The Spanish View on Rangers/Barcelona

Last updated : 24 October 2007 By Maccloyalist
The Spanish football media and fans in general are notoriously hard to please, after all this is a country where clubs sack their coaches after winning trophies and where teams get booed after winning 7-2, so I'm afraid anyone looking for praise of Rangers heroic defensive performance yesterday evening, will have to look elsewhere - however you would like to think that even the 'holier than thou' Spanish football connoisseurs, can understand that Rangers and Barcelona simply don't play on a level playing field, when you consider the revenue Barça make from TV and compare it with the pittance Rangers receive from Setanta.

Onto the game then, a few Spanish reporters were generally surprised at how un-aggressive Rangers were and expected more of a battle, whereas some (namely those in Madrid) thought that while being limited technically, we had too much respect for The Catalans and were somewhat in awe of Barça's reputation. - Some argued that Barça were off-form and were there for the beating…if only Rangers could have shown more ambition. However most reported that Barça dominated the game and were critical of the defensive tactics employed by Rangers.

Some of the headlines;

Todos Contentos (Everyone happy) from Madrid based Marca

La superioridad del Barcelona no se refleja en el marcador (The superiority of Barcelona wasn't reflected in the scoreline) from Catalan broadsheet La Vanguardia who went onto say in their report that ' Rangers y su gente festejaron el empate como si se tratara de un triunfo spectacular (Rangers and their support celebrated the draw as if it was a spectacular triumph)…patronising…I know.
They also were expecting a far more aggressive Rangers arguing that: ' Rangers afronto el partido con demasiado respeto' (we approached the match with too much respect.

Madrid based AS described it as a ' Empate válido' (a fair draw)

Yes the headlines aren't great, but the simple fact is Barcelona were ground down at Ibrox last night by dogged resistance and couldn't come up with a way to beat us…so much so that they even gave up trying to do so and in the end were just as happy as we were to take the point.

Maccloyalist.