Jimmy Burns's Blog, page 27

Clemente at the Camp Nou

In the Spring of 1984,  one of the ugliest encounters in Spanish football history,  the King's Cup final between FC Barcelona and Athletic  Bilbao was held at the Bernabeu. The clubs had, respectively, Cesar Menotti and Javier Clemente as managers. Barca still had Maradona as a star player.

The season had been characterised by a growing debate between Menotti and Clemente about how football should be played. Menotti claimed to be an admirer of free creative football which he contrasted with the defensive 'brutal' play favoured by Clemente. Brutality had certainly been very much in evidence in the previous autumn when one of Clemente's favourite players,Goikoetxea, had hacked Maradona from behind, badly injuring  his left ankle.

The King's Cup final of 1984 ended in a pitched battle, with Maradona and Goikoetxea in the midst of it. King Juan Carlos was appalled, while Barca directors felt the reputation of their club had been tarnished by the thuggery of an uneducated Argentinian.

On Saturday, just under twenty-eight years  later, Clemente came to the Camp Nou, this time  in charge of Sporting Gijon, a team facing relegation. From the opening whistle Clemente's boys hustled and bustled, their defence ( ten players most of the time) as seemingly solid as a Maginot line, focusing their maximum suppression around the mid-field trio of Cesc, Iniesta, and Xavi .

Had Messi being playing, he  would no doubt have been hacked from the outset or he might have broken through and scored a goal. Suspended after getting his fifth yellow card of the season against Atletico Madrid, this Argentinian  could only  watch from the sidelines.

Without Messi, Barca struggled  to prove  that it is still a great team . For much of the first half, it played as if it was missing  its defining act of genius, as time and again Barca's intricate play was closed down, without any decent shot at goal being attempted- that is until, close to the half-time whistle, Adriano used his speed to get to the end line before pulling back for Iniesta to tap in.

Then Clemente showed the tactician in him is not all bull and bluster. He took advantage  of Pique's sending off, to mount a counter-offensive and level.

Barca fought back, with two  beautiful goals, one a curling shot by Keita into the top corner of the next, the second a sublime lob by Xavi over Sporting's goalkeeper Juan Pablo Colinas, that seemed to be 'Made in Messi', and had  cules , in tribute, chorusing Guardiola's name as if wanting to say, 'We might seem a damn ungrateful crowd at times, but it's your style football that we like so please, please don't go.'

My friend Brian Paddick

Just alerted by former colleagues that Brian Paddick has been decent about me at the Leveson inquiry . Today's Guardian blog comes out with following :

12.23pm: Brian Paddick, a former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner who is now a Lib Dem politician, has taken the stand as today's first witness.

12.26pm: Paddick says while he was at the Met he had lunch with staff from the Guardian and the Daily Mirror – although he describes the latter as "more of an audience with Piers Morgan".

He says the Mirror lunch followed a "kiss and tell" on him by the paper; he had got to know Morgan when the journalist called to get a quote.

A bunch of Channel 5 weather girls were there as well, he says.

Leveson is bemused as to what Morgan had to say and why Paddick went. Paddick suggests it was a thank you for his co-operation with his newspaper. "Requiring you to listen to him?" asks a bemused Leveson to laughter.

"There was lunch as well," explains Paddick

12.31pm : Paddick says he also has a working relationship with a (now former) Financial Times journalist Jimmy Burns.

"We were on the same page in wanting reform of the police, better handling of race relations and that sort of thing," says Paddick. "We had an immediate rapport and had a series of lunches that he paid for."

We were indeed. Just to add to the record: One of the lunches Brian Paddick and I  had together when I was still working at the FT was at the restaurant above the Globe theatre. He wanted to  ask my advice about how he should handle 'coming out' publicly as a gay as he was about to be promoted into the higher management strata of the Met. I told him that if he left it up to the tabloids they would most likely take him to the cleaners. I suggested that I would write a measured profile about him in the FT but mentioning that he was gay deep in the piece and in context for it was -as far as I recall-mainly about him as a reformer across the board and being a  breath of fresh air within the Met which he was- and continues to be (although now as an outsider) .

Long before he hit any kind of headlines, I met Paddick for the first time when he was still a young commander in west London. I was investigating the Met's homophobic and sexist 'canteen culture' and its institutionalised racism following the enquiry into the first police investigation into  the Stephen  Lawrence murder . Paddick struck me immedeately as an enlightened reformer and I speculated in a piece later that he might one day become a Commissioner. He probably would have become one had he not not gone against the system.

