Earthquake on the Madrid planet due to a typically culerphobic refereeing decision. Barça and Madrid are vying for the monopoly of refereeing victimhood. The show is grotesque: they share accusations that turn them into corrupt children of slavery-Leninism or henchmen of sociological Gurucetism. It is a phenomenon as old as football. But the VAR and the opportunistic interpretation of it by the sensationalism of many media has exacerbated it to a level of self-destructive delusion that should be – but will not be – unsustainable.
Let’s delirious, then, and recover that cynical retort of Groucho Marx: “We paid the referee to declare you the winner. We paid your opponent to let you win. The rest is up to you.” Or the wisdom of Bill Shankly: “The problem with referees is that they know the rules, but not the game”. The referee’s error (Valencia’s or any other) has a dramatic dimension disproportionate to the other errors in football. Yesterday in Manchester, Haaland missed an incredible goal, but today we talk about it as an extravagance that will not tarnish his CV, while Gil Manzano’s decision will haunt him (and his descendants) until death.
If the referees knew the game, Madrid’s goal would probably have gone on the scoreboard and would have contradicted the visionary projection of Franz Beckenbauer, who imagined a football that no longer needed the referees. A football subjected to the infallible and technological precision of drones. In Spain, this will never work: if the only judges were robots or drones, we would already find a way to discredit them and accuse them of being perverse, corrupt or terrorists.
Can you tell that I’m making time (and space) so that I don’t have to comment much on the match against Athletic? Playing on foot against a team with a hangover does not seem like the most convincing and ambitious tactic for a team that is playing for the League (and much of its future). And if, in addition, your midfield suffers two injuries – De Jong, Pedri – in the first half that complete the dismantling that Gavi inaugurated, the situation worsens. We can bet on the fatality card, of course. Romain Rolland, Nobel laureate and conspicuous loner, said that fatality is the excuse of souls without a will.
The commemoration of the third year of Joan Laporta’s return to the presidency could have served as a calendar shocker. Laporta, in fact, is the example of a soul with a surplus of will, but without the resources to transform it into minimally tangible facts. Unfortunately, the signs belie the possible green shoots and place us in the sadly common realm of chronic uncertainty and impotence. What do we play? The only tactic is desperation understood as a continuous effort to change things based on the will (without a soul). The minutes pass. The team transmits great discomfort, with and without the ball. It is better not to talk about the discomfort of the fans.
