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Carlo Ancelotti had said that before Real Madrid face Manchester City on Wednesday night, he would approach Pep Guardiola and ask him if he really thought his team had only a 1% chance of going through. Most people would rather he went up to his opposite number and said eff off instead. Better still, try that with the thousands of City supporters landing in Spain hoping for a comeback of their own this time, see how they react: a smile, an embrace, or a punch in the face? At least that way they might get an answer to the question occupying them more than any other the last three days, expletives eclipsing everything.
Even, it has felt, this European tie, conspiracy winning out over what Ancelotti said had become a clásico. These are strange times, strange and very silly times. At moments they have felt like slightly sinister ones too, and definitely depressing. Apologies for the language that follows, and for the amplification, but you should try being here. Laugh? You’ll cry.
Let’s explain. On Saturday, Jude Bellingham was sent off as Madrid drew 1-1 at Osasuna. After the game Madrid’s manager said he shouldn’t have been: he hadn’t said: “Fuck you,” to the referee José Luis Munuera Montero, after all. He had, in fact, said: “Fuck off.”
And that, the coach claimed, is “very different”, “not an insult”. The words were a bit of a red herring – what mattered more was that, Bellingham said, he wasn’t addressing the referee but talking to himself – but immediately it was everywhere, an entire country turning the air blue like there was no tomorrow. Many fell about laughing, others were deadly serious or perhaps just cynical, a furious mass debate started over the difference between “off” and “you”, perhaps the most versatile, nuanced word in the whole English language now dissected by those who don’t speak it.
English teachers were invited to explain, or better still support the shoutiest. Some clearly felt awkward swearing like troopers on TV, others rather enjoyed it. The set of the nearest thing to Match of the Day – which is still a long way from Match of the Day – was literally emblazoned with the words in question.
A late night radio show called a supposedly random English number, although they later said they had chosen a hotel to ensure someone would be on reception at that time, and just said: “Fuck off,” down the line to see the response, and find out of it was offensive after all. They were hung up on.
It was all quite bizarre, a bit embarrassing too. It was also, no point pretending otherwise, very funny. Above all, it was genuinely inescapable, even on the eve of this match.
Behind it all is something deeper: Real Madrid’s belief, actual or affected, that they are victims of a conspiracy, a willingness to see a plot in every penalty, to attack every official as an enemy. Madrid have embarked on a campaign against the referees which is now a full-on crusade, no going back, and one which conditions everyone, shaping debate and turning up the noise. Every week, Madrid’s TV channel delivers character assassinations of the men taking charge of their games, before and after the “crime”, while they have their crusaders out of house too, and plenty of them.
The club recently sent an open letter to the federation and the government denouncing what they claimed was a corrupt and totally discredited system designed to harm them, ie everyone was out to get them. Without mentioning it in the letter, the Negreira Case, in which Barcelona paid the vice-president of the referees’ committee €7m (£5.8m) over almost two decades between 2000 and 2018 (Barcelona deny any legal wrongdoing), underpins it all, or serves as a sort of justification for the accusations now, for demands that the entire system is pulled down. One front page talked of a “purge” of officials.
Asked if decisions that he called “inexplicable” and “surprising” in the three games since then might be a consequence of the letter, the decision to come out fighting rebounding on them, Ancelotti said: “I don’t want to comment this subject.” It was the last answer of a press conference heavy on referees, despite the significance of the game the next day, in which Ancelotti had also said he was hopeful that Bellingham would not get a suspension following that red card and that he is more comfortable with the officiating in Europe than in the league with which they are at war. There was also a worthwhile discussion of the way the video assistant referee is used which was more conceptual than conspiratorial.
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But then everything is referees now, and at times it’s as absurd and unpleasant as it is unavoidable. One simple, slightly surreal way of showing how significant, how ubiquitous it has become, is that on Tuesday afternoon Madrid’s likely captain, Fede Valverde, posted a tweet apologising for “not” protesting in his pre-match press conference. “I always said I’m no one to judge a ref or another person doing their job; in the end, we’re all human and all make mistakes. Refs are criticised a lot and no one praises them when they get it right,” he said then; barely an hour after leaving the press room, long enough for someone to have a word, he said he had not forgotten “the refereeing we’re suffering”; it’s just that he has to focus on the match.
Well, it is tempting to respond, someone has to. (And, yes, look at all those words above and there is indeed a hypocrisy here.) Real Madrid v Manchester City is quite important, after all. “90 minutes in which everything is at stake,” as Ancelotti put it. Yet it hasn’t felt as built up as before: not just because of the crusade that conquers all, it is true, but also in part because the noise need not be channelled into a comeback this time. Madrid’s performance at the Etihad changes things, Guardiola saying that he only sees a 1% chance of going through. And maybe that’s the risk for Madrid, reason for Valverde to turn his focus to the field.
“I don’t think it’s 1%,” Ancelotti said. “I will ask him: do you really think you have 1%? I’m sure he really thinks it’s more, and that’s right. We don’t think we have 99%. We think we have a small advantage. It’s a psychological issue. We will have in mind [that leading could negatively impact performance]. It’s happened before. But it’s hard to fix. You can say: ‘No, no, we have no lead;’ ‘We have to treat it as if it was 0-0;’ or ‘Play like we have to come back;’ but that’s nonsense. No one believes you. There is a fact: we scored three and City scored two and you can’t change that. You can try to change the team’s mentality, try to tell them not to hedge their bets, say we have to approach it like last week, but you can’t forget the way it is: that we have an advantage.”
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