état when rebel soldiers stormed parliament
at gunpoint and fired off machine guns in the chamber, putting our
hunt protestors to shame. The Real star is just as likely to explode.
Burns shies away from deploring the patently mad way the club
is being run. Chaotically directionless, the club has been throwing
ever more absurd amounts of dough at any passing superstar (e.g.
a wasted £23 million on Nicolas Anelka in 1999 as well as
£37m on Figo and £46m on Zidane) without proper regard
for the good of the team.
Hemingway pointed out at the corridas (bullfights) how adulation
can swiftly turn to fanatical condemnation and Beckham's fairytale
will sooner or later turn sour. The Spanish season has barely begun
yet the fireworks are already exploding in the form of two changes
of coach and in Real's defeats, including a mauling in the
Champions League by Bayer Leverkusen.
At time of writing they sit in a disastrous 10th place in the league.
Florentino Perez is a megalomaniac fool, an interfering non-football
president from the Berlusconi school who is steering the good ship
Real Madrid drunkenly into the rocks.
His firing of the perfectly adequate Vicente del Bosque, hiring
and firing of Manchester United assistant coach Carlos Queiroz and
then Jose Camacho were the actions of a man after the late serial
coach-sacker Jesus Gil's heart. The entire world including
Queiroz could see that Real were top-heavy with stars and had a
leaking defence but Perez charged on assembling a team of glittering
galácticos like a magpie collecting shiny objects for its
nest.
There are many more chapters to be written in the tale of the
Essex boy, of Real Madrid and of Spain's relationship with
football, but for now, El Becks is the world's top football
personality and Real the No.1 glamour team.
Given that Real were atomic in the 1950s but then fell quiet for
so long before erupting again and look like burning out once more
now, you suspect that the club is more of a dormant volcano than
a perennially burning fire. But enjoy it while it lasts.
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