Eulogy for Frank Rijkaard

The match against Mallorca today was just absolutely devastating to watch. Frank Rijkaard deserves better, but it reminded me of a bullfight. At the end, no matter what happens, you know the bull's going to die. The optimism (and, with it, the disappointment) of the last couple of seasons had just vanished for me and, it seems, for the club. Even when they went up 2-0, it was tense. You could just feel that they were going to lose. Fans had been whistling at Eto'o and after he scored, he angrily kicked the ball into the net twice more, then waved to the crowd with a scowl firmly planted on his face. There was no joy there, not even though they were ahead 2-0. Not from anybody, and it just seemed so obvious that they were going to collapse. Then, 1 goal, 2 goals from Mallorca in the space of 3 minutes. A third in extra time, just after Barcelona had blown two good chances and just after Edmilson had been sent off in what could only be the most fitting way that the man responsible for the "black sheep" remarks earlier this year to end his career at the Camp Nou.

A third, and the look of heartbreak on Rijkaard's face was shared with the team and the fans, but the loneliness was his own. Out came the white handkerchiefs, which took on a sort of cruelty they hadn't had before. They used to say come on, you're better than this. Just score! Just win! Now, it was clear, so long you rotton bastard, who can't even manage a win against a mid-table mediocrity in his last match at home. So long, you bastard. It's not that he didn't try. It's not that he wanted to lose.

Cruelly, Barcelona fell pray to the same disease that had crippled Real Madrid in such horribly recent memory. All the stars in the world don't make the best team, and if Thierry Henry wasn't the problem, then Ronaldinho was. If not Ronaldinho, then Eto'o. If not Eto'o, maybe Marquez or Puyol or Yaya. Somewhere, at some point, Barca lost the spirit of the side that rose to the top of Europe (my God, was it only two years ago?) and gained nothing but a whole lot of t-shirt sales. Is that Frank Rijkaard's fault? Maybe. Who cares about the last game of the season, though, with nothing to play for but 3rd place? We, Barcelona fans, can only hope that Pep Guardiola can bring the same kind of passion for the beauty and art of football at its finest that Rijkaard did, and manage somehow to convince multi-million dollar shaving cream spokesman athletes that the pride in playing for a club with UNICEF across the shirt is more important than the number of minutes they get, or the likelihood that they'll get to be on the cover of FIFA 09.

A Grisly End To A Grisly Year

Things are ugly out here as the hellish bloodbath known as 2007 winds to a close. And, who knows why? But it seems appropriate. Things started ugly this year, got uglier, and ended ugly. In a weird way, everything is as it should be. Now, I'm not into recapping so there won't be some kind of timeline of ugliness written out here, but it is truly shocking that I could react with such vitriol and angst to a year that brought me a very unlikely National League pennant. I guess that just shows how bad things have gotten.

This must be the part where we all kick back to watch Roger Clemens and his old meathead trainer duke it out in the press for several months about whether or not The Rocket got his ass injected with steroids and HGH. Hint: there is absolutely no precedent for pitchers that old to perform that well. Clemens also underwent a very similar body-mass transformation as everybody's favorite Whipping Boy, Barry Bonds, and his BFF Andy Pettitte had admitted to taking HGH in 2002. (Note: a snarky, bitchy admission is still an admission.) So, friends, I think the jury is pretty much IN on this one. The greatest pitcher of all-time has joined the greatest hitter of all-time as a circumstantially convicted juicer.

