Jimmy Burns's Blog, page 33

Shakira Cule Part 2

The news- emanating from Bogota and reproduced in today's Mundo Deportivo that Shakira has agreed to become a kind of roving ambassador for Barca as well as poor children without a voice can only be welcome.

So we are told Shakira's charitable Foundation Pies Descalzos – an educational trust for underprivileged children in her native Colombia- has formed a strategic alliance with Barca's  foundation, the Fundacio FCB which exists to promote the professed values of the club – solidarity, effort, companionship, friendship, sacrifice, and tolerance. The two foundations are set to cooperate in developing two educational  centres for poor kids- where no doubt song and sport will be important parts of the school curriculum – in Colombia and the US.

It makes a change from deals with Qatar and will probably prove more popular with cules. But does it also take us nearer to a possible marriage between Shakira and you know who?  I do not dare mention the player's name for fear of distracting him at this crucial stage of the season.

Qatar's football card

Nooone really knows for sure how far and in what way the current upheavals among Arab nations  are going, but I suspect the fate of Qatar is beginning to put some nerves in the football world on edge.

Qatar was not only recently picked by FIFA as the host nation for the 2022 World Cup, it has also  in recent months signed  a lucrative sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona after pouring money into a far less successful Spanish Primera Liga club Malaga and reportedly showing an interest in Manchester United.  

 Ever since the country's leader, Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani came to power, by instigating a bloodless coup against his father, Qatar has earned a reputation as a "developing democracy" not without influence. It has one of the world's largest natural gas fields in its waters, is home to the Al Jazeera TV network and has been clever in using sport, especially football, to market the country internationally.

 Qatar has gone from being a relatively modest absolute monarchy to being one of the richest states in the world. Barca's current coach Pep Guardiola is one of several football stars that have done a professional and promotional stint on behalf of the Qatari Football Association. Others include Marcel Desaillly, Gabriel Batitusta and the ex Barca player Ronal de Boer whose brother Frank also moved to Qatar and was one of the ambassadors for the 2022 World Cup bid.

Central to the bid was a revolutionary cooling system that would use solar power to provide zero-carbon air conditioning to cool the stadiums, technology that has the potential to transform the lives of tens of millions living near the equator.

And it is the legacy that a Middle Eastern World Cup could bring that has arguably persuaded FIFA to take a risk on Qatar. After the tournament, Qatar has promised to dismantle the modular stadiums and rebuild them in third world countries who can't afford their own. But there's an even bigger legacy that the Qatari bid have been pushing: Peace in the Middle East through football.

Quite a boast and one that could still come back to haunt Qatar and its friends, if the country itself and some of its neighbors also become embroiled in a much broader political uprising and their current system of governance proves unsustainable.

A tale of goalkeepers

Let me admit it – yesterday I spent a long afternoon of mixed emotion, glued to sport on TV, switching effortlessly from BBC rugby at Twickenham to La Liga on Sky TV. After cheering on England's inspired second half performance against France, I nearly fell asleep towards the end of the first half of yesterday's Mallorca- Barca tie, took a short meal break, and then lay awake until the early hours recovering from the nail-biting excitement of the last minutes of the Deportivo-Real Madrid game that kept me, tensed, on the edge of my armchchair.

The star of the evening was undoubtedly Depor's  Daniel Aranzubia, one of a long line of heroic goalkeepers produced by Athletic Bilbao's excellent youth  academy Lezama. At 31, Aranzubia is no spring chicken, but he could have become more famous had it not been for the fact that Athletic  opted for  Gorka Izaiza as their first team choice and Azoiza's stint in the Spanish squad was destined to be short lived with the advent of the exceptional Casillas and the similarly talented Valdes.

