In the end it was Tito Vilanova’s season and Eric Abidal’s too. They became the symbol of the suffering and the success of Barcelona’s fourth league title in five years, the feeling in their celebrations.
And yet there was something strange about the 2012-2013 campaign, Barcelona’s greatest ever season greeted like a disappointment. The league was won so early that there was something anticlimactic about it and they finished without the injured Leo Messi, without the Champions League, destroyed 7-0 over two legs by Bayern Munich.
They finished too with that nagging sense that something, or maybe many things, were not quite right. Again, Abidal was a symbol: he returned to action 402 days after having undergone a liver transplant, but departed in tears, the promise broken.
Barcelona also missed out on the Copa del Rey, where they had been knocked out by Madrid and were defeated by their rivals’ subs in the league. But this was a colossal season for Barcelona, not least given the problems they faced. Javier Mascherano put it well when he noted: Our coach is not in New York on holiday, you know. Even with illness and injury, even with a short squad that desperately lacks defenders, even with the doubts, they still produced a near perfect 2012: 17 wins and one draw, 2-2 against Madrid. José Mourinho claims that he ended Barcelona’s hegemony but Barcelona won the league again, 15 points ahead of Madrid. That’s the biggest ever gap between first and second. They equalled Madrid’s points record, reaching 100.
Meanwhile, Mourinho and Madrid were unravelling and as each layer fell away, it became clearer that those stories, dismissed as literature by the club’s president, were largely true. Mourinho gave up the league title before Christmas, which might not have mattered had his team not been knocked out in Europe and however much they sold success, everyone knew this was not it. The divisions grew more entrenched, the battle bitter, complete with press campaigns, punishments and even a pre-match plebiscite.
When the man assumed to be Mourinho’s faithful defender turned it was hard not to think: Et tu, Pepe? Alvaro Arbeloa still stood up for his coach but by then he stood alone. And by then, Mourinho had long departed – mentally if not physically.
By then, too, his team had lost the Copa del Rey final to Atlético Madrid.
The Rojiblancos finally defeated their rivals for the first time since 1999. Atlético also took up a place in the Champions League after finishing third, where they will be joined by Real Sociedad, the best team to watch in the second half of the season. European places went to Valencia, who Real overtook on the final day, and to Betis – another team that was brilliant to watch on a shoestring. With Málaga and Rayo both denied Uefa licences, there could still be a European place for Betis’s city rivals Sevilla, all the way down in ninth. A team that didn’t win a single away game.
Good news for Sevilla, not so good for the league: an eloquent comment on a league that is, at an organisational shambles; a competition where financial crisis grips and no one can compete with the big two. Not just compete: where nobody else even seems to matter. Which is a pity, because beyond Madrid and Barcelona, there are great stories, great games and great players. But for how long? Radamel Falcao has already gone and so have Fernando Llorente and Jesús Navas. They will almost certainly be just the first as a familiar trend continues, a trend in which everyone else’s good players depart. The winter transfer window was reality, laid bare. Less money was spent in the whole of Spain than QPR spent on Chris Samba.
This was also the season that was marked by match fixing, after Levante midfielder Barkero accused his team-mates of selling themselves following a 4-0 defeat by Deportivo de La Coruña. Allegations like those are nothing new in Spain; in fact, they have long been indulged as just one of those things, accepted as part of the game. But this time is different; this time it could even be good news. The incoming league president Javier Tebas insisted that he was going to make match-fixing his priority – why he didn’t when he was vice-president and de facto president is another question – and launched an investigation, with evidence passed on to the anti-corruption attorney. Maybe this time something will actually be done.
At least the scandal meant that the familiar whiff that surrounds the final day was not there this time; alarm bells had been sounded, players and presidents warned. They were being watched. On the final day, four teams could go down; in the end, Deportivo, Zaragoza and Mallorca did, while the side that stayed up were Celta de Vigo, prompting a proper party, with fans hanging off the crossbar and players disappearing tearfully under piles of bodies, emerging in just their pants.
Iago Aspas’s suicidal head-butt in the Galician derby and subsequent four-game ban had not cost his team relegation after all. Instead, he provided the assist that saved them. No wonder he was delighted. No wonder Hugo Mallo was too. And not just because he’s the first man up as the Guardian once again hands out the most prestigious awards in the game …
Best fan
Hugo Mallo finally lived his dream of travelling to the Galician derby to watch his beloved Celta face Deportivo in enemy territory with his mates from the Iago Aspas fan club. Mallo boarded the bus, posed with a For Sale sign superimposed across debt-ridden Depor’s badge while his mates gigglingly stuck it up on Twitter, and then sang his way through the journey before heading into the stadium two hours before kick off, ready for war. It was dark but he wore sunglasses and pulled his hood up, shouting for Depor’s fans to come and have a go if they thought they were hard enough, singling out his victims and grabbing his crotch, inviting them to get their lips round this until a policeman in riot gear intervened. All of which would be pretty tame, but for one thing: Hugo Mallo is not just a Celta de Vigo fan, he is a Celta de Vigo player.
Best put-down
One man not impressed with Mallo, or team-mate Iago Aspas whose red card in that game cost Celta victory and almost survival was striker Mario Bermejo.
When you go to bed with children, he declared, you wake up covered in piss.
Speaking of which …
Least prepared player
Goalkeeper Gorka Iraizoz was nowhere to be seen when Athletic Bilbao v Granada kicked off. I was still in the toilet when I heard the whistle, he admitted afterwards.
Best fan protest
Among the Málaga fans protesting against their Uefa ban was one ever-so-polite supporter wearing a T-shirt that across the top read: With the greatest of respect, Platini… And across the bottom concluded: … I crap on your sainted mother. Sevilla’s Biris refused to go to games, but they weren’t about to miss the city derby against Betis, finally returning in November carrying a banner that said simply: sorry for the delay. But no one does protests like Rayo Vallecano do protests and certainly not quite so consistently. They started the season as they meant to go on by vacating the end but for a banner directed at Javier Tebas. If football belongs to Tebas, let his fucking mother cheer them on, it ran.
Then there game against Real Madrid which didn’t take place at all after the floodlights failed. The club published photos of the cables that had been cut, Madrid carried out an impromptu training session in the semi-darkness of the pitch and the match was put off 24 hours, as the president cried sabotage. There’s still no proof that Rayo’s fans were involved but outside the stadium they were remarkably calm and there was a cheer when they were told the match was off. Almost like they already knew.
Best fans’ wind-up
Sevilla is one of the great Spanish cities but if there is one thing that it hasn’t got, and one thing that the rest of Andalusia loves to remind them that it hasn’t got, it’s a beach. So when Sevilla played at the Rosaleda, Málaga fans spent the game playing with lilos, dinghies, rubber rings and beach balls, sending them bouncing around the stands and laughing at their sea-less rivals.
Best presidential rant
Deportivo’s Augusto César Lendoiro, who complained about people making wild match-fixing allegations without proof … by making wild match-fixing allegations, without proof. Everyone knows that if there is a club that has behaved with total honour, it’s Deportivo, he said, which was a good start, coming from the president who lied about the size of the club’s debt. We’re absolutely indignant. There were other cases, some of which cost us relegation, but as we didn’t have proof we kept our mouths shut.
Almost every game at the end of previous seasons has been fixed for years.
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