Morbo - The Story of Spanish Football

Sean O'Conor

When Real Madrid thumped Manchester United 3-1 at home in the Champions League in 2003 the English press went into convulsions.

According to every journalist on these shores, Real's football had come from another planet and was up there with the greatest displays of all time. Funny then that the Spanish press saw it as just a good win against a United team whom they feared could yet overturn Real's lead in the return leg - (they didn't).

In Morbo, Englishman Phil Ball tackles the conundrum that is Spanish football. We think we know what it is all about like we claim to know the country millions of us flock to on holiday each year but we actually don't. Spain, like its football, is misunderstood, enigmatic, isolated and ‘out there' on the edge of Europe, a sleeping dragon that is roused periodically in shows of noisy pyrotechnics though more often than not blows hot air and flatters to deceive.

The author over the course of the book takes us to the four corners of Spain via its football teams to persuade us of the merits of a country he clearly loves deeply and of a league he rates as vastly superior to England's “crude offering…of the corporate Premier League experience” with its “spiritual death”. Strong words. But burning emotion is the name of the game here.

Ball cleverly chose an enigma of a word, ‘morbo' as his title and theme. The strongest undercurrent beneath the game is one that really makes sense only to the natives. It is a fire, a passion, and a needle rivalry that explodes in Barcelona v Real Madrid most famously.

But it is far more than a football feeling, which is where La Liga diverges from the Premiership most markedly. Arsenal v Spurs is a local derby as is Liverpool v Everton but neither carries the baggage of regionalism, politics, language and a state of mind like Spain's clasicos (derbies).

According to Ball, “the gap in morbo terms is of Grand Canyon proportions”. The religious/historical backdrop to the Old Firm in Glasgow in fact comes much closer to the spirit of Spanish ‘morbo' than anything in England. Britain became politically united and industrialised decades before Spain so has merely pale echoes of the potent regional identities that still resonate in Iberia. This is another book that proves the truism that to understand a nation's football you must first understand the nation.

Spain's stubborn adherence to regional identity, its pueblorinismo, therefore makes it less a nation than a confederation of states whose frustrations and cries for attention are played out on the football field in a way that fairly eclipses other countries' regional rivalries. Can you imagine for instance Cardiff City maintaining a Welsh-only player policy right up to the present day, as Athletic Bilbao have done with Basque players?

We remain as largely ignorant today as a Royal Marines band visiting Barcelona in 1925 was when, in good faith, it struck up the Spanish national anthem but abandoned it after only five bars and 90,000 boos. The most famous ‘morbo' is the Barca-Real antagonism of course with the left-wing Catalans proclaiming their independence in the face of their defeat in the Civil War by the Francoist Castilians, who trumpet Spain's tenuous national ‘unity'.

This rivalry is so well documented it often obscures the other Spanish football centres like Valencia, twice Champions League finalists in recent years, the pride of Andalucia Sevilla, and the North-West cheerleaders Deportivo La Coruna.

The giants of the Nou Camp get a chapter to themselves here as do Real Madrid, and rightly so. Any overseas visitor to either club's magnificent stadium leaves overwhelmed by the immensity of the experience, converted absolutely to the idea that Barcelona/Real are far, far more than football clubs.

Yet refreshingly Ball does not let the big two of Spanish football swamp the book in the way they seem to choke La Liga's image. There is a long chapter on Galician football, focusing particularly on Deportivo La Coruna, a shorter chapter on another Champions League wunderteam of the ‘90s - Valencia but the most enjoyable section is where the author gets to the heart of the Seville-Real Betis rivalry by engaging the views of five local cabbies. If there is a team English fans might warm to most it is perhaps Athletic Bilbao.

Fiercely tribal, the Basques have a reputation for aping the playing style of football's homeland and even the weather is a far cry from the postcard Spain of Andalucian flamenco, bullfights and paella. “As you take your seat you seem to be transported back to the old days of rattles, cloth caps, steaming hot mugs of tea, mud, rain and a hard but appreciative working-class audience,” waxes Ball gleefully.

A charming chapter sees Ball trace Spanish football to its roots in the Southern copper-mining town of Huelva. The area where English migrant workers started the nation's first football team in 1889 is a sleepy, dirty, dusty and forgotten backwater but in this stable was lit a spark that leads all the way to David Beckham and the galacticos today.

Ball's overview of Spanish football feels pleasantly succinct at only 240 pages and never drags.

Amidst the engaging narrative there are a few anecdotal gems such as Basque nationalists in San Sebastian letting off fireworks when Korea knocked Spain out of the 2002 World Cup, hot-head Hristo Stoichkov chasing a live hare around the Nou Camp, ex-Liverpool man Sammy Lee finding his first training session at Osasuna consisted of learning how to dive properly or the fact that yellow-shirted Villareal are nicknamed ‘The Submarines' after the Beatles song.

However any eulogies to Spain's vibrant club scene come with a nagging caveat at the back of the reader's mind: What about the national team who bafflingly disappoint time after time? Well yes what about them: One European Championship win in 1964 is all they have to show for themselves. Even England have a better record!

You can put your Spanish holiday home on the fact that come the next major tournament (World Cup 2006) everyone will be whispering it has to be Spain's year at long last before the team stumbles embarrassingly out of the tournament again.

It is as if ‘failing to live up to expectations' should be the motto on the team crest. Their shortcomings have become legendary and even somewhat comical, such as losing to Northern Ireland & Gerry Armstrong's famous goal when hosting the World Cup Finals in 1982.

Ball provides some clues to the enduring mystery of the Iberian underachievers, noting that cautious defensive play, an often prudent option at the highest level, is just not the Spanish style and that foreigners have dominated the league for a long time, from Di Stefano and Puskas via Herrera, Cruyff and Toshack to Beckham, Ranieri and Ronaldinho today.

Then, once more, there is the pueblorinismo in the population whose lack of collectivism as a whole rubs off on to the national team. Maybe Valencia and Spain winger Vicente summed it up succinctly when arriving back at the airport after Euro 2004, “What do you expect? We're Spain” and as we well know by now you cannot separate football from its country.

Like many fans I have begun to follow Spanish football at the expense of Italian in recent years. After Real Madrid's 1998 Champions League win over Juventus heralded the incoming Spanish Armada, the 2003 quarter final between Valencia and Inter was all the proof I needed.

The Milanese bored through to the semifinals with a display so excruciatingly negative Ball calls it “cynicism that was almost obscene”. Valencia on the other hand played some of the most colourful attacking football I can recall, on a par with Red Star Belgrade's demolition of Rangers on their way to the 1991 European Cup or Ajax's extraordinary away win at Real Madrid four years later.

Spain, after years in the shade of England and Italy, has emerged triumphant again on the UEFA stage and the overseas focus in England has shifted from Serie A to La Liga.

Real, for now, have the top stars: Beckham, Figo, Ronaldo, Zidane, Raul and Owen. Barcelona with Ronaldinho look on fire this season and perhaps the most likely candidate to halt the Chelsea train in its tracks. It is not just the weather that is hot in Spain and ‘Morbo' is the best guide to it yet written.

Sean O'Conor