Tomorrow is the Champion’s League final (think: European Super Bowl) between Manchester United and FC Barcelona. It would be easy to say that these two teams represent opposite ends of the spectrum, in fact this match represents a clash of ideals so obvious it could be a short story by a Freshman Lit Major. For instance one team considers itself to be the care-takers of the game while the other goes by the nickname Red Devils. One is known for its peaceful political protests against a fascist dictator while the other is known for its history of hooliganism. One plays in the most beautiful and romantic city in the world while the other plays…in Manchester.
Full Disclosure: my favorite football team in the world is Arsenal FC, but I definitely have a special place in my heart for Barca. This means three things about my feelings towards this matchup: 1) I want Barcelona to win because I always want them to win (except win they’re playing Arsenal.) 2) I want Manchester United to lose because I always want them to lose (except when they play Chelsea then I want the pitch to open up and swallow all 22 players into hell. If that means an innocent ref has to go with them then so be it, because let’s be honest ‘innocent ref’ is an oxymoron.) And 3) I want Barcelona to win because of Thierry Henry (more on him later.)
However, despite throwing all impartiality out the window, there is something you need to know: the surface-level logic (Barca=good, Man U=bad) is not quite as simple as it seems. Don’t get me wrong, I will be wearing my Barcelona jersey all day tomorrow and cheering whole-heartedly, but as with all things in this world there is a gray area here that I usually try to ignore. So today, before the black/white of the game begins, you and I will take an honest look at this beautiful game and the two teams that play it better than anyone else on the planet.
The History of the Game
Barcelona FC is like a combination of the Montreal Canadians and the University of Michigan if they played in Miami. While Manchester United is like the New York Yankees crossed with Marshall if they played in Pittsburgh.
Real quick history/geography lesson, that as an American I am sure to screw-up/dumb-down: Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia which, when push comes to shove, doesn’t really think of itself as Spanish (the whole situation is very similar to Quebec’s). Barcelona is a port city that has long been more worldly and successful than the rest of Spain. Meanwhile Madrid has been the capital of Spain; to put it another way: if Barcelona were Los Angeles, then Madrid would be Sacramento. And in typical-Sacramento fashion, Spain spent a lot of the 20th century under dictators, most notably Francisco Franco. The city of Madrid, and therefore the soccer team Real Madrid, came to be Franco’s; and Catalonia and therefore FC Barcelona came to be the resistance. And when resisting a dictator, it is safest to do it under the guise of athletics and to do it with 100,000 other people. FC Barcelona has therefore proclaimed their motto to be: “More than a Club”. Mas Que Un Club is still stitched inside the collar of every Barca jersey.
Both teams have been around since the turn of the 20th century but a history of Man U has to include the tragic plane crash in 1958 that killed 8 of its players. That loss is still remembered a half-century later. Before and after the crash (and really throughout the entire 20th century) Man U was successful, but it was Sir Alex Ferguson arriving in 1986 that has made Man U what it is today. Most notably in 1999, when Manchester United won the FA Cup (a sort of inter-season playoff), the Premier League, and the Champions League- the first, and still only, team to win all three in one year. Man U has just won their 3rd straight Premier League and are, at least for the moment, the defending Champions of Europe. Although it is interesting to note that Barcelona, having already won La Liga (and the Spanish league) and the Copa Del Rey (the Spanish FA Cup), are just one win away from matching Manchester’s treble.
The Heart of the game
While most teams play a 4-4-2 (four defenders, four midfielders, and 2 attackers), Barcelona has been playing a 4-3-3 (moving a midfielder up to a striker). As with all sports, an attack-minded soccer team is always a fan favorite- but Barca’s style and flair put them on a whole other level.
Meanwhile Manchester United is predicated on that 4-4-2. They are not necessarily as physical (read: dirty) as Chelsea, but Man U is definitely known for their defense. Manchester had the best defense in the tournament giving up 6 goals in 12 games, Barcelona had the best offense scoring 18 goals in their 12 games. This is strength-versus-strength, offense-versus-defense, good-versus-evil. The end…
Except as I said earlier, it’s not that easy to keep up the Barca=good, Man U=bad, because as much as I want to say that Man U is a grind-it-out, ugly team to watch, they have an all-world attack force in Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, and Carlos Tevez. And while Ronaldo is very much the Portuguese A-Rod, Rooney the English Mr. Potato Head, and Tevez the Argentinean Shrek, they are three incredible players to watch…for reasons other then just their ginormous heads.
And suddenly the black and white picture, or at least the paint by numbers storyline, becomes a little murkier.
