Four Clasicos

by Raül Pope Fargüell

Four “clásicos” in eighteen days? I’m too busy doing anything else.

In our house since the semi-finals of the Champions League were confirmed, where Barcelona and Madrid would lock horns in la liga and the final of the King’s Cup too, making it a whopping four games in just eighteen days, we’ve repeated over and over again that either we’ll ‘drink to forget, or drink never to forget’. It’s with that in mind that at 9 am on Saturday morning, eleven hours before the la liga dead rubber kicks-off, that I have a can of Voll Damm in front of me and more in the fridge. It’s 7% and Catalan and I’m hoping to pass out by five pm and sleep through the first of the most over-hyped, nauseating, up-its-own-ass run of games in the history of football.

Graham Hunter says it’ll be ‘sensational’, Guillem Balague has a blog detailing possible scenarios about the next 360 minutes and Sid Lowe has written his bit in the Guardian to show how Spain has utterly lost its head. The whole place has gone Clásico potty and the worse thing is I live here. For these blokes though, they get paid to crank up the power, maximise the intrigue and sensationalise the spiel, it’s job security. But me, I’m sick of it all before a ball’s been kicked.

If I turn over to Gol TV right now there’s a show about the history of the Clásico and it looks just like the one they showed before the last game with Kluivert, Xavi, Michel and el Butre (who went to school just across the road from where I am now) talking about how special this game is blah blah blah. The fact is these four games aren’t classics at all, in their own right they may be an interesting combination of fixtures, but a world series of football it won’t be.

Barcelona can afford to lose the game tonight and still win the league, it’s almost won and Madrid taking points off of Guardiola’s men now is inconsequential as far as the league title is concerned. It may give Mourinho’s side a confidence boost going into the cup final, but let’s say Barcelona step it up for that game after losing the league game, that’s still two titles to nil to Barcelona. The Champions League games might be interesting, but a one-nil defeat at the Bernabéu for Barcelona is acceptable in the grand scheme of things as long as the job is done at the Nou Camp. On balance it would seem fair with Madrid taking two victories from the four and they could hold their heads high, when Madrid would really end up with another empty trophy cabinet and Barcelona taking all the spoils. How Roncero would spin that stomach-churning eventuality Allah only knows.

These games aren’t meaningless, the TV revenue and worldwide attention alone means people want it to happen, but after the quarter-final draw on March 18th when the possibility of this “dream” semi-final became reality, two days shy of one month ago, I’ve heard about nothing else and I’m saturated to the point of avoiding all contact with football, I can’t take any more and I’d rather be doing anything else than finding out there’s some sort of turbo button the media hasn’t yet pressed.