Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I'm Eli Mengem and I love football.
But even I would struggle to match the
passion and intensity we're going to see in the
next few fixtures over my new series Derby Days
And what better place to start than here in Spain
and one of the most bitter conflicts in world sport
El Clasico
Whilst El Clasico is not a derby in the traditional
sense, in that the two teams don't come from the
same city, it still has all the hallmarks of a classic
derby. The intensity, the rivalry and the hatred
the two sets of fans have for each other.
El Clasico has serious political, social and historical
agendas behind its rivalry. So for these guys
it's more than a club and more than a game
For us it's all. It's all.
If we win we have a very good month.
People feel the match. It's a different feeling.
The atmosphere, all the people, with the kids
it's nice
I think it's one of the biggest games in the world, really.
When the Clasico comes around it is just number one
It's the priority.
The clasico's timeless.
Maybe for a clasico there might be five hundred
journalists from a hundred countries in the place
In the newspapers usually there's five, six, seven days
of twenty page build-up every single day
It's just enormous
Even I could not anticipate just how much
coverage this match is getting but this rivalry
It's more than just a sporting competition
For these two teams their rivalry starts back during
the Franco era when both clubs represented much more
than just a sporting capacity
The simplistic view is of Barcelona and Real Madrid
representing left and right on the political spectrum
Of Real Madrid being Franco's team and Barcelona
being the democrats, the freedom fighters if you like
Franco's team was Real Madrid and the team of the
left, the team of separation, the team of the
resistance if you like were Barcelona
and Barcelona and Catalunia as a region were
repressed under the dictatorship
Franco was a piece of ***. He used to
like only Madrid. he said to all the teams
You cannot bring people from outside Spain
Only Spanish people can play in Spain.
And then he said to Real Madrid, you can bring
whoever you want and we're going to give them
Spanish passports.
And the one element that the Catalan people
could use to express their 'Catalanism', if you like
was Barcelona and through FC Barcelona
and to a degree that part of it has still
remained today
They go to the Camp Nou to show their 'Catalanness'
or to show their pride in what they see as
their country or their nation
You will see lots of Catalan flags and probably
a whole mosaic of a Catalan flag at the Camp Nou
on Saturday.
On all of the shirts there is always a Catalan
flag somewhere. Maybe not always too prominent
but a little bit on the collar or on the inside but now this
year with our away shirt it's a full Senyera which is the
Catalan flag.
The problem is, of course, and this is one of the
reasons why I wrote about it, is that some of those
identities that we all take as read are not quite so
simple, it's not quite so clear cut
A former Real Madrid president
a guy called Ramón Mendoza, once described
the clasico as a story that's a myth
but that suits us both.
And that's the bottom line. He saw this as a power
struggle in which it suited both teams to lie,
it suited them to embrace this idea.
Why? Because it helped them create a narrative
to create a story that eclipsed the rest of Spain and
put these two at the head of everything.
It's not only two big cities, it's also two different ways
of understanding the game, and understanding
the model, the club model
From the outside you can look at Madrid as being the
big global commercial super-power
They have Florentino Perez and his 'Galactico' policy
and they just sign up the best players from
all around the world. Whereas Barcelona
what they say themselves is we have Xavi and Iniesta
and even Messi might be from Argentina but he's
come through the La Masia youth system.
One way of looking at it is in terms of their two
franchise players. You've got Cristiano Ronaldo on
one side and Leo Messi on the other.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the guy who cost nearly €100m
that's a fantastic athlete, that's very, very direct
that runs at people, that's ambitious, that's aggressive
that makes things happen.
And then you've got Messi; the guy who came up
through the youth system, who appears to
be virtually mute. He says almost nothing
he appears to be timid. And his skills are all
about the technical control, the ability
in small spaces. In those two players you
have a microcosm of the way the clubs
see themselves.
We can't forget that this rivalry is
played out on the pitch. So we're going to
head over now to Real Madrid's training centre,
speak to Carlo Ancelotti's right-hand man
Paul Clement and find out just how Real Madrid
despite how big they are, prepare for
what is essentially European football's biggest match
For me it's about the game on the pitch
We're working to get the tactics right, to get
the right players on the field, to make
the right changes in game if we need to
to be able to get us an advantage.
The fans are going to get behind their team,
they are going to make it very difficult for us
they are going to put a lot of pressure
on the referee with decisions going their way
And that's why going away
is so much more challenging.
Real Madrid are training just behind me on the grass
over there. And there are journalists and cameramen
everywhere from all around the world.
I'm hearing languages from Russia, China, Germany
Spanish of course. And it's just indicative of
just how big this game is to not only Real Madrid and
Barcelona, not only to Spain but to the world.
Alright, so I've just woken up, the sun's come out for
us. There's a bit of a calm before the storm
feeling here in Barcelona but I'm checking
media and straight away you know that today
is el Clasico day. Every paper is full, the
whole thing, twenty-five pages deep of
Barcelona and they are dissecting everything.
After they've got the squads, you've got the line-ups
the historic moments. You know today is a
different day when all the paper is either white
or red, blue and yellow. It's early morning now
but I can't wait until the day moves on
and I get to see what el Clasico in Barcelona
is all about.
This is what makes Derby's so different.
There is a different tension in the air.
The game is getting closer and people are
getting more passionate. They are singing
anti-Madrid chants, there are anti-Madrid
flags everywhere. This is Barcelona, Madrid
is that way. Get out! Because the colours here
are blue, red and gold.
This guy just went up to the Barca fans
and tried to provoke them. They say there is
no passion in this derby, they just jumped him.
They made him take his shirt off and everything.
Check this out, he's got his shirt off now.
They made a problem for you?
Look, he had a Madrid jersey on before and
he had to swap it over just to cover the
Madrid logo. It's really heating up.
It's crazy, an hour or two ago we were walking
through and there was Barca and Madrid standing
together. But the atmosphere has changed.
The beers have come out, people are starting to
sing in Catalunyan. Their pride in what
Barcelona means. And Madrid is banned.
The colour white is banned. The logo's can't be seen
anywhere, the cops take you away.
Where have you guys come from?
Guatemala. Sweden. Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
and you're Tajikistan, all of central Asia.
Do you watch el Clasico back home?
Yes! We never miss it!
You never miss it?
Never!
Have you come for the game?
Yes!
Unbelievable. From Botswana, Tanzania, Kazakhstan
and Tajikistan. This is unbelievable.
Alright well now I've spoken to Barcelona
fans and I've spoken to Madrid fans I've realised
that this el clasico, that I thought was tame
in the streets, is not. They hate each other.
But the game is penned in, there is one last piece
in the puzzle to discover and that's Camp Nou.
It holds ninety-eight thousand people, and
it's about to kick off.
I've been saying it over and over
that's wasn't a derby but that's exactly
what a derby provides. To be honest,
despite what I heard I wasn't expecting Barca
versus Madrid to have that intensity that
Derby's have but from the second you walk in
ninety-eight thousand people holding the placards
I heard a screech when Madrid came out that
I have never heard before. It was intense,
it was passionate, it was beautiful. It showed
what football can do. Força Barça, Força Madrid
I don't know. To me Força el Clasico.
Because that match, that rivalry, that fixture
brings out something beautiful in these people.
And just to think, I've still got seven more
of these to go. So if you enjoyed this,
subscribe to Copa90, follow Derby Days and
follow me on twitter at @eli4copa90
and follow me round Europe as I discover the
passion that only football and its derbys bring out.