A haughty Spaniard
Some obscene gestures
Today we continue yesterday’s theme of matters lost in translation – and if you haven’t seen it, yesterday’s post Phallocephaloid of the Week is considerably more scurrilous than today’s, includes speculation on a famous Norwegian’s menstrual cycle, and is therefore recommended.
This week’s prize for enriching the language goes to Argentine publication Olé (you couldn’t make it up, could you?) who, reporting on the goals heard across the world (Arsenal 2 Barcelona 1 this Wednesday past), gave us the headline Arselona. They added:
“Victory was the justification of a lifetime. Arsenal beat Barcelona playing as they always seek to: like Barcelona. A Spanish team was dominated by its double.” (1)
Arselona probably sounds good in Spanish, though in English (sadly not in American) it sounds enjoyably rude. After all, Tottenham supporters – who hate Arsenal with the visceral viciousness of the second best – refer to their north London rivals as “The Arse”.
You can just about get away with the arse syllable when it is part of a word (like arsenic or arsenal) – though something tickling at the back of your mind always goes “arse” when you hear a word like that, just as the anus always springs out of the name Zanussi and the C word out of Scunthorpe – but you can’t get away with it in invented words. Foreigners, whose sadly restricted linguistic skills prevent them from recognising that arse is rude, don’t get it – hence an entertaining coinage like Arselona, which does sound (and mfk is genuinely sorry but can’t resist it) like a gay republic. Indeed, foreigners whose names begin with arse flock to become associated with Arsenal if they have the talent. Mfk thinks of the great Arsène Wenger, who almost is Arsenal now, and the erratically brilliant Russian winger Andrei Arshavin. No matter that the vertically gifted Arsène resembles one of the storks from his native Alsace and can probably look in through people’s upstairs windows, while the vertically challenged Arshavin’s arse grazes the turf when he runs – both were drawn to Arsenal, at least partly, for the sympathetic euphony of the name.
The word arse has been around in English since at least 1000 AD – when it appeared as ars, ears or ers – and very probably before. Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) renders it erse (pronounced arse). What possessed North America to change it to ass, as though one were sitting on a donkey rather than a pair of usually flabby cheeks, is beyond mfk. If anyone can explain this bizarre switch from a strong sound that can be relished in the mouth (sorry for any unfortunate images conjured there) to a weak one, please do. It is a mystery.
Arsène, incidentally, is none too pleased when his maturing wonderteam is compared to Barcelona, pointing out pettishly (and with duplicitously skilled French disingenuity) that he has been teaching Arsenal to play that way for thirteen years while Pep Guardiola has only been developing the style of Barcelona for two or three. Wenger is infuriated whenever Arsenal are described as Barcelona lite – which they often are by journalists too lazy or dim to think with depth or originality – and mfk can see why he would react like that while simultaneously advising him to take the intended compliment. Barcelona are the best team in the world, as Wenger himself keeps repeating (more disingenuity), and when people compare Arsenal to Barcelona what they mean is that these are the two teams, of all the teams on the planet, that are the most enjoyable to watch.
Human-stork hybrid Arsène may not be best pleased by Olé’s suggestion that his team played like Barça’s double, but he should take the intended compliment gracefully and not have one of his hissy fits – because time will tell. The point is that his team of precocious embryos and under-11’s is finally maturing into something nearly as good as Barcelona (and only superficially similar, as you point out Arsène, but that’s not the point) and may even be on the cusp of being as good, or even better. It has been a long term project and he has stuck to his gunners against a firestorm of ignorant criticism with obsessive single-mindeness. This explains the touchiness, but he should have taken more note of Olé’s comment “Victory was the justification of a lifetime”. They do get it, Arsène, and they do appreciate what you have achieved.
The rest of the world – with one notable exception that we shall come to shortly – gets it too. Italy’s La Gazetta, for example, called it thus:
“A night of Arsenal in their purest form: quality plus courage plus adrenaline. Arsenal are now very close to the Catalans, both in terms of talent and organisation.”
Brazil’s Lance will also not have upset Wenger:
“Barça’s big players were overshadowed and will have an extremely complicated mission in Spain. Arsenal seem more mature than before.”
Nor will South Africa’s The Times have offended:
“Wenger insisted all along that his side would be true to their instincts and seek to fight fire with fire. At the Emirates they proved as good as their word.”
Holland’s De Telegraaf was as nationalistically one-eyed as a relatively small country is entitled to be:
“Robin van Persie was again the difference for Arsenal”,
but otherwise they echoed the general tone. And so on round the planet, except …
You know when you look at a satellite photograph of the Earth at night you see huge blazes of light (all those Mormons in Utah and northern Arizona for example), with less blazing but consistent light in most places, and then a few areas like the Amazonian rain forest or sub-Saharan Africa were there seems only stygian blackness? Well, in terms of objective appreciation of the Arsenal performance, Spain alone was a huge dark blot on the sparkling planetary map.
This is excellent news for Spain. Still drunk with Quixotic glory on returning home from the recent World Cup Finals with the golden bauble, their football has become less and less interesting. Apart (Arsenal excepted) from Barça’s most watchable football on the planet and the perpetually entertaining sideshow of José Mourinho and his shenanigans at Real Madrid, the whole tippy-tappy edifice has been getting duller.
In truth, you would have to be Sepp Blatter or Spanish to believe that winning the World Cup means you are the best. It usually means you’re quite good, or at least effective, but that’s not the same thing at all. The truth is that Spain weren’t the best in 2010 or 2006 – and if you don’t believe me, look at the Sepp tables for those years (accessible via the geekbar at the top of this blog) and mfk’s analysis of what those tables reveal.
