La Liga finally addressing violent history

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  • Deportivo closed the stand usually occupied by the club's ultras in the wake of the recent death of one of their fans in Madrid.

    I watched the Deportivo v Málaga game on Saturday night. It seemed the logical thing to do after the week’s events here in Spain, after the fall-out from last week’s incident in Madrid when a Deportivo supporter died after a mass brawl with Atlético Madrid ‘ultras’. It hasn’t been a good week for the Galician club, and things got worse on Saturday night when they lost 1-0 on a rainy evening, in a game that they probably deserved to win – but as the Spanish saying goes ‘A perro flaco todo son pulgas’ (All the skinny dog gets is fleas). Malaga’s keeper Carlos Kameni saved a penalty and generally stopped everything else thrown at him. Formerly in the shadow of Willy Caballlero after arriving in 2012 from Espanyol, he deserved a bit of the spotlight on Saturday night, although his saves were not quite as spectacular as the goal Sergi Darder hit first time from 30 metres, after Depor’s goalkeeper Fabricio kicked the ball out poorly from the area. Goal of the week, and just Deportivo’s luck. They huffed and puffed from then on, but never managed to blow Malaga and Kameni down.

    Now, to add insult to injury, their manager Victor Fernández is under the spotlight, and among the dozens of messages emitted from the stands on Saturday night, one of them was that the fans are no longer very happy with him. Fernández, an experienced boss in La Liga who began way back in 1990 with Zaragoza, is of the hissy-fit managing school – the one that bases its methods on looks of exasperation, arms raised to the skies and the blaming of everyone but yourself. Deportivo’s fans have not had a good few years, and their tolerance is wearing thin. And it has been an awkward week for them, with their ex-president Augusto César Lendoiro (he was on their throne for 25 years until January 2014) sacked from his position as international ambassador for the Spanish League by the president of the Spanish League Javier Tebas. More on Tebas later, but Lendoiro’s crime was to be spotted at the funeral last Wednesday of ‘Jimmy’ Romero, the 43 year-old ultra killed last week.

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    Deportivo closed the stand where the Riazor Blues ultras normally gather and draped it with a large flag reading ‘Depor against violence. Riazor 100% for football’. They also offered entrance to non-member supporters at 1 euro each, but despite this there were plenty of empty seats around the stadium. It seemed to mirror the ambivalent attitude that many have adopted towards last week’s incident, brought about by the fact that the fan who died was an ultra himself, with a fairly lengthy police record for various public order offences and minor crimes. This in no way subtracts from the tragedy, but it has coloured the incident somewhat. A hooded member of Frente Atlético, interviewed during the week as if he were some sort of elder statesman announcing grave news, told the journalist that the brawl had been pre-arranged between the two sets of fans, that they always were, and that ‘Jimmy’ had been well aware of the dangers. The ultra added that he saw no reason to stop the violence, and that it was a part and parcel of their lives. He didn’t like them (Depor fans) and they didn’t like him. Simple enough logic. He did, however, have the semi-decency to admit that nobody attended these brawls to actually kill anyone. Just a decent bout of fisticuffs and iron bars on a Sunday morning.

    The Spanish football authorities have acted swiftly, bringing in wide-ranging and tough legislation to force clubs to ban and exclude ‘los violentos’. This is to be applauded of course, but the problem is that the legislation has gone from zero to one hundred in a matter of days – a knee-jerk reaction without a great deal of thought behind it. Cynics might say that the same people who have scrambled to look as though they are now doing something had been doing absolutely nothing since 2007, the year when the law against racism, violence and xenophobia in sport was introduced in Spain. Angel Villar, the head of the Spanish Football Federation since 1988 – a man accused of many things but rarely of hard work – has remained largely silent on the issue.

    However, Javier Tebas, the new head of the league structure, has been charging around like a bull in a Pamplona street, announcing a clean-up of La Liga’s image and the exclusion of ultras from the stadia. But this is a man himself with an interesting past – a young member of Fuerza Nueva (New Force), a disbanded collective nostalgic for the days of Franco and fascism, who themselves recruited and paid young thugs to beat up left-leaning folks, back in the early 1980s. Tebas surely helps old ladies across the road these days, but his personal crusade against the far-right this week has been somewhat ironic, and significantly ignored by the entire Spanish press. The very fact that he was voted into the position (in 2013) that he now occupies tells you maybe too much about Spanish politics – particularly since Tebas’ past was well-known.

    Javier Tebas has been trying to stamp his authority on the current situation in Spanish football.

    The point, surely, is that La Liga is only reacting now because it has suddenly realised the potential effects of a negative image. Spanish football is big business, and generates a lot of money – in international TV rights, football tourism and general merchandise-related marketing. There’s nothing like a nervous sponsor to get people off their backsides. Real Madrid finally cut off relations with the Ultras Sur when they realised that it no longer fitted their image, and that the Bernabéu would look much better as a family-filled shrine. Barcelona did the same, when ex-president Joan Laporta decided to exclude the Boixos Nois ultras – for which he received death threats and considerable discomfort to his personal well-being, but at least he did it. The problem remains with the years before that. Laporta also saw the way things were going, and since then Barcelona have been a money-making machine, now attracting controversial but lucrative sponsorship. It’s all a part of the mix.

    Enrique Cerezo, president of Atlético Madrid since 2002, was happy to let the Frente Atlético do anything they liked, because it suited the club’s Millwall-like image, out there on the banks of the Manzanares, unloved and unwanted. Now, all of a sudden, they’re league champions, Champions League finalists, and much more internationally visible than the last time they were successful, back in 1996. People are buying their shirts and taking to them, in a Diego Simeone-fuelled sort of way. It’s still a bit edgy, and they still like the hard-guy image, but now it sells. Frente Atlético, loyal fans for 30 years (according to their website), are now no longer wanted. The fact that they murdered a supporter back in 1998 was of little consequence to the club and La Liga back then. In fact, Frente Atlético have been singing about it on the terraces ever since – unmolested either by police or by the club’s authorities. But now it’s a business matter. To celebrate their new dawn, peaceful Atlético fans were snapped exchanging bouquets and insignia with Elche fans on Saturday, before their 2-0 win. It’s a step in the right direction, of course. But it should have happened years ago.

    Back inside the stadia, Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo both scored hat-tricks, but that was only because they failed to score last week. Messi did it in the Catalan derby against Espanyol (5-1), and Ronaldo scored the lot against Celta (3-0), the first one a rather laughable non-penalty. Bigger news was Cordoba’s first victory in the top flight since 1972, surprisingly beating Athletic in the new San Mames 1-0 with a goal from Ghilas. The last time, back in 1972, was against Barcelona, interestingly, with Vicente Del Bosque playing on loan for Cordoba. That’s a good one for the trivia merchants.

    This coming week sees the final games of the Champions League group stages, and hopefully a welcome return to matters on the pitch. If Real Madrid defeat Ludogorets, they’ll pick up a record 19th consecutive win. You can’t see them blowing it now, but stranger things have happened. Watch this space. 

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