He  was one of the few senior cops I know who was prepared to say the truth about the shooting of De Menezes . You can check the articles I wrote about Brian Paddick. I think I am the only journalist who gets a possitive  mention in Paddick's  autobiography. I never offered or paid him a dime nor did he ask for one. Our lunches I claimed off FT expenses.It's a pity he hasn't a hope in hell of becoming Mayor of London, but he deserves a place in the Lords. After all, Sir Ian Blair got a peerage , didn't he?

 

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Falklands/Malvinas: An Open Letter to Sean Penn

Dear Sean,

I am writing in response to  your comment in today's Guardian.

We seem to have missed each other when you were recently in Buenos Aires.

I note that you were granted a meeting with 'President Kirchner' (sic)- that was her late husband. I am surprised your knowledge of Argentine matters did not extend to calling her by her official and family name Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. But don't worry this kind of slip won't matter a damn to the current incumbent of the Casa Rosada whose style of government and public utterances are surrealistic.

 I am told that Cristina-as her supporters like to call her-is delighted to have  met one of her favourite actors- a true world celebrity and campaigner to boot-who seems to have provoked more column inches in the British media than the rather limp and ill-conceived presentation  the other day of foreign minister Hector Timerman. Cristina's  sister in law ,Alicia  who  as you know is a good friend of a brave and hard working priest in  Haiti, must also be thankful that you came there not only waving the Malvinas flag, but also in your capacity as ambassador at large not just for one island, but several, and one country.

Unlike you I did not have personal access to Cristina- she does not give interviews to investigative  journalists and avoids press conferences like the plague – but I have  spent rather more days than you have  in Buenos Aires, a city (and a country)  I happen to know pretty well having been posted there as a correspondent  both in the lead-up to and during the Falklands War. I have revisited the country on several occasions since .

So let me take issue with just some of the points you raise in your comment. Contrary to what you suggest, the current diplomatic deadlock was provoked not by a pre-emptive  intimidation by the UK but by the decision taken in 2007 by President Kirchner-Cristina's late husband- to unilaterally ditch  a cooperation agreement on oil exploration around the Malvinas/Falklands.

The agreement formed part of a broader compromise reached by Argentina and the UK during the Menem and Blair governments in the late 1990's to put the issue of sovereignty 'under an umbrella'- i.e. set it to one side in order to make progress on bringing about a better engagement between the islands and the mainland, while also improving diplomatic relations between the UK and Argentina.

But Kirchner-in a position shared by his widow-insisted, like Galtieri, that recognition of Argentna's sovereignty claim should be back at the top of the agenda , and therefore a sine qua non of any resumption of constructive diplomacy. In recent weeks, Cristina  Fernandez has upped the ante by getting Falkland flagged transport  and fishing boats banned from Argentine  and neighbouring countries' ports while threatening to cut off flight communications , carrying food and other products from the mainland to the islands in a move that would amount to a virtual trade embargo.

This , I would submit is intimidation, not the alleged  military escalation that the Fernandez government has denounced and which ignores or rather distorts the fact that the dispatch  to the islands of a vessel by the  Royal Navy has been a regular and routine  practice since the end of  war, and that Prince William's role on the islands is not  commander in chief of an Imperial  Task Force but as a member of a Search and Rescue team which is there to save lives, regardless of their nationality.

You suggest that those who rule Argentina  today are not tainted by their involvement in the brutal repression of fellow citizens carried out in the 1970's and early 1980's by their military. Granted they have put several military officers in jail but it was President Alfonsin back in 1985 who had the guts to put the juntas on trial. Closer scrutiny of the current president and her late husband's political background would show that your assertion that the very people who suffered and fought most enduring against the military junta are the ones who now lead the country gives a slightly misleading impression that they led the resistance  after the 1976 coup and that Argentina today is a fully functioning democracy when it is not.

Neither Christina Fernandez nor her husband Nestor played a prominent role in the resistance to the military after coup.  Nor did they take  a public stand against the invasion of the Faklands like Alfonsin did.  Today the President , whose ideological ally is Chavez, is  surrounded  by a small clique of unquestioning ministers and officials supported by sectors of the media  the government controls, and a praetorian guard of young nationalistic neo-marxist Peronist activists called La Campora who have taken key positions in  government departments and state companies. A new anti-terrorism  law has been drafted  to curb opposition which is increasing as the ecomomy detriorates and the social compact with favoured business leaders and trade unionists is no longer solid.  While you were in BA, government media censored details of the brutal repression by riot police and hired thugs of those protesting  on ecological grounds the ravages to earth and water threatened by private gold mining companies in the northern province of Catamarca.

