Can there ever be too much of a good thing? You bet! The Clasico might be the sport’s grandest spectacle played out between the two best teams in the world, riveting to watch, hypertension inducing, possibly a cure for the ever growing world population by threatening to take out one small subset at a time, still a lot of us are positively sick of it. We don’t want more Clasicos. Like ever again. The vitriol and venom spewed in the aftermath of a Clasico can be a pain in the wrongest place for the longest time. Heck, we are still talking about the deluge of Clasicos that rained down on the unsuspecting public last April and left the world tottering on the brink of implosion and collapse before it was miraculously saved. Is 2012 the end of civilization as we know it? If Barca and RM end up meeting over two legs in the Champions League, I for one am not betting against it.
The polls are still coming out on yesterday’s Clasico. Was Real Madrid better? Or was Barca ‘superior’? Who was the moral victor? Was the referee an evil UNICEF secret agent out to get Real Madrid? Or was he intimidated by the thought of meeting Mourinho all alone near his car and explaining why he sent off three of his players? Was this Mourinho’s team? Or the team suggested by the Spaniards maybe? Or perhaps by the Jorge Mendes clique? Is there really a Hamstring curse on Barcelona players? With Andres and Alexis out, is it the darned alphabetical order starting all over again? Oh, it’s the February Jinx is it not?! Is Pepe becoming a Serial Stomper? Is RM catching up? Is Barca becoming complacent? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Is there life in outer space?
Or so it goes. Surely it’s ridiculous that more time is spent the next day discussing which team was wronged more the by referee rather than the quality of the game or the goals? Or that the lasting image from the game is not a sublime piece of play but of Pepe sarcastically applauding the referee before walking out of the pitch? (Yes, Pepe of all people!) So there. That’s why we hate Clasicos, not for the 90 minutes of play, but for the nonsense that transpires without fail before and after. And considering we don’t have one in the near future (meaning in the next 10 days at least), here’s our chance to stop talking about the Madrid camp. See – they’re united, Ramos and Casillas even got Mourinho a birthday cake and MouMou actually blew out the candles instead of rubbing their faces in it! See – we’re through to the semi-finals after surviving yet another two legged Clasico series with limbs intact and no bite marks. It’s all good. All’s well that ends well. Or something like that.
So, now for some peace and quiet finally then? And let’s spend our spare time praying to the Football Gods to spare us yet another CL meeting.