 Nonetheless Aranzubia's star has grown brighter since joining Depor. Last night's extraordinary series of saves against a sustained Madrid attack follows other high points in recent years. They included saving three penalties in Depor's UEFA cup tie against SK Brann in October 2008, and scoring with his head against Almeria last month, the first goalkeeper in La Liga history to score from open play. That Aranzubia is not even a third or fourth choice for Vicente Del Bosque's national squad is a reflection of the extraordinary generous pool of great goalies that Spain can draw on, as it has been able to do for many decades.

By comparison, Pinto Barca's second choice goalkeeper, playing instead of the injured Valdes, last night showed himself, yet again well short of the kind of quality in that position one would expect in a  club that in its history has had its fair share of heroes defending the net- from Zamora  and Ramallets through to Andoni Zubizarreta. At 35, Pinto is four years older than Aranzubia and nowhere near his class or reliability.

Prior to last night's match, it was reported in the Spanish media that Pinto was looking forward to playing at Mallorca, the place where he made his debut with Celta and later, when playing for Barca stopped a crucial penalty. Well enjoyment is not an emotion he shared last night. There is something deeply unsettling about watching Barca's fortunes in this season now largely hanging on the antics of this most unpredictable and unstable of goalkeepers whose main claim to fame is having been disciplined by UEFA for improper conduct during Barca's Champions' League group tie against FC Copenhagen last October. Pinto had whistled to the advancing Cesar Santin, to fool him into thinking that the referee had caught him offside. Last night's Pinto performance was marked by a surplus of panicky punches when a surer hand would have held the ball.

With his long-hair tied in a bun, Pinto reminds me of the latter years of David Seaman, long after David Seaman had gone off the boil, and had become a caricature of him. With his cloth cap and polo neck jumper, the great Zamora – El Divino as fans called him- never allowed his eccentricity to get in the way of his courage and skill. The same cannot be said of Pinto who lacks both charisma and leadership what he more than makes up for what Catalans excuse as rauxa (creative madness).

Not even Messi's goals could make up for the fact that this was a tired looking and uninspired  Barca , struggling without Xavi, Pujol, and last but by no means least Valdes.

Barca have a fight on their hands

Barca did not find it easy beating Athletic Bilbao last night. The Basques played their rocks off, playing a hard physical game not bereft of skill which forced Barca to up their game so as to fight as well as entertain.

After the lacklustre draw with Sporting Gijon and the defeat at the Emirates stadium , the omens were not good. February we were told was always a bad month for Barca. And yet this was just the kind of hard  earned victory that Barca needed to restore its confidence.

It was good to see Villa on fire, and Messi scoring again, even if belatedly. The team played better once Mascherano had been  been substituted by  Maxwell. But Pinto is not Valdes even  if he did manage to pull off a great save. Nor can any ammount of rearrangement in Barca's  current defence make up for the absence of Pujol. This was a Barca entering a critical period of the season, at times looking tired.

There are greater challenges ahead although last night was a 'must win'. Which is why the sight of Guardiola at one point urging  fans to give  more vocal support to the team was significant.  Barca can no longer take victory for granted and its spirit needs sustenance.

Barca is down but not out

 

Ok , from the perspective of a cule, let's be honest: it was  not one  of those magical nights we've got used to with Barca.

Sure,  we paid tribute to that Victor Valdes block, celebrated Villa's goal, and forgot how many oles we cried- so many passes did Barca make, for long periods,  without interruption. But Valdes later let in a howler, Messi threatened but was incapable of delivering,  Pedro was non  existant., and Pique got another yellow card which means he will miss the second leg. In the end   our defence crumpled before Arsenal's counter-offensive. We missed the rallying cry of Pujol.

And yet thanks partly to the Arsenal fans, the defeat did not feel like a humiliation. The mutual respect  between fans of the opposing teams showed  on a crowded tube train to Holloway station, and afterwards in the stadium and its surroundings , persisted through the night. This was not Stamford Bridge. These are two teams that know the true meaning of good football.

