Barcelona and Hungary

Day -784. WorldCup2018

I admit, if it wasn't obvious already, that I have a little bit of a footballing crush on Barcelona. They are a little bit special; no, really special and have been for a number of years. A few years ago, when Frank Rijkard was their manager, and more European football was being broadcast on Canadian TV, I was transfixed one day, watching them play Harlem Globetrotter style football, but in real competitive matches. And they never stopped attacking, and scoring. And it was pretty, in the hard-to-explain-to-a-non-football-fan way that football can be pretty. It is possible that I enjoy watching them play because I don't have to suffer the humiliation of them, well, humiliating a team that I support. There is little chance of that happening for a while, unless there is a new European competition that pits the best teams in the Spanish League against teams in the English Championship (that's the Second Division in my language).

Barcelona have replaced my well documented, oft mentioned childhood team that made me dream: Brazil, version 1982. There is one big difference. While Brazil entertained as much as Barcelona do now, the latter actually won stuff, a whole lot of stuff, over and over again, season after season. Barcelona are without doubt the team that showed it was possible to win and still make it look like fun. Brazil are still looking to find that formula, lost since 1970.

And the reason for my Barcelona loving today? Apparently they were going through a bit of a crisis: knocked out of the Champions League and two consecutive defeats in the league. So what did they do today? They went to La Coruna and beat Deportivo 8-0. Eight. Nil. That's how Barcelona deal with a crisis.

All of this sparked a memory of that 1982 World Cup. High scoring wins are quite rare in recent World Cups. Germany beat Saudi Arabia 8-0 in 2002, and Portugal won 7-0 against North Korea in 2010, and there was that 7-1 hiding by the Germans in that terrible semi-final for Brazil two years ago.  In 1982 Hungary beat El Salvador 10-1. That seems quite incredible to think that one team could score 10 goals against another country that had qualified to be part of the tournament for the best 24 teams in the world. But as a first time World Cup watcher it seemed pretty normal. After all this was Hungary (I had heard they were quite good, had a guy called Puskas playing for them once upon a time) and they were playing El Salvador. They didn't even sound like a proper footballing country.  So, yes, 10-1 seemed like a logical result. And by that same logic, Belgium and Argentina must have been terrible to only beat El Salvador 1-0 and 2-0 respectively. In the end, I guess, the 1-0 and 2-0 counted for a lot more than the 10-1. Argentina and Belgium qualified for the second round and the Hungarians were, if they were allowed to in 1982, off on their holidays.

It may not exactly be Barcelona-esque, although the defending was probably worse than Deportivo's, but here are those 10 goals and the wildly celebrated El Salvadorian goal to make it 5-1.