It's a Conspiracy

There's been a lot of hot air recently, once again, over the influence of foreign players in English football. Ex-Charlton midfielder Alan Pardew, now in charge of a local team doing quite well, says that Arsenal's home victory over Juve wasn't an English one at all and and then Chelski's Drogba falls over once again after receiving a nasty gust of air up the proverbial and consequently there's lots of talk about English players don't cheat, bloody foreigners etc ( that was even before he did his famous hand-ball trick).

But there's one thing that's thankfully missing from the English Football scene - The Conspiracy Theory. Yes, I do remember Sir Ferguson getting upset a few years ago ( maybe there is a connection) but thats nothing compared to how it is over here in Spain.

No prizes for guessing who starting the rumours, just look at the League table and its not hard to see the answer. Whenever Royal Madrid are not lording it over the provincial plebs, out comes the old line about cheating refs. The local fanzine AS, ( otherwise advertised as a sports paper, a bit like the Daily Sport pretending to be about sport ) devotes its first 10 pages to news and interviews with their stars. During the very lean past couple of years it hasn't been rare to see a double page spread complete with relevent incriminating photos supplemented with lines and arrows on how many points have been accumulated by their rivals due to dubious refereeing decisions.

So it was that after Saturdays away draw with leaders Barca that another series of theories hit the news. "Enough! wrote AS he should have stayed on strike" - "Barça play with a safety net. If they win, fine. If they don't, the ref prevents their fall". All very upset.

Even the official Royal Madrid web-page has got in on the act - "Weird things keep happening for Barça." And described ref Medina Cantalejo's display as "a disgrace". "Real Madrid played against twelve men all game long, eleven Barça players and the referee. He invented a penalty, massacred Real Madrid with free-kicks and cards, sent off Roberto Carlos and didn't give a penalty on Ronaldo..

Sadly the officials and fanzines seem to take no issue with the teams failure being due to a policy of buying whoever was the most expensive at any particular time but seem eager to push the blame elsewhere. A bit like Charlton blaming their mid-table position on those nasty people over at White Hart Lane for beating us twice this year and all those dubious goals scored by those lucky Man.City boys.

Sadly in Spain its always the poor sod in black that gets all the blame.