I already have  a ticket to the second-leg in the Nou Camp and am looking forward to it. I have a feeling that the outcome will decide which of the two will reach Wembley.Barca not only should do it. They must. If nothing else I want to relish the sight of Pep Guardiola  lifting a trophy in the stadium just like he did as a player- with that other 'dream team'.

My team is back in town- Visca Barca!

Great evening last night aboard Bar & Co, the superb Latino bar on the Thames were Barca's UK based fans –British, Catalans, other Spaniards and even an American from Washington DC-gathered to share a meal, a few beers, and a large cake emblazoned with the club colours between singing, exchanging old campaign stories- from Valencia to Rome via Manchester-, and celebrating a video showing the historic 5-0 victory over Real Madrid at the Nou Camp earlier in the season.  Among the new members of our UK fan club , and last night present dressed in club colours, was a recently born babe, brought there by his parents Rodrigo and Anna, the hugely energetic and genial organisers of the party, and the fan club, the best Barca has in the world. This traditional feast on the eve of a fixture with a London club has become a high pint of my social calendar. May it long remain so.

It's also hugely pleasing to see the extraordinary coverage which British papers have given the club in the last few days, ranging from a huge spread in the SUN on the club's youth policy and school for future stars to long profiles in broadsheets on Pep Guardiola and Xavi, whose leadership has ensured not just two dream teams in modern history, but two.

Whatever happens tonight in the game against Arsenal- and I cannot wait to take my seat with fellow cules at the Emirates-this is a club and a team that has won worldwide respect and admiration, and deservedly so, for bringing the word beautiful back into the game, and winning trophies with it. I am looking forward, God willing, to seeing Barca back at Wembley in the Spring, preferably against an English team.

POLICE FOR HIRE?

Writing in today's Guardian, the minister for policing and criminal justice Nick Herbert jumps to the defence of the street-level crime mapping initiative, as a key element of the government's reform agenda aimed at holding the police to account.

"We live in an age of accountability and transparency. The public have a right to know what is happening on their streets. By opening up this information we are giving people real power-and strengthening the fight against crime."

Quite right Mr Herbert. The only problem is that such accountability stops short when it comes to policing matters affecting your own party- or so it seems. For it is  only by pure chance that I have stumbled upon the information that on Monday night Wandsworth's full contingent of parks police along with all the local neighbourhood  task teams of police and community support officers were deployed  to providing security for the  annual Conservative  Party fund raising Black and White Party in Battersea Park.

The information, as far as I know is neither on the official www.police.uk website so eagerly publicised by Mr Herbert or any 'map.' Instead it was slipped out during a Safer Neighbourhood meeting between police and local community representatives last night in Battersea where discussion revolved round the enduring crime problems of the area and the stretched resources for dealing with them.

No surprise perhaps that drug dealing, knife crime, muggings, and burglaries continue to threaten some Wandsworth estates, although the recent violent hijacking and subsequent robbery of a pedestrian in one of Battersea's leafier neighbourhoods was seen as a potentially worrying new trend for those residents of 'South Chelsea'.

As worrying, one senior police officer suggested, as the reduced number of officers as a result of the cut-backs. The small but much respected Wandsworth Parks Police have ended all night-time patrols, as a result of staff reductions and vacancies they can no longer afford to fill. Meanwhile local residents received a formal apology from local police in response to complaints that their calls for urgent assistance were being met by a standard question: "Is it life threatening'? "

As one long-suffering resident from a local estate put it: "So does that mean I can only ring the police if I got someone about to stab or shoot me? "

Understandably civilian attendees of the Battersea Safer Neighbourhood meeting were thus not exactly ecstatic to hear that police officers and community support officers had been diverted from their normal crime-prevention duties to providing   a security cordon around the annual Tory knees up so that senior party donors, and politicians could enjoy themselves without the intrusion of the public.  Tickets were £300 per head. "The extra policing was all paid for by the organisers, "a senior copper said.  

