Andy Mitten

Andy Mitten has been writing about football for 21 years, beginning by founding United We Stand, a Manchester United fanzine and has written for most English newspapers and several books. He began writing about Spanish football in 2001 and now lives in Barcelona, covering Barca as well as his boyhood club Manchester United. Richard Martin caught up with him before Valencia hosted Manchester United in September 2010.

What was your first experience of Spanish football?
The first time I saw a game in Spain was when Manchester United played Atlético Madrid away in 1991 in the European Cup Winners Cup, when I was 17. I had three days in Madrid, and I loved the Calderón. United got hammered, which wasn’t that much of a surprise. In the 90s I saw United play in Barca, then at Real Madrid in 2000. When I moved to Spain in 2001 I started to really get under the skin of it, going to La Coruña, to Vigo, to Malaga and took a real interest in it. For me it was like a new playground going to all these grounds. I’d been to Leicester ten times, I’d been to Villa, Newcastle or Sunderland and I felt there was nothing left to learn, nothing to sate my enthusiasm. So when I found out that Malaga had two thousand British season ticket holders I thought ‘That’s a good story’. So I spoke to my editors and they told me to go there and write about it.

What’s the difference between going to a match in Spain and England?
I think British fans are better. They’re more loyal. I’ve got mates in Manchester who for many years would go to every single United game, home or away. We’d go everywhere to the point that if you didn’t go to Galatasary away you were a part timer. You don’t find that in Spain at all. Barca will play away at Deportivo La Coruña and they’ll take fifty fans, partly because Spain’s so big – it’s a 12 hour  drive, 16 hours on the train – partly because there’s not the culture, partly because they’re not as good at supporting their team. I don’t think football is as big a deal in Spain as it is in England, especially in the North of England – Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow in Scotland, they’re massive football cities. So if there’s an event, say someone gets sacked or they sign a new player, it sweeps through the city. I remember Diego Forlan saying “It’s 90% religion in England and only 20% in Spain”.

Having said that, there’s individual examples of great away followings in Spain. When Espanyol were striving to stay up in 2009 they were taking thousands to away matches. Atlético will travel well, Osasuna will travel well if they’re playing within a three hour striking distance. Same with Sporting Gijon, they took 8,000 to La Coruña last year. I watched the game and my main observation was the away fans and not the match. I thought it was brilliant, in the rain they never stopped singing, and you don’t see enough of that. When Cádiz were in La Liga four years ago they took 4,000 fans to Barcelona and they were brilliant, and that’s a huge distance (around 1200 km each way). They were in the bars around the grounds singing “All we wanna do is get pissed”. And I loved all that. Hercules brought a couple of thousand last week (to Barcelona), and they won. But too often, I’ll look up to those terrible seats on the third tier at Camp Nou and see forty away fans.

Is there anything they do in Spain you’d like to see in England?
I think the football’s better in Spain technically, although games are not always played at 100 miles an hour like in England. I don’t like the cynicism in Spain of the diving, I like the honesty which you find more in England and I know these are clichés, but they’re bedded in the truth. I like the way that Spanish clubs look after their season ticket holders. So you can buy a season ticket even at Camp Nou for quite cheap, but if you wanna turn up for a big game you’ll get hammered for it, far more than you would in Britain. I get better access as a journalist in Spain than I would in England. I find the relationship with the media is more adult than in England, you don’t have the tabloid culture in Spain, players tend to be left alone to do what they wanna do.

There’s one thing that Spanish football could learn from English football and that’s stability and longevity. Don’t sack a manager after four bad results. They’re baffled by Ferguson and Wenger and that they’re still there. I’d say that Arsenal and United are right, and that Madrid are wrong about sacking a manager. Look how many times Real Madrid have won the European Cup in the last eight years. The statistics do them no favours about how many coaches they’ve got through. I love seeing someone like Darren Fletcher or John O’Shea come through. People say they’ll never make it and for them to play 300 games for United and become really important players. I get more satisfaction with that than buying a player, seeing him stay for a season or two and then a new manager comes in and gets rid of him.

What do you make of the short notice given on kick off times in Spain?
Not only do they tell you very late, they can be at 10 at night. And there’s times when the head doesn’t seem to be speaking to the arms, because you’ll come out of the ground and the Metro’s stopped, because they’ve kicked off too late. I saw one game (Barca vs Sevilla) kick off at five past twelve a few years ago, because of a dispute over TV and when the game should be played. I remember getting home after 2am. People planning to come out and watch matches nine days before the game don’t know when those games are gonna kick off. Television’s almost too powerful.