The Soul of the game
Surely one of the clearest differences between the two is their view of money within the sport. Barcelona has long refused the big-money jersey sponsors that everyone else had, instead they decided to promote UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) by wearing their logo on their jerseys AND then donating the proceeds of jersey sales to UNICEF. Quite remarkable, especially when you look at a Manchester United jersey.
Man U’s jersey sponsor is…wait for it…AIG. That’s right, your bailout money is going directly towards Man U. Hate them yet? What kind of inconsiderate bastards are willing to be sponsored by a bailed out company? Manchester United will not have AIG on their jerseys next season, not because they thought better of it, but because part of the bailout forbade AIG from continuing it. If not for that condition, the Red Devils would continue to be sponsored by the other devils.
In fact I’d love to say that nothing better illustrates the differences between the two teams than the fact that FC Barcelona is owned by its fans while Manchester United is owned by Malcolm Glazer (who also owns the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and who is saddled with considerable debt that he used to buy the team. But that pesky gray area again…
As a fan-owned team, there needs to be someone to run the team, and that person for Barcelona is elected by popular vote. But as with elections the world over, popular votes lead to crazy promises. Picture someone trying to get elected- think about what kind of promises they would make. And it’s because of these crazy promises that there is probably no team in the world that is more despicable during the offseason than a Spanish team; Real Madrid, like Barca, is fan-owned and therefore if someone wants to run one of these teams they need to aim big. And I mean BIG. These guys would promise to sign 1970s Pele if they thought it would get them elected. These guys would promise to sign Jesus if only he’d wear Nike sandals.
Manchester United has a nasty habit of offering tons of money to already contracted players to unsettle them from their current team. This is reprehensible. But they only do it when they actually want, and can afford, that player. Barcelona’s directors do it to any player they think will get them elected.
Imagine if Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots said in an interview that he really wanted Peyton Manning. Now imagine if he said it in dozens of interviews. Now imagine if he did that to every single Pro Bowler, every single offseason. Imagine the most unscrupulous politician, and picture him as a sports team’s owner, and you only begin to understand why every other team hates Madrid and Barca.
The Blood of the Game
Sports are inherently nationalistic. And Manchester as a city has the ultra-nationalistic, borderline xenophobia, which can only come from being an industrial city that knows what really bad unemployment looks like. But a new rule has been proposed, dubbed the ‘6 plus 5’ rule (it would force a team to only have 5 foreign players at a time,) that is not only illegal but just plain stupid. The influx of African and South American players is a dream come true for TV rights-fees and marketing, and trying to eliminate that advantage would be tremendously bad for the league. But nationalism/xenophobia keeps the idiotic proposal floating around.
However, while it’s easy to peg Manchester United as the quasi-national team of England, it is Barcelona that would have no problem with that 6+5 rule. Barca has far more players from Spain than Manchester has from England, Barca as I mentioned is a hub of ultra-Catalonia pride while Manchester is owned by an American. It’s easy to look at Manchester and say it is a city full of xenophobes but as always it gets greyer when you look at the city, and the team, and their efforts to come to grips with the new- smaller but more diverse- world.
The Romance of the Game
All their nasty habits make it harder to sell Barcelona as the bastion of all-things-beautiful. But they still try. Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World and complete FC Barcelona die-hard, likes to say that Barca fans “want nothing more badly than victory, except for romance.” There is definitely an element of truth there, and as a result they tend to attract a certain style of player. That style is personified by Thierry Henry. Monsieur Henry is a French football player, a former Arsenal superstar, and while now slightly over the hill was at one point the most talented player in the world. There is a grace and skill to Henry that Barca, at all times, tries to capture. Which is what makes the situation more bearable. What is the situation you ask?
Arsenal, and therefore Henry, never won the Champion’s League. In fact their only time in the final they lost…to Barcelona. Think of a player that never won the big one. A great player, and he made it only once. Let’s say Dan Marino. Went to Super Bowl XIX with the Dolphins and loses to the Niners. Now picture, years later, still never having won it or even been back to the Super Bowl, what if he leaves Miami to join the Niners? Do Dolphins fans cheer him on? I think they do, right? Like Boston fans cheering for Raymond Borque to win one. This guy has dedicated, and contributed so much, that if he can’t win one with you, you want him to win one somewhere.
And if he wins that one with somewhere special, then even better. Because despite their flaws, Barcelona really is something special. There is so much to like there. The Catalonia crest? What a cool logo. Why can’t LA have a coat of arms? I mean sure it would probably be a palm tree, a movie reel, and fake boobs, but how cool would that be!?! Mas Que Un Club? How can you top that? If the Lakers had a motto, what would it be? “Winning…with drama”? I mean, nothing can top “more than a club.” And I think that is what attracts me to this club, to this game, to this sport. Because isn’t that what we all want from our sports? Something bigger than just a game. Something more than just a club.