There's nothing like Christmas to bring up old
and unresolved family issues.
With the rest of Europe, England apart, on
hibernal hiatus, 32,000 turned out at Barcelona's Olympic Stadium tonight to
watch Catalonia hammer Honduras, a representative in last summer's World Cup
Finals, 4-0, with a brace from Barça's Bojan Krkic.
The Catalan eleven also boasted blaugrana
stalwart Carles Puyol and teammate Sergio Busquets, who both lifted the World
Cup in Spanish colours in South Africa this year. Barça heavy though the team
was, the Catalonia squad actually contained more players from the city's other
team, Español.
The Catalan national team remains of course
unrecognised by FIFA or UEFA, as are a handful of European 'countries' like
Corsica, Gibraltar, Jersey, Kosovo, Monaco and the Vatican City. FIFA now
demand full United Nations recognition before they rubber-stamp anything, but
in their quest for acceptance, the 'forgotten nations' point to the footballing
status of not entirely sovereign states such as Andorra, the Faroe chesterfield sofa online Islands,
Liechtenstein and San Marino, as well as the four nations which make up the
United Kingdom, which has only one seat at the UN.
The Spanish close season or mid-winter break are
the only times the Catalan national team can realistically assemble, but on the
evidence of recent outings, their side, now coached by Barcelona idol Johan
Cruyff, would be a force in European football were it playing regularly: Last
year they downed Diego Maradona's Argentina 4-2 at the Camp Nou, beat Colombia
2-1 the year before that and in 2003 thrashed Ecuador 4-0, five years after a
memorable 5-0 walloping of Nigeria. And absent from their ranks tonight were
Catalan aces Cesc Fabregas, Gerard Pique and Xavi, World Soccer's Player of the
Year for 2010.
Indeed, Spain won the World Cup playing the
Barcelona style and with far more Catalans (five) than any other regional
nationality, although the skipper who hoisted the golden prize aloft in Soweto
was Madrid-born and 100% Real man Iker Casillas.
That magical night in the Rainbow Nation shone a
brighter than ever spotlight upon Spain's fractured footballing loyalties,
which were last probed in depth following their Euro 2008 victory. Claim and
counter-claim surrounded the extent to which the triumph of 'La Roja' ('The
Red') was cheered in its less than ardently patriotic regions, and the
apparently obvious semantics of the chant 'Yo soy español, español, español' ('I am Spanish, Spanish, Spanish') which echoed around the
country this summer, were equally dissected at length.
Maybe it was the dawn of a new and modern Spain
ready at last to jettison a painful past or perhaps it was just a passing
fiesta where everyone fervently embraced each other in brotherly love as on New
Year's Eve, toasting La Roja with ample Rioja, before waking up hungover the
next morning with unforgiven feuds and remembered rivalries.
AS Diario, one of Spain's daily football papers,
summed up the conundrum quite succinctly in its headline 'Visca España' -
'visca' being the Catalan version of 'viva'.
And Cruyff, despite his assimilated Senyera DNA
- he named his son Jordi after all, does not foresee or even desire that
Catalunya should become FIFA-recognised or an independent nation any time soon.
He speaks (ropey) Castillian Spanish rather than Catalan, yet remains proud to
take charge of what are essentially glorified friendlies once a season in his
adopted homeland.
With Spain defeating Holland in the World Cup
final only a few months ago, harvesting the fruit of the seeds he had planted
as a player with Barcelona in the 1970s, perhaps this is not the best time to
be questioning Cruyff's cultural leanings with any certainty anyway.
The Basque country also has a national team in
action over Christmas, hosting Venezuela tomorrow night in Bilbao. Heavily
dependent on the historically Basque club sides of Athletic Bilbao and Real
Sociedad, their squad also boasts Spanish World Cup-winner Xabi Alonso of Real
Madrid.
Euskadi are no slouches either, having claimed
the scalps of a host of FIFA nations across the last twenty years including
Uruguay, Ghana, Russia, Serbia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Bolivia and Morocco. Famous
former players from the Basque country include the great goalkeeper Andoni
Zubizarreta, still Spain's record cap-winner, and the flying French World
Cup-winning left back Bixente Lizarazu.
And the tapestry does not end there: Andalucia,
Aragon, Asturias, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia,
Navarre and the Region of Valencia have all played friendlies against
FIFA-recognised nations during the past decade.
A united Spain might have won the World Cup in
June, but the red of its national shirt, in truth belies a coat of many
cultures.
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