Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Monday November 22, 2004

[ Personal ] Barcelona vs. Madrid

Frank Rijkaard
I had been attending the OMA and W3C-MWI meetings in Barcelanoa last week and since I also planned to visit our offices in Trondheim, I ended up staying in Barcelona on Saturday, when FC Barcelona was playing against Real Madrid.
This promised to be a great game indeed.
On the U.S. presidential election day, Nov. 2, Barcelona had played a great game with F.C. Milan. (Under its Dutch coach, Barcelona seems to be combining group dynamism, first put to international display by Johan Cryuff's team in the 1974 World Cup, with Spanish mico-skills.)

The fact that the game was occuring in Barclona while I was there became all the more interesting to me because FC Madrid players, including Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo and David Beckham were staying in the same hotel as I was. I actually saw the players leave the hotel for the stadium Saturday evening, met Zidane Friday night and got to take a picture with him. (I wrote about meeting Zidane to the parents of a soccer team I coach in the Silicon Valley.)

Saturday night I had resigned to watching the whole game on one of the Catalan TV channels but on the pre-game reports, 20 minutes before the start, the journalists were interviewing people who were still buying tickets. I decided to walk to the Barcelona Stadium and was lucky enough to get a ticket for a third tier seat on the side.

I got inside 10 minutes after the game had started. It was impossible to make it to my seat during the first half but I did make it there by the second half. It was a wonderful game to watch. Eto'o, Deco and Ronaldinho were truly amazing on the Barcelona side. Madrid seemed totally disorganized, unmotivated and not capable of making good of its great players through combinations. Ronaldo did not have any good passes and made no threats on the Barcelona goal although Zidane did take an incredibly fast and surprising shot on the Barcelona goal. There were more opportunities he could have converted had he been given a pass.

So, on whom do we blame Barcelona's 3-0 win? Probably on the dynamism that Frank Rijkaard has brought to the team as the coach and to the high spirits of players such as Ronaldinho who play a great role in organizing the other players on the field.

Soccer is an amazing group sport and I've only become more sensitive to its subtlties since I started coaching my daughter's AYSO under 12s girls team this season.

2004-11-22 14:22:33.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.