The prospect of the Argentinian and all that is built around him leaving Barcelona would create such a frenzy it is difficult to imagine it being possibleWe all have our favourite Victorian engineering folly. Mine is the SS Great Eastern, Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s super-ship powered by a hundred furnaces, a vessel so vast it could carry 10,000 passengers, so vast it became a symbol of grandiose, stovepipe-hatted ambition, and so vast that it turned out it couldn’t actually sail anywhere.Completed in November 1857, the Great Eastern stayed moored at Millwall on the Thames for two months, unable to move because of its own mind-boggling size. Several times a launch was attempted and then abandoned. Eventually the Great Eastern left its dock...
Barcelona’s decision to play last Sunday’s match against Las Palmas in an empty stadium smacked of choosing points over principles, and overlooks the fact that sport has always found room for protestWhen it came down to it, FC Barcelona – mes que un club, remember – could not bring themselves to go all in. The threatened loss of six points – three for the defaulted match, three more as a penalty – was enough to persuade them to stage their match against Las Palmas behind locked doors in a deserted Camp Nou, while outside the streets of the city rang with the echoes of violent confrontations between police and voters in an independence referendum ruled illegal by the national government.The...
Barcelona’s nuanced identification with Catalonia is part of what gives the club an explicitly socio-political dimension. And that meant this was always going to be more than a match … even if in the end it was less than oneAt every Camp Nou game for almost six years now, chants for Catalan independence have gone up when the clock reaches 17 minutes and 14 seconds, commemorating the year the city fell to Felipe V, but not this time – not on the day they were perhaps closer to independence than ever before. This time, Europe’s largest stadium was silent. No fans could be heard, only footballers. Occasionally, the referee’s whistle rang out or somebody clapped yet there were no chants,...
Barcelona want the Brazilian to follow Luis Suárez to Camp Nou, leaving Jürgen Klopp with a potential hole in his team just as the season is about to startAn unhappy transfer window for Liverpool has every chance of becoming more grim should Philippe Coutinho make a £100m-plus move to Barcelona and, though some well-rehearsed arguments are being heard from both sides over whether the club should make a stand or accept the inevitable, there is an unpalatable truth beneath all the posturing that is not being shouted so loudly.This is, simply and briefly, that Liverpool are a selling club. They might not see themselves that way, they might keep denying it and taking encouragement from Jürgen Klopp insisting that no...
Neymar’s move to PSG from Barcelona will make him the first player in 85 years to more than double the previous transfer record. An already inflated environment will feel the consequencesBernabé Ferreyra, according to his River Plate team-mate José Manuel ‘El Charro’ Moreno, never used to let his status as the world’s most expensive player bother him. “Bernabé earned as much money as he wanted but he was not concerned with keeping it,” he said. “He gave other people a lot of money, without asking for anything in return. When he shook your hand, you could be sure that you had a friend for the rest of your life.”But 85 years since the Argentinian striker moved from Club Atlético Tigre...