Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are the problem and the solution of Spanish football. Nobody overshadows them, nobody generates as much income as they do and nobody is capable of acting with the arrogance with which they react when things go wrong, in the case of these hectic days.
Listening to a sensible and hardened guy like Carlo Ancelotti sowing doubts about the VAR lines causes stupefaction. Does he feel so questioned? Did the defeat at the Camp Nou sting you so much? Do you trust that populism – and not titles – can save you from the pillory, there where the most aristocratic heads of France rolled during the Revolution?
The senseless output of the VAR is covered by a smoke campaign – fueled by some media in the capital, not all – that tries to attribute the defeat at the Camp Nou to referee decisions. With Benzema in the dark, Real Madrid lacked on Sunday everything that usually makes them great: faith in victory, punching power and quality.
When they are wrong and in a big way, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona overreact in a big way. There are no longer differences or nuances, indications of lordship or great values. Zero self-criticism, all propaganda. Thanks to the rivalry, the two limit themselves to imputing their own failures to the other. Never in the history of football have they needed each other so much (the arbitration is the least of it).
If we focus on FC Barcelona, an irreducible current of opinion appears capable of sustaining –without blinking an eye, unlike Ancelotti– that the Enríquez Negreira scandal is an extension of the Catalonia operation. Come on, FC Barcelona is actually the victim of a plot. The conspiracy theory, as always. If everything is so simplistic and we are the best, why is President Laporta waiting to offer explanations and defend the shield, as the coach and the squad are doing? Operation Catalonia! What you need to hear...
Real Madrid and FC Barcelona financially support the League, increase television rights and maintain the cachet of Spanish football. Both of them are feeling bad about this superiority: they react like spoiled children when someone or something reminds them of their mistakes. Not even caught red-handed, they have the humility to accept mistakes.
It is not very difficult to imagine what the remaining 18 First Division teams and their fans feel about the latest tantrums from the young men. I would say indignation and astonishment, above all because they are – season after season – the ones harmed by the arbitration that, today for you, tomorrow for me, pampers and attends to the interests of two clubs that are more alike every day. Two spoiled children.
