A Spanish Absurdity

I was reading a very interesting blog post by Jamie McGregor on his website Thoughts from the Terrace entitled Welease Mouwinho. Of course the title references a lisping Pontius Pilate in Monty Python´s Life of Brian and he equates the absurdity of that movie to the absurdity of how the Spanish Football Federation runs its business. For an outsider that would seem to be a reach, but anyone who knows or has followed Spanish footie for any time at all soon realizes that Spain is not the same as any other country in Europe.

He highlights this by referencing that infamous encounter last year between José Mourinho and current Barça coach Tito Vilanova who was Pep Guardiola´s assistant at the time. It´s a testy match, Mourinho´s Real Madrid has just lost and in the meleé that ensues he gouges Vilanova in the eye who then retaliates with a slap to the Special One´s face. The federation hands out match bans to both parties, José´s slightly more severe than Tito´s, but it feels more like the cards are being reshuffled in a deck, a show for the peanut-gallery. To add injury to the insult the Federation´s President Ángel María Villar pardoned all involved and so none of the suspensions will be enforced. This seems odd enough, but the reality is even stranger.

Every year the season starts with threats, real or imagined, that emphasize the real possibility that the season won´t start on time. The cable providers are warring with each other, so are the satellite companies, and since the television deals are done individually this splits the camps into haves and have-nots, the clubs are actively warring with each other before any balls have been kicked. This happens every year.

Once that is settled, you move to the second point of contention and that´s the starting times. It used to be that Spanish starting times were all unquestioned, they started when they all started, after sundown but before the midnight hour, but now you have game times starting in the morning, before lunchtime and throughout the day. Atlético Madrid is particularly incensed because their first three matches are on the early show. It´s not fair; the big-clubs dictate when and where they´ll be playing and the Federation scrambles to accommodate.

Then last year, the clubs began an effort to impose restrictions on radio broadcasts of games. That seems innocuous considering how radio broadcast rights are distributed here in the States or in other parts of the world but in Spain any paying customer can sit in an assigned seat and broadcast the game locally, nationally or internationally. The fact that clubs had earmarked another fountain of unexplored money-making was beside the point; it was a long standing tradition to allow free radio broadcasts of games.

It´s more than that really. There are refereeing decisions that are questioned daily, supporting or denying the idea that the Federation is biased towards one or the other big club in Spain, or between smaller and bigger clubs in general. There is graft, club directors and functionaries taking money from the till, and there is scandal, where even club Presidents are investigated for all sorts of personal and public malfeasance.

People lie, cheat and steal, with their clubs in the sort of tenuous positions that in any other country would have gotten them in serious financial and sporting trouble, the sort that Rangers in Scotland and Portsmouth in England could only wish to extricate themselves from, but since this is Spain it is not only expected but rewarded. Administration under the Spanish Ley Concursal isn´t really like anything other than a slap on  the wrist and a promise to do better next time.

But like Jamie says in his blog, ¨Spain is different¨, and that´s where I agree wholeheartedly with him. It is different and no matter how many people come out and argue against the status-quo, nothing ever changes. Spain will always be Spain.