Of Champions, Whiners & Transfers

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Mou, what is it like watching us on TV? Why?

 The big news of the week is obviously Barcelona winning its fourth, and pointedly, Spain’s 13th UEFA Champions League title – with some style. Of course, the Spanish flags were markedly missing in the post match celebrations which is quite saddening to see given the fact that even players like Pedro, Villa, who are not Catalans, did not wave the country’s flags, either by choice or because they were told not to. The blog obviously suspects the latter. Facing an ageing United squad who looked more interested in the little nuances of the opposite team’s game play than closing the damn attackers down, Barca ran riot. Following a criminal mistake in leaving Xavi with time and space to pick out Pedro who scored his first UEFA Champions League final goal, United equalized through the huff and puff of Rooney and a little whiz of a pass from Giggs, but then allowed Messi to score a special goal and failed to close down Villa who curled one to the top right corner of Van der Saar, finally killing the tie. In a record breaking season, Barcelona still has not managed to break one record: In all of their UEFA Champions League finals, none of the goals have been scored by Catalans. So much for all the self-importance. The blog feels that it should totally do away with reporting anything out of the Catalan dailies for the next two weeks given the same revolting tripe of the self-important 20 year old Barca philosophy, the famed La Masia, et al that they will continue to churn, recycle and then churn out once more.

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La Liga : The End is Here

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Guilty?

Now that the wave of self-importance in Catalunya has worn out somewhat, Another Prick In The Wall got a chance to look at some news bytes emanating from Catalunya. The general media perception is still that of coming out a binge-drinking induced hangover though. The headline news reports how the crew of the airplane that Barca travelled in post their league victory had to tell off the players to celebrate in a more civilized manner. Little whiz Messi got a telling off from a stewardess who apparently was quite ticked off seeing that Messi did the same thing to the emergency exit what Ronaldo did to the poor spectator in row 1 of the Bernabeu, i.e. break it. The blog doubts if she got a free Messi jersey in return. In Catalunya, they have yet another reason to celebrate as UEFA overturned its investigation into Busquets’ racial slur at Marcelo with the verdict “Not Guilty” citing a “lack of strong and convincing evidence” in Busquets’ defence. While people at AS have got their knickers in a twsit around their ankles given UEFA’s latest Barca related allegiance as they called it, Real Madrid was not too pleased. To start with UEFA overturned the result in Barcelona’s favor and to add salt to injury, the notice from UEFA claimed that Madrid’s complaint has been dealt with. This prompted the capital club to release an official notice stating that they were not the ones who had officially complained about Busquets’ racial slur but had instead complained about the unsporting behavior of the Barcelona players which was rejected and then again appealed against and again opened and yada yada. Ahh, the madness. And then in a move to substantiate their case, the club’s site had various players claiming that they were glad that Busquets was going to play in Wembley but were quite sad that their gaffer had to bear all the injustice. The blog sympathizes with the poor soul that is Mourinho. Fiery brand Pepe stayed true to his word claiming that Busquets walked scot-free inspite of an obvious insult while Arbeloa did a Xavi by saying that he had no preference about the impending UCL final winner seeing as he didn’t have friends at either club. The blog suspects that the journo hack who asked that question got exactly what he wanted to hear. After all, Arbeloa is a Real Madrid product who learnt his trade at the professional level in Liverpool. Oh, the Rivalry!

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The War is won, but Skrimishes are On

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Campions - 2010/2011

First of all, the blog would like to apologize to its readers for the relative period of inactivity; don’t they clash with the clasicos especially when Barca wins? No doubt more than few readers would be smelling a conspiracy theory; in case you did not know smelling a conspiracy theory in anything related to the Clasicos is the IN thing these days. However, Another Prick In The Wall solemnly assures its readers that there’s none of those shady dealings going on here; suffice to say the writer was just busy all this while.
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Anyway, now that the ugly miniseries is finally over, this blog can focus on other colorful aspects of the Spanish league. As far as footballing matters go, Barca have won their third in a row and twenty first over all league with two games to spare. Media reports emanating from the self important smug wave down in Catalunya strive to drive home one point: Football won. Well as if the blog hasn’t heard that enough. So with conscious effort APTW has decided to skip over the soddy, happy tear stained reports from Catalunya pausing only to congratulate Barcelona for their victory over Real Madrid. It does take a consistent team to win a league, but given the state the Spanish La Liga is in with its two dog affair, credit has to be given to Barcelona for not mucking up 3-4 games more than Real Madrid.
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