This year there was no champagne on offer –only Winter Pimm's- at The Black and White Party. But our police were for hire, courtesy of Tory HQ. Whether this helps the fight against crime is open to question.

An evening with 'Rocky'

As one gets older, I find some school memories sweeter than others and worth cherishing as part of that enduring, if precious, collection of good times. Let me share this one about my old school mate 'Rocky', and his revival.

I remember Francis Rockliff- or 'Rocky' – as one of the more colourful seniors, two year older, born with radical instincts and music in his head. He was destined to walk on the wild side and thus never became a prefect but instead ended being beaten by one.  My early teenage years and adolescence were spent at Stonyhurst College, a Catholic boarding school set among extraordinary mystical countryside that inspired the likes of Hopkins and Tolkien. I was privileged to have more good  Jesuits than bad ones  as my educators. The better ones  among them were  intensely human and specialists in their field whatever the subject. Corporal punishment  including beating with a piece of Indian rubber called the ferula or a piece of birch tree (used by prefects on younger boys) for offences ranging from under-age smoking to violent drunkenness  was judiciously applied along with a liberal view of  world politics and our mission to change it for the good. On the whole, the Jesuits were very good in giving us the freedom when they thought it creative and spiritually uplifting – 'discernment' was what  their founder St Ignatius called it-  so that I grew up in the late 1960's and early 1970's inspired by revolutionaries in Latin America, and the liberating force of rock music.

Stonyhurst was present last Saturday in a small theatre in Oxford where a small group of old boys were among the audience to hear a concert put on by Rocky. Other enduring schoolboy memories  of Rocky is  of a handsome and passionate  individual  , hiding mysteries in his background  with his mop of jet black hair and dark olive skin, who shunned  intellectual pursuits, other than developing refined covers  of the  Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He would lock himself up for hours in one of the school's basement music rooms   and play endless tunes on the piano, when not gathering others for an impromptu session. Rumour had it that he owed his Latin looks to someone other than his very Anglo-Saxon LIverpudlian father who had no time for Rocky's obsessive interest in music.

Over fourty decades later- with the intervening years spent learning music production and management alongside-inter alia- George Martin, and being co-nominated for a BAFTA musical award, when not making occasional escapades into more eccentric business ventures- Rocky was this weekend not in a basement cubicle but on a stage, joined by his mates, old and new, among them some well known musicians and others unknown although no less talented.

 'Rockliff' Jazz & Blues Jam' drew in the likes of John Coghlan (ex Status Quo) on drums, Vo Fletcher (guitarist to Nigel Kennedy Jazz Quintet & The Rio Sanders Group), and Phil Robson, a veteran guitarist from several bands of the 60's and 70's along with a young female vocalist called Nikki Loy who has moved on from her early days as a busker.

A veteran saxophonist, a Spanish classical guitarist (the only  Stonyhurst boy, other than Rocky, brielfy on stage ) , a music therapist from a local hospice  for the dying, and a blind female singer  with an extraordinarily powerful voice, were among others that  contributed to the evening's musical mix that ranged over folk , jazz and blues to latino  and pounding rock improvisation on one note. At the heart of the evening was Rocky himself-strutting his stuff at his piano or on electric key boards when not interrupting his broad musical repertoire with humorous confessions of a neurotic life, as when he introduced a beautifully crafted   instrumental called Rio by telling us of his belated discovery that his real father had come from darkest Peru. "This next number is called Rio- yea I know that's not Peru-but what the hell, I think it's inspired by my other Dad", he seemed to tell us.

Sometimes he left it to the lyrics of a song to fill in the missing parts of his helter-skelter life. Thus a vocal duet with the delectable Ms Loy called The End, put to original music that mixed tango with blues, spoke of one of several relationship breakdowns that have dogged his life.