I doubt, Sean , whether during your quick visit to BA you had time-as I had , to talk to critics of the government like journalists at Clarin, Argentina's  mass circulation paper that has been subjected to a relentless campaign of harassment because of its exposure of  government cronyism and alleged  corruption..

Finally there is one fact more than any other that you-precisely because if your  undoubted track record in standing up for decent  causes- should understand  and empathise with . The wish of the Falkland islanders not to be Argentine even if Argentines are quite free to visit and settle on the islands if they wish. This is not because their colonial masters are gagging them but because they  believe in , and Argentina rejects ,  a very democratic principle that should be close to your campaigning heart, dear Sean  - the right to self-determination.

All in justice and solidarity Jimmy

Poetry vs play station

It felt like a nice tonic seeing Barca play as they did last night-creativity, goals, and much presence of La Cantera –not least Messi who was in overdrive. Only hours earlier I had to suffer two cule friends of mine moaning till the early hours about how this Barca was tired and had run out of ideas and that we could be reaching the end of a cycle i.e over to you Real Madrid.

I watched Messi , pure poetry  in motion, while  thinking of what Vicente Del Bosque told me about him recently: "He still plays like a street kid." And what he meant by that was the spontaneity and skill and palpable enjoyment that this little big man shows in a small space, surrounded by others. Compared to him, Del Bosque also told me, Ronaldo seemed produced by a computer. What he meant by that was the pretty tall boy from Madeira seemed perfectly constructed on and off the pitch, an icon of the digital age,  a play-station hero that, properly managed, could deliver with devastating accuracy and effect.

Messi and Ronaldo are once again fighting it out for the Pichichi award as the biggest goal scorers of La Liga. It is likely to be a closer run thing than the title fight itself. If Barca are in recovery mode, Real Madrid are on a seemingly unstoppable roll in the direction of the Spanish league championship- you can see it in Mourinho's eyes and in the swagger of the players who still celebrate as individuals rather than as a team.

But the sceptics should remember that while it could all end in tears at the Camp Nou, FC Barcelona are in the finals of the King's Cup and once again well placed to progress towards another final of the Champions League. They are doing this despite the doubt about Pep Guardiola's future which I suspect is the consequence of personal vanity as much as a question of collective psychology. It is a natural human instinct to want to go out with a bang rather than a whimper . But for Pep to announce now that he was quitting now would have a devastating impact on the morale of his players, far beyond the points that currently separate them from their rivals. Let's hope, for football's stake, that  he stays. The only job Pep should consider in  the longer term  is as coach of the Spanish national team, the day Del Bosque retires. Noone should expect  the wise old man from Salamanca to do that quite yet.

Football's wise senor

It was a privilege to accompany Vicente del Bosque on his 24 hour visit to London yesterday when he flew the flag for his country at the Spanish tourist office, at a Q &A session at the Lumiere Cinema, and much later at Abel Lusa's ever welcoming and  excellent Cambio de Tercio restaurant on the Old Brompton Road.

The fact that he is one of the most successful managers in football history has not gone to his head. On the contrary he remains understated and modest, insisting that he would be happy to see the end of managerial  'technical zones'. The sight of managers screaming instructions and gesticulating during matches is one he would be happy to be excluded  from. He believes that what binds the best teams to the best managers is  the unpublicised bond of mutual respect and dialogue. He recalled that decisive goal Pujol scored for Spain against Germany in the last World Cup semi-finals. It was a  goal he and the players, notably Pujol- discussed prior to the scoring of it, at half time.

Last night saw del Bosque attended the  presentation of a documentary called El Alma de La Roja, which shows how much Spanish football has evolved since the early kick-around games in Bilbao ands Rio Tinto. World football's traditional underachiever, has learnt that it's not enough to want to conquer. You have to play with your mind as well as your heart, skill and technique applied with conviction and courage.

Del Bosque's biggest achievement is to have built a team of comrades that cuts across regional rivalries. Solidarity, self-sacrifice, endeavour, honesty, hard work, and delivery all form part of his project. He remains a shining example amidst the doldrums haunting his country.

