La Liga Weekly

We cover La Liga, the Spanish Primera and Segunda here, and we try to offer the league with an unbiased eye or at least not so biased an eye that would force you to keep coming here. It´s not about separating into our tribal councils, it´s about sharing our passion for our league and our teams. So I try not to let my colors show all that much, but I´m an RCD Espanyol fan at heart. I bleed blue and white. I even run the Espanyol USA Suuporter´s Club site and wrote for a time on the Espanyol Offside blog. I am proud of my club, modest though it is, and I have to suffer the sneers and the back-handed comments of culés and quite often the patronizing pats on the back from madridistas as well I might add. We are not FC Barcelona´s ugly step-children from down the road and we are certainly not Real Madrid´s B-side. We may not be as fashionable as some, certainly not as rich as others, but we have a history nonetheless. We have won domestic trophies and we have competed for European ones as well. We´re one of the founding members of the Spanish league and we deserve respect whether given or not.

We came into the derby match this past Sunday as prohibitive underdogs but with a chip on our shoulder as big and as bright as our shiny new stadium at Cornellà-El Prat. We withstood the nervousness and the dominance in possession that FC Barcelona usually brings to the table, not to mention the spectacular headed goal that a rampant Cesc Fabregas brought to our net, and we battled them not with the tactics of negativity, denying them space and conceding the ball, but we went after them with an attack-minded vibrancy that I hadn´t witnessed in an opponent for Barca in the Pep Guardiola era. We played them straight on, we converged on the ball and on the player and denied them their usual passing lanes, that quite honestly looked more FC Barcalona than FC Barcelona. If we had any consistent finishing, a player like Pablo Daniel Osvaldo who we lost to Roma (and looks just as lost in giallorossi as anyone I´ve seen) we might have taken the three points and not have denied them two. Pochettino proved that he is one of the best young coaches in world football, let alone in the Spanish league. Our cantera, or youth team structure, proved yet again that it can compete with the famed La Masia with far less money to go around, 10-20% of what FC Barcelona´s annual budget allows, but while this feels like a victory, to draw in our own house amongst our supporters and our directors, I am a bit embarrassed by what I am reading about and learning about a group of my fellow supporters. I would rather be celebrating our accomplishments and not defending our actions.

Racism is not an acceptable means to jeer an opponent. No matter how detestable Dani Álves is at times, and the play-acting and simulation is reprehensible, we need to be above that. Our himno (or song) talks about the nobility of our colors, the grandness of our spirit, and so we need to reach towards that. The monkey-chants and the racist shouts are out of line. I know it´s not fair that the same people who are calling us out were the subject of similar allegations when FC Barcelona faced Real Madrid and Marcelo heard similar chants. I know that it´s pervasive and it happens at most grounds in Spain but the line needs to be drawn somewhere. Why not at Cornellà? Why not at the place where our fallen captain Dani Jarque is celebrated on the 21st minute of every match? Someone needs to do it. Why not us?