Spanish games tend to have less of a violent edge to them than English games, is this for better or worse?
You can look at it in two ways. Yes it’s better because you’re not getting battered, but I like that edge. I like the fact that I can’t go to Anfield and speak with a Manchester accent because I’d get battered, because that adds to the passion and the intensity of the occasion. Extend that to society, and I like the fact that I don’t see violence in Spanish streets. I was in Manchester at the weekend and I just saw some horrible examples of drunkenness, girls unable to stand up waiting for taxis. I’m glad you don’t get that in Spain, but you can’t have it both ways, because I like the edge of the football.

Is the dominance of Barcelona and Real Madrid damaging the Spanish game?
You saw the difference in their lead in the league last year, I thought it was embarrassing, because the third placed team, Valencia, was closer to the relegation zone than to Real Madrid in second place. That statistic does La Liga no good whatsoever. I thought it would become even more exaggerated this season with Valencia losing two of their best players. I’m glad it hasn’t so far, I’m glad Barca have lost a match and Madrid have dropped points away from home twice.  I like the fact that I’ve seen Valencia and Deportivo win the league. I don’t think it’d be good if Spain became like Scotland. Barca only dropped 15 points last season, that’s not a good thing.  It probably comes from the imbalance in the way that television revenue is distributed. There’s collective agreements in England whereas in Spain , Barca and Madrid will get about 50% of the TV money, and a lesser team that’s just come up like Numancia will be left to get whatever they can and I don’t think that’s fair. You still do get freak results like Hercules winning at Barca ,but I go to some of those games at Camp Nou and you just know it’s Barca that’s gonna win, but by how many? It’s true to a lesser extent at Old Trafford, but it is a lesser extent.

How does Spain compare to England in terms of atmosphere and chants?
They do have some chants and over the years sometimes they can have a racist tinge to them. At Barca, the main vocal group the Boixos Nois stopped going when Joan Laporta took over as President. Laporta’s reasons were: “You expect free tickets, you expect free travel. You’re trying to bullying us, I’m not being bullied”. And he was right. But that came at a cost. There were swathes of empty seats behind the goal for a few years and little atmosphere. But I will still say that Real Madrid walking out at Camp Nou is one of the great moments in world sport. 98,000 people screaming, 600 away fans tucked in the corner. But you don’t get the spontaneity you do in England. But England’s been affected too. The atmosphere at Old Trafford’s not what it was but I remember when Barca came to Old Trafford in 2008, Old Trafford was rocking and the Barca end was really good as well.

How does El Clásico compare to Manchester United v Liverpool?
I think they’re both brilliant. I’d say El Clásico is more glamorous. It tends to have better players, it’s always at nighttime and I like games played under the lights more than in the day. And the size, 80,000 or 98,000 (fans in the stadiums), you know the world’s watching. They tend to be more momentous. But there are more interesting games in England, Man United–Liverpool, Man United-Chelsea, Man United-Man City, whereas Spain has the big one. I know the Madrid derby is a big one, but El Clasico is such a standout match, and in history, recent and long term, the games are brilliant so often and the pendulum swing from season to season. I remember Madrid beating Barca 4-1 in 2008 and a year later Barca won the European Cup. So I think the Clásico’s got more glamour and talent, but I buzz more when Diego Forlan scores goals at Anfield, but that’s because I’m a United fan.

Finally, which Spanish teams do you have a soft spot for?
Loads. I respect clubs who’ve got big fans. So I find (it hard to respect) a team like Getafe or Mallorca who get 10 or 12,000 fans or Deportivo La Coruña who get 15,000, although Depor have had some great sides in the past. I like Athletic Bilbao, Valencia, I don’t dislike any. I’ve got to write about all of them objectively. I think Real Madrid make themselves look faintly ridiculous, sacking the manager every year and I will mock them for that but I respect that they’re a great club who dominated the European cup in its formative years. I think the Bernabéu’s probably the best stadium to watch football in, possibly in the world. Atlético Madrid took 60,000 fans to the Copa del Rey final this year and I was just sat there thinking ‘That’s a big club’. I went to Sevilla for Real Betis-Sevilla and thought ‘This is a great game to be at’. I like people who like football and I meet good football people wherever I go.

Read Andy’s blog on Spanish football at:

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/football/andy-mitten/

and his blog for Four Four Two:

http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/confessionsofacorrespondent/default.asp