Bruisers in the Camp Nou

Tonight's second-leg King's Cup tie between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona at the Camp Nou had a a rough edge to it that almost left a nasty taste. But edge-of-the-seat stuff nonetheless. Who said El  Clasico was beginning to get too regular and boring? – I didn't.

This was a reprise performance for both sides with clear echoes of  last year's  encounter in which the game was reduced by the thuggery of Real Madrid on one side, and the theatrics of FC Barcelona on the other.

That said the game showed both the potential and limitations of the Mourinho project. Real Madrid were formidable in attack, and spirited, not least when things could not have looked worse for them at half time. Yet somehow the visiting team lacked the cohesion , solidarity and artistry of Pep Guardiola's boys when in possession of the ball.

It was a game that Real Madrid could have won, but didn't deserve to win. They are simply not as good as Barca. But this was not one of Barca's better games. Cesc and Xavi were subdued, Pinto unpredictable as usual, and Alexis less menacing that he has been of late. A bruising match, made memorable by some Brazilian magic-Alves's cracker of a long-distance goal- and the sense that this could be the game that finally punctured the myth of the 'Special One.' No doubt Mourinho will blame it on the ref. But such protestations poorly hide his lack of grace.

Barca's beauty: A view from the Gods

 

I have to admit that sometimes I thank God I can  watch certain matches  in the comfort of my sitting room. This is not because I am a couch potato by nature, or that Madrid is cold and wet at this time of year (as is Bar & Co, the boat on the Thames where I sometimes gather with fellow cules) ,  but because sometimes TV gives you a perspective on a match which you simply cannot capture sitting or standing in the cheapest seat you can get in the stadium, or with your thoughts distracted by too many journalistic colleagues, typing to deadline.

Last night was one such occasion. Full marks and possibly a medal should go to the TV director who made sure that at several moments  in the Real-Madrid-FC Barcelona match I had the benefit of an aerial view of the Bernabeu stadium and the play within. From that angle, several metaphors came to mind, as Barca systematically came back from 0-1 down and confirmed themselves as the superior team.

I know this is not the first  time you will read choreography or ballet or poetry in motion as a description  of the intricate movement of  Pep  Guardiola's boys- but this was the equivalent  of a good night at Sadler's Wells, watched from the Gods. Lest I be accused of being one-sided, there were elements too  of a chess game, with move and counter move reflecting the idiosyncracy and  ambition of two of world football's great tacticians. But the overriding image  was one of a fresh mountain stream  manoeuvring  its way through rugged terrain.

This was  a Real Madrid that after Ronaldo's brilliant run and executed first goal, retreated behind its lines, thereafter resorting to hostile defensive tactics and occasional forays by its special operations corps. Mourinho's  campaign  of brutal attrition was personified –yet again- by his leading thug Pepe who, no doubt elevated to hero status by some elements of the Ultra Surs, pushed, and hacked, and trampled his way through the game.

By contrast Barca showed that its  genius lies in its disciplined and imaginative  collective-the way that all the players patiently involve themselves in the build up play, and how , when it comes to creating goals,  each  player's level  is raised thanks to the inspiration and support of one player in particular. To watch Abidal pick up on Messi's beautifully timed lob, and hit it home past Casillas, was to a get a sense of  the beauty –and effectiveness- in solidarity. It also showed Barca's wonderful ability to surprise us just when you thought their game was becoming predictable.

Typical of the spirit, endeavour, and talent of  this very special Barca team is Alexis Sanchez –for me, the man of the match last night- who with his extraordinary energy, speed, and resourcefulness across the breadth and depth of the pitch, is proving one of the most astute signings of the Guardiola era. Happy Birthday Pep!

Rick Stein's Spain

In case you missed it, try and pick up somewhere, sometime  on Rick Stein's Spanish Christmas shown last night on BBC 2.

 Rick, in my view,  is the most human of 'celebrity' cooks, with a genuine interest  in Spain's  culinary habits, and a deep respect for  and understanding of how food and wine –in its varied manifestations-go to the heart of the country's soul.

As someone born in Spain to a Spanish mother and with many years of experience of living and working in the country, I felt privileged to play a small part in Stein's project-invited as I was to share some of my own memories of childhood during the extended festive season culminating in the wonderfully mystical Epiphany or Reyes.

I was one of a number of 'guests' invited to sample a wonderful range of  hot and cold recipes that Rick had picked up on his extensive travels through the country in a camper van and that have inspired one of the best Spanish cookery books I know of.

