A right Real robbery
What do you do when Real Madrid are 1-0 down and the Prime Minister's watching? Sid Lowe gives us Pedro Tristante Oliva's answer.
Sid Lowe
Monday February 16, 2004
The Guardian
With his short crop, neat central parting and teensy toothbrush moustache, Pedro Tristante Oliva is every inch the 1930s gentleman about town, or rather, about the military base where he works. But Pedro is not just an odd-looking man who loves strutting about in uniform; he is also a referee - one who last night displayed impeccable timing as leaders Real Madrid faced second-placed Valencia at the Bernabéu.
A superb first half gave way to a frustrating stop-start second, with Tristante frantically whistling like a builder on his lunch break, when a towering thunderbolt of a header from Roberto Fabián Ayala put Valencia 1-0 up. Madrid, lacking creativity without the suspended Zinedine Zidane and with Ronaldo completely absent, were on the verge of losing a first home match this season. Typically solid, Valencia were top.
Then Tristante struck: in the 93rd minute, before a stadium silently emptying since Ayala's goal fifteen minutes before, he gave a penalty. No one could believe it. Madrid didn't appeal and Valencia centre-back Carlos Marchena thought Tristante had blown the other way. But no: Raúl backed into Marchena (whose arm appeared to come across him), fell on the floor and Madrid stayed two points clear rather than one behind thanks to what El País describes as "a referee's imagination".
No wonder the Valencian press, subjected to abuse from departing Madrid fans, went loco, nipping out for a plate of ropey-looking chorizo for the cover of this morning's Super Deporte - Spain's spicy sausage, you see, is also slang for thief. "Robbery, theft, hands up ... look in your dictionary, you'll find mountains of synonyms," scribed wordy, wooly jumper-wearing Carlos Bosch from Countdown Corner. "Synonyms that explain last night. At the Bernabéu they know more about that than anyone else - about robberies, that is, not synonyms."
It wasn't just the press, either. "This has become a complete joke," raved Valencia president Jaime Ortí, who has seen major Bernabéu decisions go against his side four visits running. "We're never going to win here - we might as well stay at home." Manager Rafa Benítez agreed, steam coming out his ears like a man with a kettle wedged up his nose: "You'll see a hundred of those and not a single penalty, ever. We have to do double to achieve half as much. The referee gave one minute of additional time then changed it to three. How am I supposed to console my players?"
Simple, said Marchena: "I'd stick the ref in the freezer".
Inevitably, the seasoned crime-victims, political analysts and conspiracy theorists of Catalunya back Valencia. El Mundo Deportivo's headline reads "Under cover of darkness and with intent", while Sport insists that it was "just like old times, just like modern times, just like always. Hands up! Madrid is mucho Madrid - at all levels. The referee invented a penalty worth a league title. That is all-powerful Madrid for you."
Even pro-Madrid Marca is slightly on side, stating: "It wasn't a penalty, as 95% of those who understand football know", although it comes as little surprise to find AS in the dissenting 5%. Editor Alfredo Relaño not unreasonably rejects the "black legend", but the paper's "objectivity" is rather wobbly. "Marchena doesn't go for the ball, instead he holds Raúl back", Relaño insists, even though AS's own photo-board "proving" the penalty show his eyes fixed on the ball. Besides, the sequence, while depicting Marchena's arm over Raúl's shoulder, is misleading - taken straight on, it doesn't show that Raúl leant in; nor, being frozen, does it reveal the origin of the contact.
A week of furious argument is guaranteed - because what really made Tristante Oliva's timing so utterly impeccable was the game he chose: this particular Sunday at the Bernabéu, with the director's box full of politicians led as ever by Prime Minister José María Aznar, a man with the charisma of plywood. As Marca put it, "it was a bad day to give a penalty" - just as Madrid and referees were trying to escape the eye of a storm following Wednesday night's clash between Zidane and Sevilla's nails centre-back Dr. Pablo Alfaro.
Zidane went in on Alfaro, the Sevillista dug his forearm into Zidane's back and the Frenchman responded with a not very hard slap. Despite insisting football is a game for "men", Alfaro pathetically went down like he'd been smacked with a breezeblock-encrusted cricket bat and Zidane was sent off. So incensed was Madrid sporting director Jorge Valdano (representing a "gentleman of a club" that never talks about referees) he went down to the ref's dressing room for words. At half time. Early in the second half, Sevilla had Javi Navarro sent off - not something they considered a coincidence.
All hell let loose, with everyone ranting away like the knife-wielding, Tasmanian Devil football shirt-wearing, carton of wine-sloshing drunkard who lives near this column. AS's front page loudly insisted Zidane was ¡INOCENTE! even though the slap was clear. And Madrid lost their appeal to delay his ban (as they invariably do, because the disciplinary committee is terrified of being accused of Madridismo) - leading the Ultra Sur to unveil huge banners attacking the committee as "a disgrace" and accusing Valencia and Sevilla of being "cry babies", "two more clowns in the circus".
But the decision came too late to stop the government team jibes, especially from legendary Madrid-baiter Jesús Gil. Never one to miss a decent rant, whoever's fight it actually is, Atlético Madrid's gelatinous president spat: "If I had done what Valdano did they would have electrocuted me. Madrid is the Government's team and Florentino Pérez is God. The rest of us are subnormal, a bunch of village idiots."
If Zidane kept quiet, Alfaro didn't. "It's pathetic, Valdano acted like a Mafioso. Madrid have to win every game or else," he said. "And, as usual people are judged by reputations. You'd think the galácticos pissed perfume."
http://football.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4859978-106108,00.html