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Keep politics out of sport? Don’t make me laugh | Richard Williams

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...

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Barcelona in the strange and symbolic eye of a storm over Catalonia | Sid Lowe

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,...

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