Barcelona’s play over the course of the past three seasons has served as nothing less than a refutation of nihilism.
Nihilism, in case you wondered, is the belief that there is no meaning whatsoever without God. Think the Kardashians, who imply that life never rises above amusement or titillation. Or highly educated lobbyists who proffer the view that there is no such thing as global warming. Or people who settle in life, marrying someone out of convenience.
The sporting equivalent to nihilism is the delusion that winning and losing ipso facto amounts to success. This view—which remains unquestioned by most players, coaches and fans—is perhaps best embodied by Barcelona’s mortal enemy Real Madrid and their manager Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho, who anointed himself the Special One, is an unapologetic pragmatist. If the other team has more speed, he will water the grass excessively or neglect to mow it. If he is suspended, he will hide in the laundry basket so that he can talk to his troops at halftime. He is not above making knowingly false accusations, even it means impugning someone’s good name. And he uses the media to wind up opponents, put pressure on referees, or make excuses when his teams lose.
There is no denying his shrewdness. His teams have won the Champions League twice and captured domestic honors in Portugal, England, and Italy. But he has not done similarly well in Spain because Real have run up against Barcelona, whose mesmeric passing style has proven virtually irresistible.
Matters appeared to be changing a week ago when the two teams met in Madrid. Barcelona conceded a goal after just 23 seconds, when their goalkeeper gifted the ball to Real. Barça, who were behind Madrid in the standings, didn’t flinch. They continued to play their game, insisting on passing the ball, even right in front of their own goal, until Mourinho’s side bent and then broke. Real didn’t just lose 3-1; they were played off their own field, outclassed, humbled, beaten—edified.
Not surprisingly, Mourinho served up excuses rather than salutations. He lamented two missed chances and the undoubted luck that accompanied Barcelona’s second goal. And he’s right, to a cynical extent: the result could have gone the other way. In soccer, more than any sport, the best team does not always win. Such injustice is integral to its charm.
But he appears to have never glimpsed the larger point: Achieving a result, by itself, just mirrors reality. “Prudence,” as William Blake, put it so well, “is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity.” Engaging in gamesmanship or playing cautiously—waiting for the other team to die of boredom, as one former player put it—is not only hard on the eyes; it presupposes a lack of faith in one’s talent and serves as recourse to sad, prosaic parsimony—a life of least resistance.
The point, which Barcelona’s manager Josep Gardiola seems to fully grasp, is to err on the side of risk—what Blake called ‘the road of excess’—because the greatest rewards come from invention and adventure. Passing the ball around your own penalty area may not be prudent, but the thrill that comes with such endeavor, leading your opponents through a merry if perilous dance, affords an aesthetic satisfaction sensual enough to justify all the rotten stuff in sports.
To quote Blake one last time, “I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans (sic); I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” Mourinho may win a lot more trophies and Real might even pip Barcelona this season, but they remain enslaved to an orthodox belief system. Gardiola, by contrast, has proven that it is still possible to win while playing soccer worthy of poetry.
We need to get past looking at the world in terms of good versus evil, or right and wrong, and opt for a more aesthetic question: Does the way one plays add to, or subtract from, the sum total of beauty, meaning, and intelligence on offer in the world? Real Madrid are the richest club in the world, but, like the Kardashians, their style has no surpassing dignity. It merely mirrors the human condition rather than inspire like Barcelona’s play has.
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What if you get bored silly by Barca's incessant keep-away? What they do is unique and defines virtuosity, but there is little risked when possession is so easily protected, even in their own end. If Getafe or such a side play from the back there is risk, not so much with this Barca generation. They are simply too good and they know it. So much that they regularly behave like injured children when things go astray. Their ability to surround any ref who has the audacity to make a call against then or roll around in anguish at the slightest touch rivals their ability to create beauty. It is actually quite shameful. Give me a rough and tumble Merseyside derby, with the honor in which it is conducted any day. Just one highly calculated opinion.
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