Real Madrid bask in victory over Barcelona
Tuesday 01 December 2009 09:30
WEEKEND RESULTS Sat Nov 28: Sevilla 2-2 Málaga, Valencia 1-1 Mallorca, Sporting Gijón 1-0 Villarreal Sun Nov 29: Atlético Madrid 4-0 Espanyol, FC Barcelona 1-0 Real Madrid, Racing Santander 0-1 Deportivo La Coruña, Real Zaragoza 0-1 Osasuna, Getafe 5-1 Xerez, Real Valladolid 3-3 CD Tenerife, Almería 1-4 Athletic Bilbao
It’s entirely possible that La Liga Loca was hallucinating - fresh air and too many pork-based products can do that to the blog’s delicate constitution - but it's convinced that it watched Real Madrid lose to Barcelona on Sunday night.
Indeed, it had the same sensation about a year ago after a 2-0 Camp Nou defeat for the Castle Greyskull club.
However, after returning to Capital City and strumming through Monday’s and Tuesday’s local press it would appear that, like last year, Real Madrid pulled off a glorious victory over Pep’s weeping Dream Boys.
For that reason, the blog has decided to contract either Marca or AS as its official publicist.
Within days La Liga Loca will have been elevated to Pulitzer Prize-winning status, with a bevy of local beauties having being bedded in the process.
“A taste of victory!” claims Monday’s Marca, whose editorial gives Ronaldo eight points in a Eurovision-style weekend rating system topped by both Pepe and Carles Puyol.
There is no space at all for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, whom Barcelona fans are laughably claiming as having scored the winning goal in the weekend's encounter.
The entire Barcelona support have been given ‘nul points’ as punishment for one Camp Nou miscreant who shined a laser pen at two Real Madrid players - a story followed up on in Tuesday’s press.
Still, there’s time to applaud the 700 “brave Madridistas” who crossed swollen rivers, climbed ravines and fought trolls to sit on their arses for 90 minutes watching a game of football in a perfectly nice stadium.
Inside the same edition, Eduardo Inda appears to be fairly upset at the pressure having been taken off Manuel Pellegrini, with a rather unpleasant cartoon depicting the Third-Choice Chilean crawling out of his grave.
The paper’s editor had begun his one-man campaign against the Castle Greyskull Terrahawk with 10 good reasons why Pellegrini should be sacked. A smattering of victories saw this hit list reduced to just seven reasons.
Sunday’s glorious victory now sees Inda doing the journalistic equivalent of a sullen shrug and a sulky sniff.
To show that Spain really is one great country united by a love of sangria and shouting at each other, the papers in Catalunya seem to have been drinking from the funny fountain too, by being vaguely nice about Real Madrid for once.
“Madrid played their best game but couldn’t impose themselves on a group of heroes who know how to entertain and suffer,” said Santi Nolla sympathetically in Mundo Deportivo, despite his side’s defeat.
“We saw a great Madrid, playing a serious game,” soothed an apron-wearing, cupcake-cooking Josep María Casanovas in Sport.
But life got better on Tuesday for both Barça-barmy papers with the announcement that little Leo Messi is the winner of France Football’s Ballon d’Or - a prize that the Spanish really do care about, which is in sharp contrast to the normal mixture of indifference and total disdain for anything that comes from that particular country loafing about somewhere north of the Pyrenees.
The Barcelona player trounced Cristiano Ronaldo in the voting to become the trophy's first Argentine winner - a fact that seemed so odd, La Liga Loca actually checked it and found out that the award was only given to European players before 1995.
AS feature the minute magician on their front cover, but only in a teenie, tiny photo in the top corner opposite an advert for potions that can help gentlemen with (cough) downstairs issues.
Inside, editor Alredo Relaño argues that the announcement of the prize came too late for the paper - not too late to pen and publish an editorial it seems - and muses with some justification that perhaps Xavi was equally deserving of the trinket.
Marca’s focus on Tuesday is on the evil-doer from the Camp Nou who shone a laser light into the faces of both Pepe and Cristiano Ronaldo - something that an alert television editor did extremely well to spot on Sunday night.
“This laser causes injuries!” shouts the front cover with a picture of the offending item that appears to be the size and shape of a lightsabre.
Nevertheless, it would seem that a number of Real Madrid players were fortunate indeed to come away from Sunday’s Clásico encounter with both their eyesight and all three points.
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About Tim Stannard
When he isn't fighting the evil forces of flamenco or attracting libel actions for La Liga Loca, Tim Stannard is building his media empire in Madrid. As well as contributing to Football365 and doing odd jobs elsewhere, Tim also works in the glamorous world of television as a producer, script writer, news editor, coffee boy and stand-in fluffer.