Podcast : Jorge Zuazola of Spanish Leadership

Well the thing is, you thought the english style of football was better than the spanish one and you don’t even watch La Liga, and that’s ok, but now that the NT is successful you bandwagon into it and preach it like an expert, when anyone living in spain or watching La Liga will have more knowldege of all those matches you didn’t want to see.

I understand english media has a lot of marketing power, whatever opinion it voices will followed by a lot of people like it’s a fact.
Silva was a very good player in Valencia, but there were others like him, now he plays in the EPL so now it’s a unique superstar. Like Arteta which in Real Sociedad was a nobody. I understand that this type of player is less frequent in the EPL so they are more remarkable there.

The actual fact is that Spain has had a lot of players in the recent past that topped in quality or were at least as good as Silva/Mata/Torres/Cesc: Valeron, Joaquin (when in Betis), Vicente (when he was fit), Fran, Ivan de la Peña (especially in Barcelona), Caminero, Reyes (in Sevilla), Raúl, Tristan, etc…the thing is that because english mainstream media didn’t recognize them and now they do, all of the sudden spanish players are very good. Of course a big part of that lack of recognizement it’s down to spanish people inferiority complex (we see it working in Real Madrid right now).

The main difference between those players is that in the NT they play as a team instead of a colection of talents, because most of this guys were more succesful at club level than Silva/ Mata/Torres/Cesc, and as a result of success, more confident.

It’s not that easy to export this style because it’s a cultural thing, most of the people like their clubs to play technically and if they have to lose they prefer it to do it beautifully. I don’t think England or Italy are that willing to do so, english will prefer that the players fight epically all the match and Italy, well, I think they thrive into winning no matter what.

As soon as Barcelona and Spain aren’t successful exporting this ideas will fade away while in Spain; Brazil, Argentina this type of game and players will be appreciated no matter what.

And about Clemente it hasn’t anything to do with Clemente being basque? Clemente has been the most universally hated coach of the spanish NT, that’s a fact, not an opinion. I’m catalan and I’m not in an antibasque environment at all, and he was despised by anyone I know, horrible style, ugly ugly games, it was that shock therapy that made most of the people think “we’ll lose anyway so let’s try to lose with our style”.

And well Clemente, humble? Vicente del Bosque is humble, Clemente is one of the biggest loudmouths in the spanish football history, if you mean he said what he thought, yeah, he was sincere.

And yes, a lot of top spanish players are very professional.