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| "Good Luck?" |
A lot of people are probably annoyed by the past recent clasicos. If you take away the recent flood of clasicos that (un)fortunately plagued us we would still probably be annoyed by the el clasico that just happened. But why? I thought these matches we're suppose to be fun and exhilarating. C'mon think about it, the 2 BEST teams in the world face-off in an all-or-nothing match, just to see who's better, but will probably have another "grand" face-off rematch in the next 7 days (to see who yet again is better...). Exhilarating. Why are we so drawn to these epic yet annoying clasicos? This annoyance has long puzzled students of the human psyche.
I believe part of the apex that's deep rooted in the negative feelings for clasicos is the factor of luck. You hear it all the time, Barca just got lucky, Real Madrid would have scored 3 if it wasn't for the ref (...4 if Mesut's shot wasn't interfered by the wind and the Earth's rotation). We sometimes forget that clasicos are still smaller pictures of a bigger sport, and it's really not a game of chance.
But a huge part of el clasico is luck. It was demonstrated at Camp Nou just a couple of days ago. It pains me to admit this but Real Madrid played the better side during the second-half. We can say that Real Madrid was lucky to have a sleep-walking Barcelona play the second half, or we could say that Barcelona was lucky that Real Madrid was extremely unlucky with the number of chances they missed. Or we can take the Mourinho route and wait in a parking garage to blame the ref (but the ref was pretty awful on both sides, so that factor can cancel itself out). The point is, luck surpasses the style of play and doesn't represent attacking teams.
However, if you consider Barcelona an attacking team, in the return leg at Camp Nou luck actually did define Barcelona. Messi's assist that led to Pedro's goal was one in a million. And Dani Alves' goal...well lets just say the upper 90 was the last place I'd see that ball hit. The other side of that coin was: 1)Pique almost letting Higuain score the first 10 seconds, 2)Pinto giving the ball away to the wrong team, and 3) Barca in general giving away the ball. But this is me being cynical, if I categorize Barcelona like this, then us fans might as well be gamblers at a roulette table. In all reality, Messi's goal wasn't "one in a million" because it was made by Messi and Alves' goal was so Brazilian it could only have been made by him (sorry Mesut).
Since luck saved our team, we should be happy for Barcelona. Unfortunately, there's another side of el clasico that we're not accounting for. Unlike Messi's intentional assist through 2 Real Madrid players (which was his skill) and contributed to the overall performance to Barcelona, the win gained at Camp Nou wasn't representative of how Barcelona played. It comes back to when they stopped playing the second half. It's when the annoyance kicked in, and Real Madrid started playing the better side. If only winning was defined by performance, then all would be good for Madridistas, and disappointment would reign over cules.
But emotions that clasicos manifests aren't pure luck. That's why cules are more or less content by the outcome. The fans were unlucky to have Barcelona be complacent during the second half at Camp Nou, but in clasicos (and football in general), luck doesn't dominate the match. Talent and skill are rewarded over the former and you see this by the general trend in clasicos (yayyy...).
I guess we're annoyed by luck because of the negative connotations it carries: like the ref who might have favored a certain side, or the football fan born to worship a losing team, or the guy that almost got the girl. In the end, we can't afford to give up the role of luck that plays in clasicos. It adds to the drama and it's part of what makes them exciting. It's fundamentally essential for the beautiful game. And lets be honest, if luck was eliminated from clasicos, we all know who would win every single time.
...Barcelona, of course =)
