John Carlin - White Angels

WHITE ANGELS

BECKHAM, REAL MADRID & THE NEW FOOTBALL

John Carlin

BLOOMSBURY

First published in Great Britain 2004
Copyright Enobarbus S.L. 2004, 2005

All photographs copyright Getty Images, Inc.

This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of John Carlin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 2082 7

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For Sue and James

Contents

I went to Africa to write about the AIDS epidemic but all that people kept wanting to talk about was David Beckham and Real Madrid. I shouldnt have been surprised. Barely a week had passed since what would turn out to be with the arguable exception of the outbreak of war in Iraq the news story with the greatest global impact of 2003: the transfer of the worlds most glamorous footballer to the worlds most glamorous club. But what did take me aback, what did leave me open-mouthed in astonishment as my minibus rattled and bumped through Nairobis biggest slum, the AIDS-plagued labyrinth of Majengo, was the depth of knowledge of my travelling companions; the sheer detail with which the dozen other people in the vehicle debated not just David Beckhams transfer from Manchester United but the other great issue of the day, why Real Madrids president had sacked the team coach.

Does anybody anybody at all understand why Florentino Prez got rid of del Bosque? asked a man seated up at the front, next to the driver. I mean, he said, twisting his body around to address the assembled passengers, I dont see the logic in it. The speaker, as I would later establish, was a young Kenyan doctor. The other people in the minibus, English speakers all, were mostly medical staff headed, as I was, to a clinic in the centre of Majengo where they were conducting tests on a group of prostitutes who appeared to be immune to AIDS; who had failed to become HIV-positive despite years of sadly reckless efforts to succumb to the dreaded disease. But no one in the minibus had a clue who I was, no one knew that the tall, hairy white man jammed into the back right-hand corner of the vehicle had not only flown in from Spain the day before but also happened to be a very keen follower indeed of the beautiful game, especially as practised these days by Real Madrid Club de Ftbol. Which of course made it all the more remarkable to me that the subject had come up in the first place; that the man in the minibus had raised the names of Florentino Prez and Vicente del Bosque in the clear expectation that everybody would immediately know who they were.

Dumb-founded, I shut up and listened.

I know, said a man sitting behind the one at the front who had initiated the discussion. Its not exactly as if anyone could accuse Real of having a bad season.

Right, said the man at the front. They won the Spanish league and made it to the semi-final of the Champions League. So why then go and fire the coach? Especially, rejoined the second speaker, after the 65 win against Man United in the quarter-finals, and playing the best football anyone in the world can remember anywhere. To which the assembled company responded with solemn murmurs and nods all round, and a smile or two of warm reminiscence. Until a man sitting next to me at the back piped up,Yes, but you dont understand. The thing about Real Madrid is that they have different standards from other teams. Second or third best is no good. Not acceptable. And especially now with this guy Prez in charge. Look who hes bought since taking over the club a couple of years ago: Figo, Ronaldo, Zidane. Now Beckham.

Plus Roberto Carlos and Ral are already there, a voice somewhere in the bus reminded him.

Yes, plus Roberto Carlos and Ral. The best players in the world! So, the wise one at my side continued, with that unbelievable collection of superstars you have to win the lot, otherwise the coach gets fired. Thats just the way it is.

The man at the front grimaced, shook his head and looked out of the window. He wasnt totally convinced. Or maybe he had come somehow to share in the sympathy the Spanish man in the street felt for Vicente del Bosque, a good soul whose portly bearing, lugubrious dress-sense and 1950s moustache were heroically at odds with the filmstar fashionable footballers he had until three or four days ago coached; del Bosque, far from looking like a man who had himself played in midfield for Real Madrid in his day, evoked images of a kind but world-weary baker leading a life of honest toil in a small town deep in the Castillian meseta. I think Prez had it in for him, for some reason, said del Bosques Kenyan defender. I read somewhere that Prez just didnt like the look of him. Bad chemistry.

No, you are mistaken said someone else, a couple of rows up from me. Prez is too cool a customer to let his feelings get in the way of a big decision like that

And so the conversation proceeded, moving from one end of the bus to the other, with me realising very quickly that on the subject of Real Madrid at least I had nothing whatsoever to offer these people. Outside our minibus window little children played naked in pools of viscous water, one out of every four adults we saw milling about Majengos maze of rusty tin shacks had HIV, but their compatriots inside my bus and I have no doubt a good number of them outside it were as up to date on developments at Real Madrid as any of my friends back home in Spain. I could have introduced them to Angel the taxi-driver, with whom I go and watch games live on TV at a bar thats wall to wall with framed photographs of Real Madrid teams going back to the glorious Fifties, when the legendary Puskas, Gento and Di Stefano bestrode Europe like colossi. I could have introduced them to Pedro the tropical diseases doctor, whose joy should he succeed in his lifes quest to find a cure for malaria would be forever tempered if he failed in his other great mission to get tickets to watch what he calls this unrepeatable Real Madrid side. I could have introduced them to Sebastin, whos been going through a tough marital separation and does not know how he would have made it without the consolation of a season ticket at Reals hallowed stadium, the Bernbeu. I could have introduced my fellow travellers on that minibus in Majengo to any number of home-grown Real Madrid fanatics and within seconds they would have fallen into conversation as if they had known each other all their lives.

Even if they did not understand each others languages, football is so universal a medium of communication that what with the odd grunt, hand gesture and mention of evocative names Ronaldo, Beckham, Florentino theyd soon be getting on famously, nodding in furious agreement with each other. And then I reflected, sitting on that bus, that the discussion I was hearing was in all certainty being replicated not only in every corner of Spain, not only elsewhere in Kenya and Africa, but all over the world in France, Germany, Japan, Russia, China. (How could they not be having this conversation in China when on 29 July 2003 in the city of Kunming, 20,000 fans paid between twenty and a hundred dollars each to watch a practice match between Real Madrids first team and reserves?) They were probably even talking about the Prez del Bosque polemic somewhere in the United States, that last pagan bastion where the worlds one great unifying religion the only one to cut across all creeds, races, ideologies, flags has yet fully to take hold.