Ball: No cannon fodder for Real, La Liga digs deep for refugees

But football is a funny old game, and Karim Benema’s rather dubious goal in the 55th minute (Isco, the provider, looked offside) was the only one that occurred all afternoon, chiefly because the referee disallowed a perfectly legal one from Youssef Al Arabi, the best player on the park. Well, not quite. Madrid’s goalie, Kaylor Navas, was probably the outstanding performer, which tells you all you need to know about the pattern of the game. Ironically, the Bernabéu love Navas, and a player whom Florentino Pérez was desperately trying to smuggle out of the club in detriment to David de Gea is now looking odds-on to becoming the new team hero. Indeed, Madrid have made a clean start to the campaign, and are yet to concede a goal in five games.

They were taken by surprise, though, by a Granada team that attacked them with some gusto from the off. Perhaps because Granada are the league’s transfer specialists (the squad has 15 new players this season), there was no particular psychological hangover from last season, and anyway, they have some interesting performers apart from Al Arabi, with the wonderfully named Isaac Success a real handful on the wing. It may be a rather flippant observation, but one of Isaac’s brothers plays in Croatia and is called Goodness Success. Now there’s a tough name to carry around on your CV. Talk about raising your interviewer’s expectations.  

Anyway – Granada’s coach, José Ramón Sandoval, complained after the event that the pre-game notion of an inevitable thrashing was a ‘lack of respect’. Sandoval wasn’t too happy about an official tweet from a Real Madrid sponsor urging people to bet on a high scoring win for the hosts, as if Granada were nothing but cannon fodder. He was right to complain too. It’s one thing to have an unbalanced league, financed in favour of the few, but quite another to make that explicit. Appearances gentlemen, please!

Elsewhere, Barcelona kept up theirs, beating Levante 4-1 without too much trouble, and giving several bench-warmers a run-out from the start, namely Sandro Ramirez and Munir, with the defensive midfielder Gerard Gumbau getting on later for his league debut. Leo Messi missed another penalty, but made up for it with two goals anyway, and the Catalans sit atop the league at the beginning of this week’s mini match-fest. So maybe it’s just a question of the strength of a squad, a point that Athletic Bilbao might like to raise after going under rather meekly (3-1) away to Villarreal, three days after beating Augsburg in San Mames in the Europa League. Their victors would probably dislike such an interpretation, since they were playing last Thursday too but had to travel to Vienna (where they lost 2-1). Villarreal are looking useful though, currently undefeated and in third place, two points behind the leaders.

Lionel Messi missed a penalty last night #FCB http://t.co/SI8AaJTvsr

— Sportskeeda (@Sportskeeda) September 21, 2015

Perhaps the main victims of European hangover syndrome are Sevilla and Valencia. Both are in the Champions League and both played well last week, despite the latter losing 3-2 at home to Zenit in a topsy-turvy encounter. The former beat Borussia Monchengladbach 3-0 and might have had reason to believe that their league slump would be over, but that didn’t come true as they were beaten at home by a newly-confident Celta – a result that sinks Unai Emery’s men to bottom position.

The Sevilla crowd began to show some impatience with their team, but of course at Valencia – the most unforgiving crowd in Spain – the customers were calling for coach Nuno’s head after the home draw with 10-man Betis. Valencia did win at Sporting last week and remain undefeated in this campaign, but draws against sides that the supporters feel they should beat (more ‘cannon-fodder’ ideas) such as the humble Rayo and Deportivo, have left their Portuguese coach in a tricky position. Maybe Nuno is also suffering from the Goodness Success syndrome, since his full name, Nuno Espirito Santo (Nuno Holy Ghost) also raises unreasonable expectations among the clubs’ followers. A divine miracle or two might help therefore, starting with a win at Espanyol on Tuesday night.

Matters external to the pitch have of course been dominating the headlines this week, with the refugee crisis beginning to make inroads into professional football, pricking its conscience and moving it into action. Florentino Pérez moved first on September 5, promising a donation of one million euros, followed on the same day by Eibar, whose initiative was basically to donate 5 euros from every paying customer on the day of their game on Saturday with Atlético Madrid. Barcelona responded through their Foundation last Friday, and little by little other clubs – if not coming up with their own initiatives, are at least helping by publicising the UNICEF donation number at half-time during matches.

The most newsworthy incident however came when Getafe managed to obtain the mobile number of Osama Abdul Mohsen (the man infamously tripped by the Hungarian camerawoman) to offer him a job at the club’s soccer academy. Mohsen was a top-flight coach in Syria before deciding to flee, and happily accepted the offer. It was all pretty heart-warming stuff, but without wishing to sound cynical, there is always a danger of one-upmanship in these cases – witness the rather unseemly scramble by Madrid’s sport tabloids to get the shots of the 7 year-old son Zaid (a decent little player by the looks of it) being welcomed to the Valdebebas training ground by Cristiano and company.

If it contributes to the well-being of a larger amount of refugees, whilst giving football a chance to use its over-stuffed coffers for a good cause, then it’s a fine thing. Here in Spain, it’s been particularly good to see two financially poorer sides (Eibar and Getafe) taking the initiative, whilst another side without two pennies to rub together, Rayo Vallecano, have typically stepped in by organising an initiative to raise money through their various ‘peñas’ (supporters’ clubs).

Real Sociedad announced a fortnight ago that the derby against Athletic next Sunday would be ‘medio día del club’ (club half day) which in Spain means that all paid-up ticket-season holders (such as myself) must pay half price for the game, as a kind of annual gesture to the club’s coffers. They subsequently took 56 euros out of my account (28 x 2 – my son is also a member) and I don’t normally mind this little ritual – it can swell the club’s earnings by half a million at one fell swoop – but in this case I just thought it was cheesy to do so in these circumstances, when they could so easily have told us that they would take say 50% of this bonanza and hand it to the refugee fund. Nobody would protest, surely? And if they did, they could fill in an online form to say as much. I wrote to the club registering a mild kind of protest, but have yet to receive an answer. It’s the UN’s International Day of Peace this Monday. Football’s waking up, but it’s still a bit drowsy.