Phil Ball

Love his columns, pretty much the only reason I visit soccernet seeing as I get all the news I want to know from Marca.

 

Read his coloumns all the time and love it. prompted me to buy it from the link under his coloumn, and i really loved it. excellent history. its not just Real-Barca, chapters on the Spainish NT, Athletic Bilbao, Recreativo Huelva and Real Betis -Sevilla rivalary.

And like any smart person would, he chose to live in the Basque Country, in Donostia(SanSebastain)

 

I usually read his columns, but IMO his not always accurate in what he says.

 

Phil Ball is one of the more interesting columnists out there; no matter what you think of soccernet, his stuff is worth reading.

Not to pile on, but I'm also interested in your claim, dmar, that he's not always accurate. Do you mean factually or in an opinion?

Tony

 

Factually inaccurate. I've been trying to find the last week column where I recalled to have found several unaccuracies to point them, but I couldn't. But I'm telling you what I remember.

First and most blatant, he said that Osasuna were the "basque brothers" of Real Sociedad or another Basque team, I don't remember exactly. Osasuna is from Pamplona, in Navarra, not the Basque Country. Maybe he's confused because a part of Osasuna's ultras are radical basque nationalists or maybe beacuse he lives in San Sebastian and he's a victim of the PNV propaganda. But the fact is that it's a different region and the majority of the population of Navarra don't consider themeselves Basques at all.

Second, he's talking about "la Quinta del Buitre" and he states that Butragueño was nicknamed "el Buitre" (the Vulture) for his way of playing -he says that he lives on his teammates work-. He doesn't state that the main reason for the nick was the resemblance between the two words in Spanish (Buitre-Butragueño), and also served as a diminutive. And he was an active player indeed...

I also remember having noted other minor unaccuracies in past weeks, but I'm sorry, I don't remember what they were now... I'm not saying he's horribly unaccurate, but sometimes he's not 100%.

 

Well, that's true...

BTW, he also wrote Martín Vásquez and it's Vázquez . Also when he says "For Real Madrid, famous for their big-name signings from the 1930's onwards, the historical importance of the 'quinta' resided in the fact that the players were local " a reader tends to think that la "Quinta" were the only or first generation of famous locals in the history of Real Madrid, which is unaccurate too. Just think about the 11 Spaniards who lifted Real's 6th European Cup, the "ye-ye" team. Velazquez, Sanchís, de Felipe, Grosso... were from the youth ranks.

 

Dmar,
Osasuna means health in Basque, so it does have basque roots. however, does it make it a basque club?, that is up to serious debate in the Basque Forum

 

dmar,

I'd invite you to set up a sign in downtown Pamplona telling the locals they are not Basque, nor are they of Basque heritage.

Let me know how it goes...

 

Nutmeg,

Have you read today's article by the writer? He talks about Depor and the differences between Vigo and La Coruña. An interesting read.

 

I read the article. Interesting, but the focus was mostly on Coruña. Hopefully, he'll do an article later in the temporada on Celta.

 

I let you do it and see how it goes. If the Navarros believed themselves to be Basques, wouldn't they be governed by a Basque nationalist party like PNV? They are governed by PP and UPN, far away from that ideology. There are some small villages specially in the north governed by extremists of Batasuna -the guys that don't condemn terrorism, remember?- which certainly make a lot of noise -violently-, but they're not certainly mayoritary. The Basque nationalist government defends that point of view, patently against the will of the people in Navarra.

To B2B: About the linguistic issue... well, a lot of places in, for example, Madrid -like Guadalix or Alcalá- have names that come from arabic and no one says that we are a part of Morocco.

To Simmer: agreed. In fact I do read his articles by some reason. But I just wanted to make clear that the information he provides is not 100% right, like in the case above.

 

By the way, for the Merengues in the bunch, his new book on the Real Madrid centenary is now available:

http://www.sportsbooksdirect.co.uk/product.asp?SportID=2&ProdID=3439&SBDProdID=6670

 

In my experience the Navarros consider themselves to be just that, Navarros. Not Basques, not Castellanos... Navarros.

Sure there exists Euskera speaking population in the province who teach their kids in ikastolas and side with Batasuna, and depending on the street in Pamplona you're drinking your way down, the bars may be full of Ikurriña waving nationalists. But even some of these people will tell you that they're Navarros first and Basques second.

Just my .02

 

http://www.soccernet.com/columns/2002/1015/20021015featball.html

Latest article from Phil Ball. Personnally I consider him an average commentator. While he knows La Liga well, he makes many small mistakes, such as using the acronym FEF instead of RFEF and saying a Betis fan tried to tackle Prats (I could swear he was a Sevilla fan) are two examples.

Now that I'm done nick-picking, I also don't care for his insinuation Sevilla threw the last game of the season in 2000. He said the same thing about Osasuna vs. Alaves last year, allowing Alaves to go to UEFA over Sevilla. IMHO there was nothing you could really point at that indicated either team actually tried to lose. In fact, both teams seemed to show great pride in thier efforts, the best I could tell. He seems to be basing his judgment on bar talk and not what happened on the pitch.

If, during his trip to Sevilla, he would have had an open mind he would have discovered the taxi driver was closer to correct then wrong. In general, the club rivalry is intense, but fun. Only a small minority make up the Ultras that tend to hurt the good names of both clubs.

This doesn't mean all his data is bad. He is good at bringing up historical aspects, such as the development of the club's fan base. I read and enjoy his articles, but I never take opinions for more then they are.

One last comment on the derby to my Betis rivals, 22-0.

 

Pichi,

What does: "Viva er Beti manque pierda" mean?
Is it some type of castillian dialect, or just badly written castillian?

Horizon

 

Ha! My friend Betis B is looking a lot more like tercera then segunda A.

http://marcawas.recoletos.es/servle...ada=7&competicion=7&grupo=4&temporada=2002-03

The possibility of Sevilla going to second is about the same as Betis going to Champions League, not nearly as good as people think.

 

I love to see this Betis-Sevilla rivarly even here. It's clear that it's the biggest in Spain, even moreso than Barca-Madrid. My favorite memory was of a fews year ago when I was living in Spain, watching a Segunda Division match between Barca B and Sevilla in the mini-Estadi and in the the front row were a bunch of Betis fans with a sign that read "Sevilla: !Pudrete en Segunda!" They had actually travelled all the way from Seville to Barcelona just to heckle the Sevilla team! And this was when Betis was in Primera!

Unfortunately for the beticos, Barca B couldnt beat anyone that year and Tsartas (I think) scored a late winner for Sevilla. Afterwards he flicked off the Betis fans who looked like they were going to explode.