Barcelona-Madrid Is Like Goneril-Regan

Lionel Messi of Barcelona

Sports Saturday

Soccer fans are salivating over today’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United.  I hope Man U fans will excuse me if I devote most of today’s post to Barcelona.  In return, I promise them some hope from the King Lear parallel I have in mind.

Barcelona’s recent history has been nothing short of spectacular, especially in 2009.  That was the year when it became the first club in Spanish history to win the treble: the regular season title, the championship game, and the Champions League title. That year it also won the Spanish Super Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, and the FIFA Club World Cup.

Regular season champion Barcelona won’t be winning the treble this year, even if it beats Manchester, because of its archrival Real Madrid.  Madrid has been dominated by Barcelona in recent years but pulled off a hugh upset and won the league championship game.

The rivalry is what I want to talk about.  Real Madrid is a team of individual superstars, purchasing the best players available and then throwing them at you.  Barcelona, by contrast, is the ultimate passing team. Many people became acquainted with Barcelona-style soccer when they saw Spain win the World Cup in 2010, which included many Barcelona players (including Iniesta, Puyol, Pique, and the incomparable Xavi). To top things off, Barcelona also has Argentina’s Lionel Messi, the greatest player in the world.

As a Slate article describes the two teams, “Barcelona’s passing could get a camel into heaven, and Madrid’s raw, careening power can be amazing to behold.”

The rivalry, however, has gotten ugly. To counter Barcelona’s superior passing, Madrid has opted for brutish tactics and received a series of red cards. Barcelona, meanwhile, may have a tendency to dive. Then there has been (mostly on Madrid’s part but not entirely) referee bashing, paranoid claims, tempestuous press conferences, and even lawsuits.

As the Slate article describes it, everything surrounding the rivalry has

gotten blown out of all proportion to the soccer and turned it into a realm like politics, where there’s always another story, no one can be trusted, and everyone is angry all the time.

In search of a literary work that captures the contention, I went searching amongst sibling rivalries since those often feature the kind of antagonistic familiarity one finds between Madrid and Barcelona.  Because I visited the boyhood home of Mark Twain on Tuesday, I thought of Tom Sawyer and Sid, a comparison that would seem to favor Madrid.  Sid is the refined and well-behaved cousin whereas Tom is the picturesque troublemaker.  Barcelona barely draws fouls while Madrid routinely sees its players thrown off the pitch.  But as in a great scene in Tom Sawyer, Madrid isn’t always guilty.

The situation I have in mind is the following: in the first of three matches between Barcelona and Madrid in the semi-finals of the Champions League tournament, Madrid’s Pepe received a red card for a spikes-up challenge of Danny Alves.  Many thought it was only a yellow card offense, and the Madrid coach, when he accused Alves of overreacting (maybe with some justification) was also red carded.  Suddenly Madrid was down a man and Barcelona went on to win 2-0.  Madrid was never able to overcome the deficit, which is why Barcelona is in the Champions League finals.

Was Pepe in fact innocent? As Barcelona’s Pique noted, even if he were, Madrid was playing with fire all night and there were other dangerous challenges that were not called. This leads me back to Tom Sawyer.

In this episode, Tom for once is innocent.  Sid has stolen a cookie and broken a cookie jar in the process. Tom is ecstatic at the thought that someone else will be punished, only to find himself sent sprawling. The following interchange ensues:

“Hold on, now, what ’er you belting me for?—Sid broke it!”

Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity.  But when she got her tongue again, she only said:

“Umf! Well, you didn’t get a lick amiss, I reckon.  You been into some other owdacious mischief when I wasn’t around, like enough.”

The problem of seeing Madrid-Barcelona as Tom-Sid, however, is that Twain’s boys aren’t antagonistic enough.  I therefore turn to Lear’s older daughters.

As you probably recall, Goneril and Regan, once allies, have a falling out because both are in love with “stand-up-for-bastards” Edward.  Nor is there anything gentle about how they go after each other. Goneril ultimately poisons Regan.

Think of the sisters as Barcelona and Madrid and Edmund as a spot in today’s Champions League final.  This would make Goneril Barcelona since she’s the one that emerges (temporarily) triumphant.  That’s appropriate because her way of dispatching her enemies is slightly more subtle than Regan’s: she employs poison whereas Regan (in the case of Gloucester) gouges out eyes and then sends out a follow-up assassin.  (“Out vile jelly” has got to be the grossest line in all of classic literature.”)

But perhaps Manchester United (remember them?) can take some heart from the Lear parallel.  Goneril may triumph in her battle with Regan, but ultimately it is someone who has been overlooked—a good English hero—who emerges to win the day.  Edgar, like Man U, is definitely an underdog.  Yet he defeats Edward and appears posed to reunite the divided kingdom.  If the foreign invader is repelled (the Champions League game will be played upon English soil), then England, which considers itself the spiritual home of soccer, can stand tall again.

 

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