Hand shakes and endangered species
Friday 03 September 2010 11:22
La Liga Loca may be fairly ambivalent to the whole concept of
international football - a bit like the Europa League, but not as
high-octane - but it really looks forward to the break in the domestic
game it demands.
First off, Deportivo won’t be playing. Second,
the blog generally has less work to do. Third, the four main sports
papers cranking up the batsh*t-o-meter to a billion is guaranteed.
Marca has been leading the way in the loony stakes, this week. Of course.
Plan
A for the Real Madrid-mad daily was five fun-filled days of reflection
on how wonderful the irritatingly monikered ‘Mou Team’ was in the 19-0
win over Mallorca and whether Cristiano Ronaldo had got even hunkier and
dreamier over the summer.
But - to borrow from Bart Simpson here
- Real Madrid were a little like a vacuum cleaner in last Sunday’s
match in that they managed to both suck and blow at the same time. This
means that Marca has had to launch a hastily-compiled three-pronged
diversion campaign to prevent its readers from realising that another
€70 million had been blown by the Madrid bosses, only for the team to be
even more rubbish than last season.
The first strategy was to be
really, really mean to Pep Guardiola, both over his handling of Zlatan
Ibrahimovic and for failing to shake José Mourinho’s hand quickly enough
at a manager’s conference in Nyon.
Friday’s front cover has the
image of the Barça boss with his own hands planted firmly in his pockets
with his rival’s outstretched hand in front of him. “Was it so hard for
you to shake his hand, Pep?” yells the banner.
The answer is ‘no’
judging by a smaller sequence of photographs printed by the paper
showing Pep happily shaking Mourinho’s hand seconds after. Indeed, the
front cover of AS has the two embracing and joking and joshing with each
other - knocking the wind from their rival paper’s insane sails
somewhat.
The second part of Marca’s ‘look away!’ campaign is to
write about how very hard Cristiano Ronaldo is working to get over his
ankle knock picked up in the Mallorca clash.
Thursday’s edition
boasts that he was in the Real Madrid gymnasium till four in the morning
on Sunday to begin his recovery - a commendable effort thought LLL
until it noted that the squad didn’t actually arrive back in the Spanish
capital from the Mallorca game until way past two.
Anyway, the
blog suspects that the only reason Ronaldo loves spending so much time
in gyms is because of the sheer quantity of mirrors they tend to have.
Friday’s
edition hands over both inside pages - with diagrams - to show how
Cristiano uses astonishing concepts such as ‘strapping’ and ‘padding’ to
protect his supposedly targeted weak spot such is his dedication to his
club’s cause. The downside is that those footballers who didn't know
that he was a tad vulnerable there, certainly do now thanks to the good
work of the paper.
“His right ankle is the most cared-for
treasure at Real Madrid,” gurgles the paper to shouts of “Oi!” from Iker
Casillas’ hands, Pepe’s tiny, tiny head and Sergio Ramos’ peni...(Stop
right there! Ed).
Diversion tactic three from Marca is to stop
Ronaldo from picking up injuries in the first place, by changing the
laws of football to prevent anyone from ever tackling him, with an
editorial on Wednesday arguing that the forward should be treated like
an ‘endangered species’.
From what LLL gathers from reading the
tabloids over the summer, the footballer has already begun his own
specialised breeding programme.
Friday’s editorial had a similar
theme claiming that “football should demand its referees have zero
tolerance against violent play”. LLL applauds such a stance from Marca,
which is why it is sure that the paper’s bosses were fully behind the
decisions last season that saw Ronaldo sent off for booting an Almería
player in the back of the thigh and smashing Patrik Mtiliga’s nose in -
not a pleasant experience really - despite it being all the Málaga
defender’s fault, apparently, for being too small.
Aside from
this, there has also been a fair amount of muck-spreading from the
Madrid papers concerning the outlandish outgoings of Joan Laporta and
his directors during their seven year spell at the club. However, the
blog is not so sure that an “executives go nuts with expense accounts”
story is one that runs particularly far up its flag pole.
Documents
somehow leaked by Sandro Rosell and co after an audit on Barça’s
accounts show how the Barcelona bigwigs apparently had tabs set up at a
number of bars and nightclubs, as well as a bunch of other allegations
that LLL certainly won’t be going into until the former Barça president
has had the chance to respond to them.
However, Josep María
Casanovas in Sport - whilst detecting a classic Madrid-based wind-up
campaign - does admit that “the economic theme must be cleared up
quickly to avoid it turning into a soap opera for chat shows and
ammunition for enemies.”
With LLL aware that it is duty-bound to
touch on Spanish football from time to time, it will note that Spain are
playing Liechtenstein on Friday night in a European Championship
qualifier.
But who really cares about that when there is so much other fun stuff going on?
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About Tim Stannard
La Liga Loca is the playground for the evil, more childish half of Tim Stannard’s psyche to be let loose. The other 50% is a contributor to FourFourTwo magazine, Football365, Sabotage Times as well as other publications such as UEFA Champions Magazine and When Saturday Comes. He is also a regular guest on Real Madrid TV’s Extra Time show and works as a TV producer extraordinaire for hire. To contact Tim directly email laligaloca@yahoo.co.uk