Having won the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, La Roja has retained the number one position in the FIFA World Ranking. The Spanish national football team?s Euro 2008 triumph, combined with the world cup victories, makes them the only national team in history to win three major tournaments consecutively. The Spanish side is now considered the best-ever in world football by many commentators, experts and former players. It seems that the team which was always seen in red, in fact considered as a laughing stock for its ?weak? style of playing football, has now made the world see red. La Roja seems to have decisively broken away from its miserable past.

Jimmy Burns? La Roja: A Journey through Spanish Football couldn?t have been published at a better time. The book that charts the history of Spanish football meets a national team at its peak. As Chris Maume noted in The Independent, ?Until recently, Spanish football bore marked similarities to the English game: a rich domestic history and a proud record in European club football contrasting with sorry decades of under-achievement by the national side. Now, Spain are world and defending European champions.? Before its recent round of success, the last time Spain had won a major trophy was way back in 1964.

Burns narrates how far Spanish football has travelled from La Furia, or the aggressive and spirited style of footballing that was popularised by the Basque team Athletic Bilbao in the 1920s. La Furia was quite liked by the Spanish dictator General Franco as he felt that it portrayed the spirit of Spaniards in general. Also, it fed his political ambitions, which were at best savage. La Furia was always sneered at, meeting its inevitable end when the players found harmony in playing as a team and shrugged off unnecessary aggression. This transformation has been phenomenal. But it was never an easy task in a country grappling with poverty and political upheavals.

Football was never really the preferred sport among Spaniards, more turned into bull-fighting and flamenco for recreation. But all that changed with the influence if British sailors and engineers, thanks to whom the mining towns in southern Spain were the first to get a taste of football. The flavour soon spread to the more industrialised north. There is still some doubt as to where the first football game was played in the country, but popular belief points to the first kick-off having taken place near the mines of Rio Tinto in southern Spain. The place lies buried underground, covered over by slag. The mines stopped operating in the early 1990s, and Burns discovers that the majority of the local bars have been turned into fan clubs of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, football clubs that local people follow because they can afford the best players, win the most trophies.

Real Madrid was bestowed with the title of the royal one during the 1902 King?s Cup at the coronation of King Alfonso XIII. Together with Barcelona, it undoubtedly ranks among the greatest clubs ever. And these clubs are now rich with both native and foreign talent, like Johan Cruyff and Lionel Messi. The Argentinians have also brought their influence to the rival clubs in Madrid.

The national team had a tough time breaking away from all its cultural and political baggage to carve out a new footballing identity; only when it did this did it became a force to reckon with. The Barcelona influence on the Spanish national team is significant: from the style of playing, the quick touch and possession better known in Spain as ?tiqi-taca?, to the centrality of the club?s players such as mid-fielders like Xavi Hernandez and Andr?s Iniesta, important in every single minute of the game. Real Madrid?s Iker Casillas also adds to the team?s brilliancy by leading the side and by being an even more brilliant goalkeeper.

Burns spends a lot of time narrating the struggles that Spain faced while transitioning from European football?s ?great underachiever? to the best team in the world. Now it is considered favourite in every single tournament. And the big turning point clearly took place in Johannesburg in 2010. Burns celebrates: ?The World Cup tournament in South Africa would be remembered for many things?the deafening vuvuzelas, England?s abject failure, the US?s relative success, the humiliating exit of France amid a major dressing-room revolt, Maradona?s eccentricities, the brutishness of the Dutch, the pervasive good cheer of the local people?but most of all for the fact the best side won.?

With the country?s economy sinking deeper into depressive drains, its football team continues to give people much-needed comfort and joy.

La Roja: A Journey Through Spanish Football

Jimmy Burns

Simon And Schuster

Paperback, Pg 415

Rs.699

Of God and Mammon

After the Spanish Civil War, Franco came to Montserrat on a number of occasions to pray before the Virgin there. It was his way of telling the Catalans that the Virgin was Spanish first and foremost. But FC Barcelona?s devotion to the Virgin of Montserrat long outlived Franco, as did its tradition of dedicating every cup won to the Virgin of La Merce, the ?Mother? of Barcelona, and for players?if they wished?to pray in the Camp Nou chapel prior to a big match.

No Spanish club worth its name has abandoned its holy icons over the years. Even Real Madrid, whose fans celebrate victory before the goddess Cibeles, do so only out of convention rather than any deference to a pre-Christian deity. The square surrounding the eighteenth-century statue depicting the Goddess of Nature on her chariot stands firmly in the centre of one of the capital?s busiest commercial, administrative and residential neighbourhoods. The club?s patron still remains the Virgin of Almudena and each major victory is marked by floral offerings to her as well as Cibeles being covered in Real Madrid scarves and embraced by players and fans.

Spanish football?s enduring propensity to mix sport with religion suggests that the Catholic faith has remained deeply embedded in the collective subconscious however much Spanish society becomes laicised and the Catholic Church loses its traditional powers. But it is money rather more than religious faith that has arguably shaped some of the key developments of Spanish football in the modern era.

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