Rocky's thick black hair has endured along with his eccentricity.  Only his paunch and bags under his eyes reflect a life occasionally lived to excess. A  somewhat tongue -in-cheek blues number set in the west country was on the theme of sexual temptation  stirred by drink and cocaine. While paying tribute to the "loyalty of true friends" and those "who may be talented but are never successful', like his blind guest, Rocky never grew heavy.  His repeated calls for a missing piece of equipment on stage struck the only discordant note of self-indulgence and provoked an outburst from one of his Stonyhurst chums-turned lights man for the night, theatre director Hugh Wooldridge. "You are a Prima Donna, Francis", cried out Wooldridge who has dealt with many an actor since leaving school.  Others on the evening   simply saw a consummate and hugely engaging entertainer, drawing his musicians and his audience around him with his seemingly improvised rendering of some inspired music and words.

Towards  the end Rocky seemed on a bender, letting  music sheets slip chaotically from  his fingers and leading his band down unrehearsed paths , as his eyes rolled and closed, and the pounding of the key boards became increasingly frenetic. As the show reached its climax, he threw off his jacket, staggered  to the front of the stage and there stumbled through a chaotic roll and roll dance with  the short-skirted  and spirited Ms Loy- she all poised sexuality, he his black hair all over the place, his shirt hanging out , his eyes wild, as he briefly grappled with his lead female singer's young body, Meat Loaf like. One could only love him for it.

Rockliff's Jazz & Blues band played on February 5th at The North Wall Threatre in Oxford. The event was a 'sell-out.'

Bilbao Revisited

Just back from a visit to Bilbao as part of my latest wonderings through Spanish football (theme of a new book I am working on).

This City is much altered since I first visited it on a ferry from England some thirty years ago. The air is much cleaner, it's got one of the best public transport systems in the world, and its river is a joy to walk along now the Guggenheim gleams nears its banks and there's a Calatrava bridge joining one side of the city with the other.

Bilbao would indeed seem to embrace the modern civilised world were it not for the tortuously unresolved politics of the Basque country. ETA have declared  a ceasefire but neither the ruling Socialist government not the opposition Partido Popular are in a mad hurry to be seen to negotiate, in public at least.  ETA wants to see its political arm legalised and an initial deal whereby members who have been imprisoned are brought closer to where their families live prior to being released. Both the socialists and the PP believe that lifting the political ban on ETA would see the local administration in villages and towns throughout the Basque country being inundated with radical Basque nationalists, destabilising not just the region, but potentially the Spanish state.

It's good to report on some traditions that endure. I was invited over two lengthy lunches by Basque friends to their eating clubs and treated to some superb baked fish and red wine. I was also well received by officials of Athletic Club of Bilbao, among them the legendary international goalkeeper Iribar, and was the focus of a report in the club's official programme.

While declaring myself a Barca fan, I also said that I had a lot of respect for Athletic, a club with a very strong sense of cultural identity that still believes in home-grown talent even if its policy of 'Basque-only players' in its team undermines its competiveness internationally. I'm posting a copy of the  article an Athletic fan wrote on me on Facebook in the run-up next weekend's game. I hope the Nou Camp will show Athletic as much respect as Barca was shown at the San Mames earlier this season.

Shakira cule

My candidate for the best news of the week is a report in the Spanish media today that Shakira is thinking of buying a house in Catalonia where her sister already lives.

The beautiful, talented, and engaging Columbian star is one of my favourite singers and dancers and it will be great to see more of her along with my regular visits to the Nou Camp. A real bonus would be her finding a house she likes in Sitges where I like to take my holidays and have many friends.

El Pais today mischivously suggests that Shakira's house hunting in Catalonia may also be linked to her reported friendship with Barca's Gerard Pique. I have no evidence one way or the other as to how central this excellent footballer has become in the singer's life. But I wish Shakira and Pique each all the best for the future. Whichever way you look at it, this is a good news story, in stark contrast to the reported growing freeze in the relationship between Mourinho and Valdano over at Real Madrid. Loca, Loca, Loca!