Re: The Silly Season - World Soccer Transfer Time
Quote:
Originally Posted by Betterread
(Post 1890875)
Don't compare this rivalry to Yanks/Sox. It is far deeper and more intense. It is between cultures - Castilians vrs. Catalans. Real Madrid is the world's richest football club. It became rich during the fascist dictatorships of Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. During that time, all regional cultures were openly suppressed (all the languages spoken in Spanish territory except Spanish itself were officially banned). Barca sybolized the Catalan people's desire for freedom, Barça became more than a club (més que un club). Support for Barca was the Catalans' best way of demonstrating their identity. It was less risky than joining a anti-Franco movement and allowed them to express their dissidence.
On the other hand, Real Supporters are Ultras - like Lazio's supporters. Their fandom is based on expression of brute force, reflecting their Franco patronage.
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I know it's more than a simple Yankees-Red Sox analogy can encapsulate, but it characterizes the general nature of the rivalry in pure sporting terms.
I got to live in Madrid 20 years back. While Spain is always swimming in its history, it's a decidedly post-Franco society. Franco was an anachronism in Madrid when I was there. I lived near the Bernabeu, even got to go to some games there. It's why I'm a Madrid fan - when the club scored a goal, five million people stuck their heads out the window and screamed. How can't you fall in love with that?
Anyway, the knuckleheads you're talking about where a sliver back then and their numbers are even fewer today. It's nothing like Lazio, where entire sections of the stadium are overrun by the ultras (or even PSG with the Boulogne Boys).
Madrid and Barcelona compete to see who can play the most beautiful football in the world. Real Madrid is in many ways the most public expression of Madrid's collective desire to shed its Franquista history. Almodovar captured the change just about perfectly in "Live Flesh."
Yeah, it's oligarchists paying the bills (for both clubs, not just Madrid), but it's Romanticism at its core for the Royal Whites, not Futurism.
So, it's everything you said and everything dating back to pre-Roman Iberian history and everything that's happened post-Franco and a nation full of people who like to ogle a soccer match like it's the Maribel Verdus against the Penelope Cruzes. |
