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Sid Lowe, writer from Spain
Florentino Perez will not go to Classico In Barcelona on Saturday. This time there will be no visiting boss in the directors’ box alongside all the usual suspects, from former players and football figures to bankers, businessmen and politicians. Barcelona president Joan Laporta will have to find someone else to sit alongside him. Unless he has an inflatable Berez he can use? There won’t be a formal meal before the game, not this time — and you know it’s serious when someone cancels lunch.
– Live stream on ESPN+: Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, Saturday, 10 a.m. ET (US)
They say that the Real Madrid president made the decision because of a tweet from the Barcelona manager. And the “they” here is not the club, not directly, and almost never: this sort of thing, which is most things, is best said by others, through the usual channels where someone else’s fingers might get burned.
On Wednesday night during Real Madrid’s win over Braga in the Champions League, when Vinicius stood by the touchline, faced an opponent and took dozens of steps without actually going anywhere, the Barcelona manager whom you’ve never heard of before but perhaps have heard of now wrote the name Mikel Campes: “This is not racism. Vinicius deserves a clip around the ear for being a clown and a pisser.”
Camps deleted the tweet soon after, but it was too late, and then remained silent. Not only is he a director, he is – hear this – a spokesperson, but he never spoke or tweeted again either. He pretended it didn’t happen, because it would work. 24 hours passed and there was nothing.
Before Barcelona’s match in Glasgow the following night, Barcelona manager Rafa Yuste was asked about this; He said it was a mistake, an unfortunate and unacceptable tweet that “will not happen again.”
When Xavi Hernandez was asked about it, as he was asked about many issues that it should not be his job to play, the Barcelona coach said that the fact that Camps deleted the tweet says it all; It’s done. He wasn’t the one who was going to end it Classico.
There was no reprimand for Camps, no dismissal from his position, no word from him either, and no reason to assume that he would be absent Saturday, taking his seat on the board. In silence, Perez made a decision, or so it goes: he wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t attend Classico. It seems that this time there will be no pre-match meal or official reception anyway, but now there will be no president either.
On Radio Cadena Ser on Thursday evening, the former Barcelona president spoke asked Joan Gaspart: “Why does he want us to kneel down and ask for forgiveness? What should we do for him to come to a match that he is obligated to attend?” Gaspart said he never missed a beat ClassicoNot even when the police suggested he do so. If Perez did in fact withdraw over a tweet — a bad tweet, it is true — then he felt “disappointed.”
if. If the tweet did that, that was the thing that tipped this over the edge.
There’s more to that, of course, and Perez didn’t leave last year either. There is the Negrera case (the reason then) and Madrid’s decision to request participation in the case as a victim. There are repercussions from that, with Laporta turning to that old favourite: Real Madrid as the team of the system. And there was Madrid’s response: a video The team favored by dictator General Francisco Franco, the real regime’s team, was actually Barcelona. This was praised by the Prime Minister of Madrid, a description It is “brilliant”, the Catalan referee student To be taken down, called insulting and manipulative.
(It didn’t really happen, but we could have been here all day on that.)
There was also Laporta’s recent line about “social Madridism”, the power they wield in the media, government, business and beyond, being behind the pursuit of the Negrira case – not the €7.2m Barcelona paid the club’s vice-president. panel of judges for nearly two decades.
(For what it’s worth, by the way, many were quick to deny it and thus expose it, sociological Madridism exists. So does sociological Barcelonaism. It’s there in the paragraph above, with those political responses; it’s there in the media every time I pick it up.)
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Should Barcelona’s manager be fired because of Vinicius’ tweet?
Gap Marcotti and Julian Lorenz condemned a tweet from Barcelona board member Mikel Camps directed at Vinicius Junior.
In short, things are not good between Madrid and Barcelona at the moment. But then, well, Madrid and Barcelona. The other thing Gaspart said Thursday evening is that when he was president, he said things “much worse” than Camps said, and he’s not alone.
Gaspart was the president whose first task was to solve the chaos caused by the departure of Luis Figo from Barcelona to Real Madrid. It did not solve the chaos. You made it worse. He was there the day a pig’s head was thrown at Viggo. He said it was all Viggo’s fault. He added that he came to “provoke them.” And he wasn’t just a pig’s head that day, even though he became the Image of this rivalry there were bottles, coins, lighters and even mobile phones. It wasn’t just that year. The previous season there had been a bicycle chain and a rooster’s head, when they met in the cup in 1968, bottles were thrown and two years later there were 30,000 cushions.
Santiago Bernabeu He claimed to be famous“It is not true that I hate Catalonia. I love and admire Catalonia… despite the Catalans.” This sparked a reaction from Barcelona’s then president, Narciso de Carreras, who declared: The separatists are worse than the separatists. Bernabeu came to the presidency primarily after an infamous and politically charged cup meeting between the two clubs in 1943, during which the regime forced a calculated reconciliation and put pressure on Madrid (and Barcelona) to change presidents.
Madrid striker Juanito once took Barcelona president Josep Luis Nunez to court, After he saidPublicly: “Juanito walks around leaving pregnant women on every corner.”
Then there was Ramon Mendoza, president of Real Madrid between 1985 and 1995, who signed an agreement with Barcelona to work together on television and marketing deals and not to interfere in each other’s contracts, but he also denounced what he saw as Barcelona’s manipulation of the Catalan nationalist message and the use of the system team metaphor. He took every opportunity to filter them in search of what he called “the sports narrative.” Because they were superpowers, Mendoza said, that meant they had to have “the nuclear bomb: you have to have missiles, and you can’t fight permanent terrorism or blackmail with your hands behind your back.”
Pérez’s first act as president was to sign Figo: not just because he was Figo but because he was one Barcelona Vigo. When Laporta put up a huge banner during the presidential election campaigns, he did not do so on Avinguda Diagonal. He pinned it a kicking distance from the Santiago Bernabéu. “I look forward to seeing you again,” she said.
And with all the seriousness of some of this, and with all that there are things Do No matter the subject – the Negrera case is above all a case of real importance – and some of it is sloppy, tired, depressing and downright pathetic, there’s a dangerous undercurrent to it all. Although these historical arguments often have you tearing your hair out, they can also sometimes feel like a game, or even contrived. This is Real Madrid versus Barcelona, things are not supposed to be good between them. They’re not supposed to be nice to each other; The words that are silenced and censored are those in which someone on the other side is praised.
In addition, as Mendoza’s letter indicates, they also have things in common, common interests, a marriage of convenience. Don’t go to ClassicoDon’t allow a photo to be taken sitting side by side with Laporta, but beneath the surface, they are on the same side on many things, against the league, and against the rest. They are the last remaining members of the Premier League, clinging together, and being abandoned by the rest.
It is a strange and uncomfortable place to live, and is difficult for many to understand, but even less accepting. This week, for many fans, the worst thing to happen in the ongoing battle between Madrid and Barcelona, the moment that disgusted them the most, came in the La Liga tie. There he met Real Madrid general manager José Angel Sanchez and Barcelona president Laporta. Finally, face to face, after all the words, all the accusations, all the confrontations, these greatest rivals, sworn enemies, smiled and laughed and hugged each other tightly.
