Tag Archives: spain

Spring Fútbol in Spain

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had to find a way to endure the gap between high school hockey and the baseball season. The NCAA Tournament is some consolation, but not much of one for us jilted Hoya alumni, and I’ve never liked basketball all that much to begin with. Instead, I let my attention wander overseas, where a pretty nice race is shaping up in Spain.

The European soccer leagues are now in their respective stretch runs, and on Sunday I was treated to an exemplary installment in European soccer’s biggest rivalry. The goals flew left and right, and while the referee imposed himself a bit more than one might like, Barcelona came out with a crucial 4-3 come-from-behind road victory over Real Madrid. The win rescued Barcelona’s chances at the La Liga title, and gives them reason for optimism heading into their other two trophy competitions—a Copa del Rey clash with Madrid in a few weeks, and in the quarterfinal stage of the European Champions League. The match-up had been hyped as a changing of the guard, with aging Barça perhaps finally relinquishing the crown Spain’s most expensive team. It wasn’t to be.

The man who grabbed the headlines was, of course, Lionel Messi, whose hat trick answered any questions about his recovery from injury, and quieted the tiresome efforts of the Madrid backers to suggest that Cristiano Ronaldo might have surpassed him. Messi breaks records nearly every time he scores these days (and he’s still just 26!), and his performance in his prime is a once-in-a-generation joy to watch. But just as dominant in Sunday’s win was Andrés Iniesta, the sublime midfielder with a flair for the dramatic. Iniesta’s goal in the seventh minute set the tone for the rest of the night, and his effort to wriggle through a pair of Madrid defenders earned the decisive penalty kick late in the game. At Barcelona he will forever be in Messi’s shadow, but the man who scored the game-winner in the 2010 World Cup final and was named the Player of the Tournament in the 2012 European Championships would be a legitimate superstar anywhere else, yet the quiet man from La Mancha is content to humbly play the wingman to Messi.

While Barça isn’t guaranteed of anything yet, they look much better heading down the stretch this season than they did a year ago, and the reasons lie in the wrinkles introduced by new coach Tata Martino. They’ve done a much better job of rotating their squad this season, keeping the top players fresh, and while they still rely on their bread-and-butter passing game and the peerless all-Spanish midfield of Iniesta, Xavi, Cesc Fabregas, and Sergio Busquets, they’re a bit more willing to play with pace on the counterattack now. Oddly unimportant in all of this is Neymar, the 22-year-old Brazilian record offseason signing, but he has some excellent flashes, and will slowly find his way into the system. Their demise, as has been the case of late, could be on defense, where Martino joins his predecessors in wishfully thinking that Javier Mascherano can hold down the back line against the best in the world. (I like Mascherano, but a central defender he is not, especially on a team whose fullbacks are often found bombing down the wings.) Goalkeeper Victor Valdes’s season-ending injury midweek could also dent Barça’s title hopes.

Real Madrid has also evolved tactically since last season, with new boss Carlo Ancelotti adopting a much more direct approach than José Mourinho’s dull counterattacking game. Against inferior opponents, it does look better, but the natural tradeoff here is a thinner midfield, where Xabi Alonso alone cannot quite cut it against an attack of Barcelona’s caliber. The front line of Ronald, Karim Benzema, and Gareth Bale piles up a lot of goals, but it isn’t clearly better than Barcelona’s somewhat deeper front line; like his fellow expensive transfer Neymar, Bale has been hit-or-miss in his first season in Spain, and Benzema, despite scoring twice against Barcelona, probably should have had himself another goal or two. Real’s saving grace may be the less-hyped midfield duo of Luka Modric and Angel di Maria, both of whom are having stellar years.

The thing is, neither of these teams is leading La Liga right now: that honor instead goes to Atlético de Madrid, the Spanish soccer equivalent of the New York Mets, the team that just sort of hovers there in the shadow of a giant crosstown rival. Atleti doesn’t have the firepower of the two perennial contenders—they’ve scored 14 fewer goals than Real, and 21 fewer than Barça—but they make up for it with rugged defense. Time will tell if they can hold up for another eight fixtures, plus a Champions League quarterfinal showdown with Barça. Those two also play on the regular season’s final day, so the race could be in for a thrilling conclusion. If Atlético can pull it off, it would be the first championship by someone other than Real or Barça in ten years.

Real has a somewhat easier road both in Spain and in the Champions League, where they drew injury-riddled Borussia Dortmund in the quarterfinals. The favorite to win the thing, Bayern Munich, also has a pretty easy path forward, having drawn reeling Manchester United. (David Moyes, given the unenviable task of succeeding the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson as manager, is allegedly facing open revolt in the dressing room, while opposing fans unfurl banners applauding his coaching skills. Once again, American sports fans have nothing European football fans.) The last quarterfinal, between Chelsea and Paris-St. Germain, is perhaps the most intriguing. PSG is very talented but has yet to win anything of any magnitude (the French league doesn’t count), while José Mourinho will look to rediscover his specialness and help English football save some face. I’ll admit it, I’m rooting for him: there is no more delightful mixture of arrogance, style, and coaching brilliance anywhere in the world.

Spain’s La Liga doesn’t draw the American audience that England gets, and that was true even before NBC snapped up the Premier League; the language barrier probably plays a role there, as does the league’s very real issues with competitive imbalance. But while Spain doesn’t have England’s depth of decent teams, it does have the best stable of top-end teams of any European league. The Brits and Italians have not fared particularly well in Europe over the past two years, while France and Germany are both dominated by one lonely powerhouse. Spain, meanwhile, has three serious contenders every year between Barcelona, Real Madrid, and one rising interloper, whether that be Atlético, Málaga last year, or Valencia in the not-so-distant past. In the Champions League, it is Europe’s best.

