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Search: 'Tony Blair'

Stories

Charlton’s situation could be salvaged but the owners must say sorry

PR specialist Kevin Rye has suggested ways Roland Duchatelet and Katrien Meire could turn things around at The Valley but it may be too late

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The Forgotten Fifteen

350 BuryHow Bury triumphed 
in British football’s worst year
by James Bentley
SilverWood Books, £14.99
Reviewed by Charles Morris
From WSC 350 April 2016

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The story of how a hard-up Fourth Division club succeeded against the odds and won promotion in 1984-85 using just 15 players has immediate appeal to fans of smaller clubs. The underdog theme also chimes with the present, as Leicester, Bournemouth and Burton confound expectations this season. The tale’s backdrop is compelling, too, because 1984-85 was a nadir for British football, a period besmirched by appalling hooliganism and the tragedies of the Bradford fire and the Heysel stadium.

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Fear And Loathing In La Liga

322 FearBarcelona vs Real Madrid
by Sid Lowe
Yellow Jersey, £18.99
Reviewed by Dermot Corrigan
From WSC 322 December 2013

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“Barcelona good, Madrid bad” is a pretty common idea among English-speaking football fans. Even those who question the Catalan club’s “football philosophy”, or its board’s financial dealings with Qatar and Brazil, still often see Barça as purer than, and morally superior to, their rivals from the Spanish capital.

This idea can be traced all the way back to George Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia – and is just plain wrong, according to Sid Lowe’s new contribution to the growing pile of English language books on Spanish football.

Fear And Loathing In La Liga: Barcelona vs Real Madrid takes a broader approach than most, looking closely at the impact of political and cultural trends on the game, including epigraphs from writer Antonio Machado and Swansea City attacker Michu. The early 20th century poet’s quote is of “the two Spains”, a famous line referring to the pre-Civil War right-left political divide. But Lowe appears to agree more with the modern player’s preference to avoid choosing one or the other.

The strongest chapters consider the effect of the 1936-39 conflict on football and turn over some pretty widely held preconceptions. Madrid (the city) was not Franco’s base, instead it suffered the fiercest nationalist attacks. This meant Real Madrid had to stop playing official games, their ground was ruined, and their republican club president Rafael Sánchez Guerra was imprisoned when the city finally fell to Franco’s forces. Barcelona was less directly impacted by the fighting, so FC Barcelona kept playing in the Catalan Championship and Mediterranean League, then toured North America.

During the first 15 years of the dictatorship the Catalan club were also more successful, winning five La Liga titles to Real Madrid’s none. In those years the Barça boardroom was stuffed with well-connected businessmen, just as it is now. Professional football clubs – in Spain under Franco, just as in England under Tony Blair – tend to go with the political flow. Which explains Barcelona’s current embrace of Catalan nationalism.

Lowe’s impressive list of interviewees includes Alfredo di Stéfano, Johan Cruyff, Luís Figo, Zinedine Zidane and Andrés Iniesta. He uncovers new archival evidence about how Barça president Josep Sunyol died in 1936, and why Di Stéfano joined Madrid not Barça in 1953. There are also neat mentions of Barça’s (unwitting) role in the murder of Leon Trotsky, as well as Madrid’s links to the Beatles in the 1960s and Pedro Almodovar in the 1980s. It’s a rare book that discusses ETA (the Basque separatist organisation) and Michael Owen on the same page.

The weakest section is towards the end, as by now there is little new to say on José Mourinho the ex-translator versus Josep Guardiola the former ballboy. But that’s a minor quibble. We have already seen how closely Spain’s two biggest clubs have mirrored each other through the years. Real Madrid and Barcelona do not represent different strands in Spanish history, or competing political points of view, they’re just two sides of the same coin.

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Sheffield United 2 Leeds United 0

These Yorkshire rivals may yet head in different directions out of the Championship. But in a tense occasion on a sunny day the confident pre-match favourites fall to a chastening defeat. David Stubbs reveals all

Bramall Lane’s highest ever attendance was the 68,287 who witnessed an FA Cup tie against Leeds in 1936. The rivalry between the two clubs is intense but fitful, as both have bobbed up and down between divisions over the years. In the early 1970s, when Sheffield United climbed back into Division One under manager John Harris, I recall as a young lad in Leeds watching highlights of the home and away Sheffield fixtures on Yorkshire TV the following Sunday afternoon.

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