In 2006, when the Spanish came 22nd equal with Costa Rica, mfk remarked:
“Spain were the biggest disappointment of the Finals, merely scoring a second place in the Best Team category, two appearances in the Best Match category, and two nominations for Tragic Hair. This was a sadly conventional and football-oriented performance by the Spanish, and I think we will all expect better of them in four years time.”
They were indeed better in 2010, but not the best (See Who Won the World Cup?, 25 July 2010). They came third, not first as they appeared to think, and mfk had this to say:
“Judge for yourself, reader, whether Spain did indeed improve … or whether they just got lucky and Spanish lack of imagination actually became more extreme. Just see what happens to their placing next time when they don’t win the Fifa thing. They have nothing to fall back on, no strength in depth, and have all their huevos in a single canasta. Sad, narrow and limited. Mfk suggests that their best bet for developing into a serious football power will be to build on their natural strengths of haughtiness and obscene hand gestures, but will they listen? The future for Spanish football cannot be considered bright.”
Well the penny seems finally to have dropped. Italy remain several streets ahead of their latin cousins in the matter of obscene hand gestures, but Spanish haughtiness is resurgent. Way to go, Spain.
The exceptions prove the rule. The main Spanish organ out of step appears to be El Pais, which is disturbingly objective:
“Wenger’s kids have got better and better, they have lost their respect for Barcelona. Arsenal have stopped being the best losers, the ideal opposition for Barcelona. They fought like champions.”
Hmmm. Marca is also rather disappointingly fair in its comments, praising Wilshere, Nasri, Walcott and Arshavin. But don’t worry. El Mundo places the blame for Barça’s defeat squarely on the shoulders of coach Guardiola – he made a defensive substitution when Barça were 1-0 up (Keita for Villa) and otherwise Barça would have strolled to their victory:
“A fatal decision. Pep got it wrong.”
That’s more like it. Arsenal weren’t better than Barça and were given victory rather than winning it.
Mfk has saved the best for last. The aptly named AS (yes, it really is pronounced arse) pontificates straight from a fantasy world – the 1970s – in which English footballers are berserk warrior thugs who crash into their opponents, boot long balls agriculturally up field where they can be lashed into the net by a skill-free but hulking centre forward, and in which superior latin technique gets defeated (unfairly, it goes without saying) by ‘English spirit’:
“Barça kept the ball, but not with the fighting spirit which characterises wounded teams. And a wounded Englishman is very dangerous. It turned out that power, in the end, overcame technique.”
Power overcame technique? What were they on? The rest of us saw a game in which technique took on technique and the less arrogant of the two teams won. The haughtiness of the AS attitude is world class. Well done at last! This is proper football culture. Hope for Spain after all.
In case you don’t know enough to perceive just how haughty-beyond-reality AS is, allow mfk to point out that there weren’t too many Englishmen on display (two to be precise – less than 20% of the Arsenal team – Wilshere, who is more boy than man, and Walcott who is a little ahead of him and has recently started to shave) and the Arsenal goals were scored by, er, a Dutchman and a Russian. Be aware also that Arsenal players are renowned for their technique and absolutely famous for their disdain for the traditional English hoof-and-hack approach.
Here’s the truth. Barça are still more technically skilled than Arsenal overall and have (possibly) the three best players in the world in Messi, Iniesta and Xavi, but the gap is now narrow and Arsenal’s different style and wonderful audacity and team spirit put an overconfident Barça , deceived by their own hype, on their arses. It took luck as well as courage and skill, but courage and skill earn any luck that assists them.
Both Xavi and Guardiola continued the fantasy in sour, flight-from-reality, post-match interviews. The upshot was that Barça were simply miles better, had actually (apart from the scoreline) won the game convincingly and comprehensively (Pep even said “You don’t understand how difficult it is to come away from home and play like we did”); Arsenal were practically beneath their aristocratic notice, and the result was an aberration like a zit on the face of a supermodel.
Playing to their national strengths at last, sighs the neutral observer with exquisite appreciation and pleasure. All we needed was accompanying obscene hand gestures to make the transformation complete. Spain are at last on an upward curve toward football greatness. There is hope for them at the international tournament finals of 2012 and 2014.
And what hope for Arsenal (or Assenal as they are presumably known in the US)? Some is the answer. Canny old man-stork Arsène continues to repeat that Barça remain favourites in the tie over two matches. If Barça are as overconfident as they sound, that’s Arsenal’s best hope and Wenger will fuel it all he can. He knows – and Barça need to remember – that pride goeth before a fall and a proud heart before contumely. Of course, if they do get things in perspective they retain sufficient overwhelming talent to kick Assenal’s asses – but it’s no longer a sure thing.
One thing is for sure. If you have the merest grain of intelligence in an otherwise junkfood and Twitter clouded brain, you will not miss the second leg at the Camp Nou (or the Nou Camp as the English broadcasters are educationally subnormal and insular enough to style it). Follow the sage advice of France’s L’Equipe:
“Keep the evening of 8 March free!”
(1) Mfk is indebted to The Guardian for this and other translations.
Mfk regrets that two posts on two successive days does not herald a return to daily posts. There is more to life than sending rude words into cyberspace. But now that he’s over his post-World-Cup inertia, he will continue to write every now and then about anything that is important and/or entertains him.
And – now that myfriendkeith is including pictures – he is truly sorry if he has breached anyone’s copyright. He has assumed from where he found the picture that it’s not in copyright or that you don’t care. But if you do, just let him know and he will instantly take down anything he shouldn’t have appropriated. He may be both an ass and an arse, but there is little harm in him.