All is not well here, though, with debt burdening many of the lower-tier teams. Spanish soccer gives a taste of the best of the sport, but also more than its share of the worst, with its giant financial inequities and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. Superficially, it’s easy to like international club fútbol: there are good teams in so many countries, and those teams draw from everywhere. Yet for all the apparent cosmopolitanism, this global sport is more ruthlessly capitalist than any major American sports league. While I actually prefer a bit of imbalance to some of the more rigid salary-capped leagues–sports need dynasties and villains– and one wonders just how strong the foundations really are in European soccer. The good news: we have a World Cup in less than three months!

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Fútbol Evolves

For the past six years or so, soccer fans have enjoyed (or been endlessly annoyed by) the domination of two teams: the Spanish national team in international competitions, and F.C. Barcelona in club competition. Spain has won the past two European championships and the 2010 World Cup, while Barcelona won three of six Champions League titles (the European Super Bowl, so to speak). Seeing as six to eight regulars for Spain have also play their club soccer for Barcelona, the two are, effectively, the same core squad. There are key differences, of course: Barcelona enjoys the services of one Lionel Messi, the greatest player on earth at the moment; the Spanish defense is somewhat better than Barcelona’s, and they also boast the sainted goalkeeper Iker Casillas of Real Madrid. But the similarities in style are all too obvious, and there is no doubt that the heart and soul of both squads is the midfield of Xavi, Sergio Busquets, and Andrés Iniesta.

In the past three months, both dynasties have come apart. First, Barcelona lost to Bayern Munich in the Champions League semifinals by a brutal 7-0 scoreline over two matches, and earlier today, Spain was thrashed 3-0 by an inspired Brazil squad in the Confederations Cup final. There are excuses out there: Messi and a couple of other key players were hurt for the Munich matches, and the playing Brazil in Rio de Janeiro a few days after a draining semifinal against Italy is no easy task. Several players have shown signs of age, as well: Xavi and Casillas aren’t what they used to be, and the strikeforce that carried the Spanish national team, Fernando Torres and David Villa (the latter also a Barcelona man), has been out of form for a few years now.

But even more importantly, there is the sense that the style of play made famous by both squads has been eclipsed by that of its rivals. Both teams relied on that famed midfield to unleash the mesmerizing “tiki-taka” passing patterns that wore down the opposition, demoralizing them with relentless ball control. The few teams that beat Spain or Barcelona usually “parked the bus”—that is, they put as many people back on defense as possible to clog up the area in front of the goal and hope to spring the occasional breakaway the other direction when Spain or Barcelona overcommitted offensively. Bayern and Brazil, however, took the game straight to Barcelona and Spain, pressuring them across the pitch and unleashing a physical style that the smaller Spaniards struggled to match. Their defenses, always the teams’ weaknesses (to the extent they had one), were exposed badly, while the pedestrian forwards not named Messi have had zero answers. The midfields have been rendered unable to control play anywhere near the level they used to, and their offenses have degenerated into Iniesta trying to dribble through five defenders.

As damning as that end of tactical dominance may sound, however, it is by no means the end of these great runs by each team. It’s not a coincidence that the two teams that have beaten them have relied on a pair of rock-solid holding midfielders to shut down the tiki-taka, and with Bayern star Javi Martínez gathering dust on the Spanish national team bench, perhaps it’s time to pair him with Busquets to give La Roja its own strong defensive midfield. It might not be as sexy, but it’s not like they’d lose much by taking off one of their mediocre forwards, and that strength would allow offensive fullbacks such as Jordi Alba to range forward into the attack more often. Up front, the national team also has some options; winger Jesús Navas, who came on in the Brazil game a bit too late to make a real difference, adds an element of speed and pace that is otherwise missing from the plodding tiki-taka, and should start playing more. It’s also probably time to start working in the next generation, which early evidence suggests is just as talented as the last one; while it’s hard to see the likes of David de Gea, Isco, and Thiago Alcántara starting full-time by next year’s World Cup, an infusion of youth could add a needed spark to an otherwise aging squad.

Untroubled by the limits of national boundaries, Barcelona opened up the checkbook this summer and bought themselves Neymar, the 21-year-old Brazilian wunderkind who just finished making mincemeat of several of his future teammates for the national team. There are some questions as to how well he’ll jell with Messi, but the potential is there for one of the most lethal combinations in fútbol history. Even if he isn’t an instant hit, he should at least lessen Barça’s Messi-dependence and open up some space for other players on the team. They still have some pressing needs on defense, and just about every center back on the market has been linked to the Catalan giants. Barcelona, too, may want to consider adding a second holding midfielder: like Spain, they have got a good one on their bench in the out-of-position Javier Mascherano, and Bayern certainly showed that such a lineup need not come at the expense of artistic play going forward. This would be especially helpful for the Barça defense, as their fullbacks are even more offensive-minded than Spain’s.

All dynasties must come to an end; it’s impossible for a team to put together a core that will win championships for ten years or so. But with flexible leadership, there’s no reason that a great team can’t build a second dynasty with a little bit of tweaking around the edges. Both Spain and Barcelona have the resources to do so. It’s now up to the teams’ respective managers—veteran Vicente del Bosque with the national team and the green Tito Vilanova at Barcelona—to prove their worth.