The question I guess I have is, so what? I do want to go to games next year and boo the shit out of everybody who's mentioned in the Mitchell Report, including Matt Herges and, what the hell, Glenallen Hill. But I have mentioned in this space that the steroid stuff doesn't really bother me in terms of on-the-field stuff. There was an extremely normal distribution of talent among the players who were named, so if anyone needs any proof that juicing doesn't make someone an immediate superstar, you can just ask Larry Bigbie or Ricky Bones. Admittedly, there is something weird and perverse and immensely distasteful in the idea that Major League clubhouses were central drug trafficking points. This universe where players are discreetly telling other players who to call, clubhouse attendants are stumbling upon vials of horse hormones and not telling anyone, and David Segui is, like, the kingpin coyote is very strange and difficult to completely wrap my head around. This is why I'll be booing the assholes. It is because they are shady, mafia-style criminals and not because they are cheaters. I couldn't care less about the innocence of the game, because that is a meaningless concept, but that doesn't mean the folks who are turning their lockers into criminal enterprises shouldn't be flogged publicly and regarded as traitors to the cause. They should, at least, get the Pete Rose treatment.

If this was soccer, it'd be entirely different. If a bunch of players from Juventus or AC Milan turned out be dealing drugs from the quiet of their clubhouse, I don't really think anyone would be that surprised. We expect corruption from Italian football, and we'd probably just be thankful that nobody got shot over this one. (Actually, if Berlusconi was involved, someone may well have gotten shot.) One of the charms of soccer is that you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and nobody needs to get caught up in abstractions like "the innocence of the game" unless they mean it. If some Real Madrid or AC Milan players tells you he plays for the love of the game, you know he's lying and that's that.

Unfortunately, and you can see I've been blowing off bringing this up, the bad guys are winning more and more often. The dissolution of the Chelsea empire got stopped in its tracks when Didier Drogba started playing like himself. He's hurt now, and so is John Terry, so there's still a good chance for them to drop into midtable oblivion and at least that gives us something to hope for. I wouldn't really be happy if Man City beat them this season, since Man City also got bought out by some truly sinister forces, but I'd be thrilled if they finished behind Everton or something.

As for the mafiosos at AC Milan, they did drop one (ha-ha Dida!) to city-rivals Inter over the weekend in particularly humiliating fashion, but they also recently became the first European club to win the Club World Cup with a brutal victory over Argentine also-rans Boca Juniors. They're set for the only real good-guy/bad-guy slugfest in the knockout round of the Champions League, where they got drawn with Arsenal. A win for Milan would be a win for corruption and deceit and a very bad omen to start 2008.

And, of course, finally, Real Madrid came into Camp Nou like a well-oiled juggernaut and snuck away with an appalling, efficient, extremely effective victory against a better Barcelona team. Their defense was just disgustingly thorough in their dismantling of the attacks that the normally-beautiful Barcelona front line came with. Ronaldinho and Andres Iniesta were thrown around like plastic bags in a shitstorm and they must've thought they'd get the ball every time they threw their hands up in the air because that's what they were left with by the end of it.

Frank Rijkaard is likely to be the scapegoat for the whole mess, but that is wholly undeserved. Deco, who is a thug and a charlatan not fit to wear the Barcelona colors, spoke with glee about the possible appointment of Jose Mourinho, also a thug and a charlatan, but a sympathetic one after his glamor-free dismissal from Chelsea, as the new manager. Then he played like complete shit against Madrid in spite of being gifted a start from Rijkaard. Sounds like collusion? It does to me. I have finally come around to the credo that my best friend has been extolling since at least EURO 2002, and that is: Fuck Anderson Deco. That son of a bitch has got to go, regardless of what happens next.

A more likely scenario is Mourinho coming on board, selling Ronaldinho to AC Milan (who else??) and hedging his bets in the Champions League. This could be devastating, and it probably will be. When Edmilson said there were some black sheep in the Barca clubhouse, he should've just said there were some white sheep, because the whole lot of them save Messi, Eto'o and Marquez look a little lost to me right now. Xavi, especially, has lost almost all of my faith and will have to string together an unprecedented lot of performances to convince me he's useful as a player or a human being. Not that he's probably concerned with proving that to me, since he's probably counting his money or banging a supermodel right now, but fuck. There is a certain pride to playing for Barcelona that these cocksuckers just don't seem to have.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the Presidential Primaries are coming right around the corner. Listen up. Doomsday is coming. Start finding out how much EU and Japanese work permits cost, because you're going to want to be able to skip the Information Line when the time comes.