Rick has travelled backwards and forth to Spain over the years and deepened in his love for the land and its people. His programme showed a  real insight into what makes Spain so special-its regional diversity, the richness of its natural produce, its respect for family life, and its positive historical legacy as expressed in  the Latin American vegetables and oriental spices used in some of the dishes.

Rick brought a natural optimism and geniality to every human encounter,  whether in a recently discovered Michelin restaurant or in an intimate family gathering of which one had a  grandmother reciting a beautiful poem about the importance  of defending the best in one's roots.

Somehow Rick's programme left me with a sense-or rather a reminder- that  Spain has a certain Quixotic resilience and self-belief drawn from  its land and its  sea that has always allowed it to pull through in troubled times. Our shared passion lies partly in the fact that in Spain one can eat and drink well and healthily in good company. It was just the tonic to end a Euro-crisis year, and to look towards the essentials of life in 2012.

Havel and a spy who came in from the cold

If I'd read the character in some spy novel, I would have thought him a figment of the writer's imagination-so unlike he was from anything I had  encountered thus far.

It was in the early 1990's and I was in Oxford attending a weekend conference on the changing post-Cold war intelligence  landscape when a friend suggested there was someone among the foreign delegates I might be interested in meeting in a more relaxed atmosphere.

I arrived one saturday evening at one of the town's quieter pubs to find my friend having a pint with a casually dressed middle-aged man. His foreign 'guest' had a thick moustache and longish hair, and was smoking a pipe. He greeted me with a warm handshake and a mischivous glint in his eye. Had he been alone or with some students, I  could have easily   mistaken him for a somewhat eccentric Oxford don. But the presence of my friend at his side suggested a more intriguing possibility, and I was not disappointed.

It turned out that my friend's  foreign 'guest' was the newly appointed head of Czech intelligence, that was at the time being trained and advised by MI6. (The British had won a contract against strong competition from the CIA, the Germans, and the French.).

 The Czech told me that during the 1980's he had worked for the anti-communist dissident Charter 77 movement while employed as a lowly technician in a film studio dubbing foreign films. The work proved perfect cover for exchanging information with fellow dissidents, and maintaining contact with helpful foreign contacts.

As far as I recall it was not long after Vaclav Havel, the leader of the 'velvet revolution', became the founding president of what is now the Czech republic in 1993, that our 'guest' found himself  offered an  appointment as his country's head spook.  "I told Vaclav that  I had no experience of working in an intelligence agency- to which he replied, 'That is why I want you to be the head : you have to clean  out the organisation from top to bottom as I can't trust anyone else to do the job'."

I never saw or heard of our 'guest' again though I suspect that, like Havel, he would have struggled to remain a practicing politician and an independent intellectual.  I would later come to wonder how this spy who came in from the cold got on as the end of the Cold War gave way to an international  environment motivated more by self-interest and opportunism than ideology, and where the intelligence services of democratic states became increasingly drawn into the questionable practices of the US-led 'war on terror.'

I remembered that  Oxford night  this morning as I read about the death of Havel. Among the tributes from old Eastern European hands , I quote from one written by Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian: "Havel was the epitome of a dissident because he persisted in the struggle, patiently, non-violently, with dignity and wit, not knowing when or even if the outward victory would come."

In today's world the memory of the Czech 'velvet revolution' remains a beacon to the possibility of change through passive resistance: a thought worth hanging onto as  Christmas approaches.

Barca rules the World

On June 12th 1963, thousands packed the Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona play Santos FC of Brazil in a friendly , and in particular one player called Edson Arantes do Nascimento Pelé. A year earlier, Santos had won the Brazil Cup, the Campeonato Paulista, the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup.The Brazilian national side won the World Cup that same year. In the following season, Santos went on to win the Copa Brazil, the Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup once again.At the Camp Nou,  Barca won 2-0 and yet Santos hung on to its reputation as  the best team in the world, with  Pelé, aged 22, already regarded as the best player in the world.

Fast forward to today's game between the two teams at Japan's Yokohama Stadium . No friendly this one, but the final of Fifa's Club World Cup. Barca beat Santos  4-0 after dominating a match, in which Barca are confirmed the best club in the world, and Messi, aged 24,  the best player in the world, supported that is with a largely home-grown team of extroardinary collective skill and talent. As for Santos, this was a poor performance , not least by the aspiring new superstar Neymar who seemed utterly overwhelmed and out played by the boys from Catalonia. No wonder FC Barcelona thinks it  can draw on their native reserves while Villa recovers. We shall see.