Monthly Archives: June 2012
La Roja keeps the faith
Vicente Del Bosque is a wise man,generally understated in public who does not believe in courting controversy But even he must be finding it somewhat irritating to find himself having to defend La Roja’s reputation from its critics. Boring, they say. A lesser man, like Jose Mourinho would have no doubt thrown not just one tantrum by now, but several. The fact is that La Roja is a match away from setting a new record in world football. Success in Sunday’s final would mean that it will become the first …
La Roja needs an element of Furia
Watching the England-Italy quarter final yesterday Spanish coach Vicente Del Bosque might well feel tempted to feel vindicated in his defence of La Roja’s performance in this tournament so far. But Del Bosque is a wise man, who guards against complacency while knowing the importance as well as limitations of self-belief of La Roja. The game was played at its most physical-the soccer ‘con cojones’ which the first English pioneers brought to the Rio Tinto mines near Huelva and the port of Bilbao the Basque country, and which became synonymous …
A CUBAN DIARY by Jimmy Burns 21/3/2008
A version of this article was published in The Tablet Just a small group of Cubans are with us on the Air France from Paris to Havana, and they are the only non-tourists on the plane, apart from the Chinese Olympic volley ball team. They are members of the national judo team, and have just been on a pre-Olympic warm-up tour of northern Europe. While the Chinese spend the flight playing computer claims, like automats, the Cubans crack jokes, eat, and play music. Their physiotherapist has bought a Zorro suit …
Argentina’s diplomatic circus
Cristina Fernandez Kirchner told her countrymen back in February that they should not feel collectively responsible for the national debacle that surrounded the military invasion of the Falklands in 1982. She blamed the military and the Argentine media. Those of us who lived through that war in Argentina- and I was there as I relate in my book The Land that lost its Heroes-know this to be a falsehood. With the exception of the then leader of the Radical party Raul Alfonsin, some human rights activists, and individual journalists, no …
La Roja : no conspiracy, just insufficient self-belief
Let the Italians keep their conspiracies. I never believed Spain and Croatia would go into their Euro 2012 Group match having agreed to play for a draw. You would have to have turned Poland into Argentina run by a military junta and swapped Peru for Croatia to have made that one stick. If Spain from the outset seemed to lack their usual sparkle, and fluffed too many passes it was partly their own fault for coming out and thinking not of themselves as champions but of Russia, a team that …
Bad sportsmen
David Nalbandian, the Argentine tennis player, disqualified from the AEBOG championship at London’s Queen’s Club, joins a not unimpressive list of Argentine icons made legendary by their ‘unsportsmanlike behavior’- only they happen to be footballers. Back in 1966, Argentine captain Antonio Rattin was sent off in the England World quarter finals match against England for his alleged ‘violent tongue.’ Rattin did not leave gracefully but rather bid a defiant farewell, taking his time to leave the stadium, and wrinkling a British pennant before finally departing. Twenty years later Diego Maradona …
Remembering my friend Cassandra Jardine
It’s never too late to grieve those who have a special place in our lives. If I write this tribute somewhat belatedly to Cassandra Jardine it is because I have only just discovered on the web that she died just under two weeks ago while wondering how she was. My search for some update news on her had been prompted by the discovery that an article in the Telegraph I had expected would have been just up her street on the celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration in Battersea …
Del Bosque’s choices
To be or not to be?- or rather to have a centre-forward or not? Vicente Del Bosque knew he was taking a gamble when he decided to dispense with a recognised striker at the start of Spain’s opening Euro2012 game against Italy-but it was a calculated choice for this serene and wise man from Salamanca. The Italy he was facing- an ambitious 3-5-2 line-up- was not the defensive ‘lock down’ that most Spaniards have come to expect. It opened up the prospect of a fast-moving game, with Spain being pressurised inside its own …
Whither Spain in Euro2012
Let me make an admission from the outset. I am approaching this Eurochampionships with one hope only-that Spain will clinch the title. I hope that I am not tilting at windmills. As those of you who might have read my latest book on La Roja will realise I’ve watched a lot of Spanish football over the years, and researched into history, to get a sense of how a country has weathered its political storms and deeply-ingrained club rivalries to produce a coherent national squad capable of playing the most beautiful and …
