Brian Viner: Glamorous cast grace the glorious Nou Camp
How often are you likely to see players of the calibre of Rivaldo, Zidane, Kluivert, Raul, Luis Enrique and Roberto Carlos sharing a pitch?
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Your support makes all the difference.Stan Collymore coined a new word on Radio Five Live a couple of weeks ago, I think unwittingly. During his time at Liverpool, he said, he had been "lambasterised" for not setting up home on Merseyside. Lambasterised. What a fine word. Worse than being lambasted, not quite as bad as being pulverised.
I have since acquired some experience myself of being lambasterised, following my interview in these pages with Walter Smith.
In e-mails and even on the unofficial website Toffeeweb, fellow Evertonians took me fiercely to task for being too soft on Smith. That, and the succession of David Moyes, is a subject I shall revisit. My father-in-law, whose goat is well and truly got every time I mention Everton, would expect no less.
But on Saturday I was not at Goodison to watch the Moyes era begin, praise be, in winning fashion. I was at the Nou Camp, my first time in football's ultimate cauldron of expectation, to watch Barcelona play Real Madrid.
The match finished 1-1, extending Barcelona's unbeaten sequence at home against the old enemy, stretching all the way back to October 1983 (the highlight of which, for many, remains the 3-2 victory in January 1987, complete with a hat-trick by Gary Lineker and, the next day, much talk of building a statue of him).
I do not, of course, use the word enemy lightly. If Collymore thinks he was lambasterised at Anfield, he should step out at the Nou Camp in the lilywhite strip of Real Madrid (although I think his chance might finally have gone).
Give or take a few hundred intrepid Real fans in the gods, 100,000 people booed and hooted and whistled their derision. I have never heard a noise like it. The enthusiasm when Barcelona took the field was lukewarm by comparison, from which the conclusion must be that Barcelona fans hate Real Madrid even more than they love Barça. The same warped passion is true in Glasgow, and for the same reason: the historic enmity between the two sets of fans transcends football.
In Glasgow the reason, broadly speaking, is religion; at the Nou Camp it is politics, indeed a vast banner was unfurled on Saturday bearing the unequivocal message, in English, that "Catalonia is not Spain". But politics also intervened in an unexpected way just after kick-off, when two activistas antiglobalizacion, in town for the European Union summit, unhelpfully handcuffed themselves to the Barcelona goalposts.
While stewards bustled about trying to unattach them, I was rather frivolously reminded of my childhood friend Nige, who had almost certainly never heard of anti-globalisation yet used to stick just as adhesively to the goal-line, seemingly untroubled by the fact that in those days there was nothing worse than being labelled a "goal-hanger". It was better, frankly, to be a bed-wetter.
Anyway, the protesters were finally carted off in a hail of bottles and other make-do missiles, which seemed a bit harsh on the stewards carting them, and a wonderful match resumed.
By the end of it, Real topped La Liga on goal difference, Barcelona remained in distant fifth, and at least one neutral observer reflected on an evening of unalloyed joy. After all, how frequently in a lifetime are you likely to see players of the calibre of Rivaldo, Zidane, Kluivert, Raul, Luis Enrique and Roberto Carlos sharing a pitch? Heaven knows, Manchester United v Arsenal offers an abundance of talent, but not like it abounded at the Nou Camp on Saturday.
Zinedine Zidane, in particular, was magnificent, gliding elegantly hither and yon in what at times seemed like a training session permitting only one-touch football. And he scored, to boot. As absurd as it might seem to think of David Beckham, the man who has everything, craving anything, it is perhaps to be offered the kind of role Zidane fulfils for Real. Vicente del Bosque, the coach, has clearly given him carta blanca to use a notional central midfield role as a platform to do pretty much whatever he wants. Beckham, I'm sure, would love Sir Alex Ferguson, and Sven Goran Eriksson, to do likewise.
But Beckham, though a genius, is not quite the genius Zidane is. Nor have I ever seen a left-back (again, a notional title) marauding forward quite as gloriously as Roberto Carlos did – not even Mike Pejic in the Gordon Lee years.
Moreover, during stoppages in play there was always the awesome Nou Camp to admire. I feel privileged to have attended big matches at Wembley, San Siro and Ibrox; I have even stood in the Scarisbrick End at Haig Avenue as Southport FC secured promotion from the old Fourth Division. But none of those venerable grounds matched the Nou Camp for atmosphere.
I took away only one regret. That Steve McManaman, brought on by Del Bosque in the dying seconds, did not nick the winner. Then two Evertonians would have left the stadium feeling thrilled, rather than just the one.
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