Franqui Not Tranqui

I once had a first (and last) date with a woman who claimed to support both Real Madrid and Barcelona. Such a statement is as ignorant and illogical as an Estadounidense evincing affection for both the Red Sox and Yankees would be apposite - if everyone in the world actually cared about baseball, and the teams were respectively associated with progressivism and Tea Partyism AND these loyalties were born out of a bitter Civil War followed by three and a half decades of oppression.

I'm not going to tell that whole story here when there's Phil Ball's Morbo to do the job more coherently. But suffice it to say, at least in the minds of their supporters, Real Madrid and Barcelona represent the centralizing illiberal tradition going back to Felipe II (at least) and more liberal decentralizing tendencies respectively. Of course it's really far more complex than that, since like the Yankees and Red Sox, the two sides are both more like one another than anyone else in their league, namely due to their vast resources gained both "legitimately" (via television deals that cement their duopoly) and through a dodgy web of loans that could run afoul of UEFA's much-anticipated Financial Fair Play rules.

Nevertheless, there are some differences between them, and not just because Barca has outperformed Los Merengues of late both domestically and even more so in Europe. The most compelling of these, to my mind, is that Madrid's Ultra Sur remains a cesspit of fascism, whereas Barca banned its own crazies, the Boixos Nois, a group most famously responsible for chucking a pig's head at Luis Figo. While I'm not a fan of exclusivist nationalism (if you're wondering, that's where the whole "Més que un club" line comes from, these are the same folks who'd prefer you to speak English as opposed to the language of Cervantes in Spain's second largest city), it's a damn sight better than fascism.

So while I'm not going to join a penya anytime soon, especially since Barca delights in putting my beloved Arsenal to the sword in the Champions League, not to mention making bedroom eyes towards Captain Cesc, I'd much prefer to see them win today than Mourinho's minions.