Si hi havia algun dubte sobre l’amor anglès per un altre tipus de futbol, sortim de dubtes. Richard Williams, un dels grans del periodisme esportiu anglès, a The Guardian.
There is something rather irritating about the tone of Barcelona’s Xavi when he dismisses the footballing methods of other clubs
The teams were a goal apiece, with the visitors down to 10 men, when a distinctive noise came from the away end at Loftus Road on Sunday afternoon. As a forward and a defender converged on a 50-50 ball near the corner flag, the force of their collision drew a massive grunt of satisfaction from the spectators.
This was English football, and it made me think back to that much discussed interview Xavi Hernández of Barcelona gave in these pages last Friday, when he spoke with barely hidden contempt for anything other than the rarified approach to football nurtured in the academy at La Masia.
His admiration of the English game was restricted to individuals – the likes of Paul Scholes, John Barnes and Chris Waddle – and to the atmosphere created by the fans at Premier League grounds. There was faint praise for what he saw as changes taking place: “Barry, Lampard, Gerrard, Carrick … they are players who treat the ball well. You see them and you think, Christ, they are trying to play.” All too clear, however, was his opinion of the basic attributes of the game in its birthplace. “You watch Liverpool and Carragher wins the ball and boots it into the stands and the fans applaud,” he said. “There’s a roar! They’d never applaud that here.”
Xavi concluded the conversation with a ringing declaration. “I’m a romantic,” he said, ignoring the fact that it is quite possible to be romantic, albeit in a slightly different footballing register, about Harry Cripps of Millwall, Stuart Boam of Middlesbrough, Terry Butcher of Ipswich Town, Tommy Smith of Liverpool, Brian Kilcline of Notts County and Coventry, or Micky Droy of Chelsea, and many other defenders who became, to the supporters of their clubs, symbols of resistance.
I love watching cerebral midfield maestros and would have made Xavi the world player of the year for the past three seasons. But there was something irritating about his tone, particularly when he dismissed Internazionale’s achievement in eliminating Barcelona at the semi-final stage of last year’s European Cup: “There is something greater than the result, more lasting. A legacy. Inter won the Champions League but no one talks about them.”
How do you like your sour grapes, Señor Hernández? It seems a pity that a man with so many honours to his name cannot accept that there is more than one way to play football, and that Inter beat Barcelona with two finely drilled performances which saw them win 3-1 at home and hold on for a 1-0 away defeat, despite being a man short for more than an hour of the second leg.
Xavi might also do well to remember that the reduction of Inter to 10 men came about through a disgracefully exaggerated reaction from his team-mate Sergio Busquets to a challenge from Thiago Motta. When Busquets went down, clutching his face, a television camera revealed him parting his fingers to peek at the referee’s reaction as Motta received the red card. People are certainly still talking about that, and also about the way José Mourinho reorganised his side to preserve victory in the tie on the way to matching the clean sweep of six trophies amassed by Xavi and his team-mates the previous year.
Barca had 74% of possession in the game against Internazionale at the Camp Nou, and completed 548 passes against their opponents’ 67. So they had only themselves to blame for their failure. And I confess it was with just the merest glimmer of schadenfreude that on Sunday, two days after reading Xavi’s claims to superiority, I watched his team struggle against Sporting Gijón, ending their run of 16 consecutive league wins and scraping a draw only through a glorious late chip from David Villa.
Of course Xavi’s Barcelona represent a powerful force for good in the game as a whole. Of course we delight in their artistry. Of course we all want to see the battle of wits and skills when they meet Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday . But we also want contrasts of temperament and style, or the game is nothing.
