ENGLISH POSTS SERIE. POST ONE:

SPAINICATION, sorry to Californians

Last Tuesday a more than a month long of Goebbels-like driven campaign came to an abrupt end. This day, France soccer team defeated 3-1 to Spain’s. So that implied the elimination of the loser. Good news! In order to understand my reaction you have to bear in mind that during the previous weeks the media pressure in order to gain popular support to “la Roja” (that’s the aka name for Spanish team) was so intense that it was almost impossible to express alternatives wishes to the official dogma: that Spanish team will or must win the World Cup.

In fact this hysteria like reaction has not roots at all. Spanish team is not by any purpose a first-rank selection, at the same level of Brasil, Argentina, Germany, France or Italy, that are the top five ones (followed by England and Holland). But this important detail was literally and intentionally forgotten.

To make things worst, “la Roja” won the three matches from the first phase. Its opponents were not precisely powerful teams: Ukraine (with only Xevtxenko striker as a real danger), Tunis and Saudi Arabia. Those victories raised the hysteria to red level. Spanish Media and supporters in Germany lose any sign of fair play and consider that the Cup, even God, believers or not, were Spaniards. Freaky people in Superman dress, but also in some typical spanish pieces infected the streets and acted with no friendly behaviour towards other supporters. They were the One and Only.

Once known that France will be the next opponent, the hysteria directed its attacks to the grey selection, meaning that key French players are old aged for soccer standards, and there was no doubt at all that the Spanish team, armed with young people will defeated French even without excessive effort. But as the final outcome showed, Spain is the selection that always barks but never bites.

From a Catalan point of view, this landing to the reality has two intersting readings:

First, is that Spain soccer team is not by no means the powerful selection it pretend to be. That’s interesting, because this argument is usually used by opponents to the creation of a Catalonia soccer team. They said that Catalan squad will have no chance in a World Cup. Of course that is false. Catalan potentiality to form a highly competitive team is the same or even superior to other nations that have sociodemographic data similar to Catalonia: Portugal, Croatia, Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia-Montenegro, among others. I firmly think that a Catalan team will perform similar as Portugal, the case may be. And of course, i strongly think that to defeat the Spanish selection (without any catalan player) will be possible, and not precisely the most important event to be remembered. As an example, Catalonia defeated World Cup participant Costa Rica 2-0 in last May (photo on the left: Barça's Oleguer Preses in action in the mentioned match).

Second. May be readers don’t know that France coach Raimon Domènech, consider himself catalan. Born in Lion, son of a catalan anarchist exiled after the Fascist victory in 1939, he shows his pride from being Catalan and rejects those who consider him from spaniard-origen. So it can be said without hesitation that a Catalan defeated the Spanish “el Toro”, ridiculous team.

That’s another lesson from history.