Opinion: Madrid lack the home-grown passion needed to beat Barcelona

Published on December 12, 2011 by Richard Martin · 1 Comment

Here we go again. Another clásico, another win for Barcelona. For all the talk about the pendulum swinging to Madrid with their recent form and José Mourinho’s side being the favourites for the first time in four years, Barcelona showed yet again that this fixture belongs to them. Real Madrid are now on their longest ever run without a win against Barcelona in the league, being unable to beat them in the last seven meetings.

So why, with these two teams so close in nearly every aspect, do Barcelona always come out on top when they play each other? Here’s one reason: the clásico now means more to Barcelona than it does to Madrid.

It’s a huge cliché, but this is a rivalry that goes beyond the pitch. Barcelona see themselves as representing Catalonia and want the region to be independent from the rest of Spain. Madrid on the other hand are seen as representing Spanish nationalism and centralisation. So when Barcelona go out onto that pitch against Madrid, they have the feeling of being the underdog, the small nation seeking to break away from the big bad kingdom of Spain. Now it’s clear that Madrid harbour as much hatred for Barcelona as the other way round, but in terms of having a cause, feelings of independence go further than feelings of centralisation. It’s for this reason that the Spanish empire in Latin America was eventually defeated. And it’s also the reason why el clásico is becoming as predictable as the Madrid derby.

The idea that Catalonia is an oppressed nation isn’t just felt by Barcelona fans. It’s shared by their manager, too. Last year, when Barcelona arrived late to their game with Osasuna because of a strike by Spain’s air traffic controllers, the club was accused of trying to have the game postponed. Pep Guardiola hit back, saying: “We know what this country is like. I don’t have any power. We are just a small country called Catalunya, from way up there in a corner – we don’t have any say at all.”

Guardiola’s affinity with the team he manages goes way back. He was part of Johan Cruyff’s iconic “dream team” that won the European Cup in 1992, and later captained the club. In just three years of managing Barcelona he has won three league titles, two Champions Leagues and one Copa del Rey. It’s a similar record to José Mourinho’s, in fact, except that Guardiola has achieved all this just at one club, in a shorter space of time, and, it should be added, with less money than his Portugese counterpart.

But where the two managers differ is in their records in el clásico. Since he took the Barcelona job, Guardiola has won eight our of twelve, while Mourinho has won just one out of eight, and that solitary victory came in the least important competition, the Copa del Rey.

Mourinho is undoubtedly a great manager, but he doesn’t have a real affiliation with Real Madrid like Guardiola has with Barcelona. When Mourinho became manager, some former players questioned whether he represented the traditional position of Madrid manager as “el señor del club”, a gentlemanly figure. He has raged against referees and fallen out with director of football and club legend Jorge Valdano, eventually having him removed from the set-up.

But no-one questions Guardiola. This September, he was awarded the prestigious ”medal of honour” award from the Catalan parliament. Here is a man who bleeds Barcelona and knows how important it is to get one over the old enemy.

Barcelona’s players have the same passion for their club and Cataonia as their boss. Xavi has said that “beating Madrid is like an orgasm”, while Carles Puyol always wears the Catalunya flag on his captain’s armband. Of the eleven players that started for Barcelona last night, six are Catalan, while a further two (Iniesta and Messi) have been at Barcelona since they were 13. Contrast this with Real Madrid, who had just three Spaniards on the pitch last night, with just one from the capital, Iker Casillas.

While no-one would doubt Casillas’s ability or passion for his club, his ability to influence the game from the goalmouth is clearly limited. Barcelona, on the other hand, had three Catalans – Sergio Busquets, Xavi and Cesc Fábregas – in the area of the pitch that matters most, midfield. In that position, Madrid had just one Spaniard, Xabi Alonso, who is from the Basque country and spent his youth hanging in Basque nationalist circles. While no-one is saying Alonso doesn’t give his all for Madrid, unlike his Catalan counterparts, his passion for his club doesn’t run deep through his veins.

In the past Madrid have had great madrileños. There was Raúl, who scored 15 goals in clásico matches and famously put his finger to his lips to silence the Camp Nou after equalising there in 1999. There was Guti, who said he would never watch Barcelona if they were on television. There were Michel Salgado and Fernando Hierro, neither from Madrid, but both long standing, loyal and brilliant players.

The Madrid of 2011 have great players: Mesut Özil, Sergio Ramos, Alonso, Ángel Di María, Gonzalo Higuaín and Cristiano Ronaldo. But none of these really love the club like Barca’s homegrown players do, and none of them perform regularly in the game that matters most. Few would dispute the genius of Ronaldo, but he consistently underperforms in the clásico. Ronaldo has played in eight of these games but scored just three times, a poor showing in comparison to his record against the other 19 clubs, and on Saturday he missed two great chances to score. Meanwhile, Xavi and Messi, the other two contenders for this years European Footballer of the year award, consistently up their game for this fixture, and both were exceptional on the weekend.

With Florentino Perez’s investment and Mourinho’s managerial skills, Madrid have become a team that can walk all over every team in La Liga, apart from the one they want to and need to beat the most. While you can buy players that can score 40 goals in one season, you cannot buy the passion that comes with being born and raised in a city with such emotional ties to its biggest club.

In the English language press conference that followed Saturday’s game, Guardiola said he was very proud of the fact that eight of his players “grew up in the club”. Madrid have produced great youngsters in the past, like Raúl, Guti and Casillas, but have nothing like the record of bringing through great players that Barcelona do. Until they can change this, they have little hope of overtaking them as the best team in Spain.