Calcio e Pepe: El Clasico edition
Welcome to Calcio e Pepe, where we discuss all things soccer (calcio) and all things food (e pepe). Our name may be Italian, but this week we’re looking to Spain, where another installment of an iconic rivalry is brewing.
With all the crazy shit going on in the world right now, including the very real fact that we may be living in the worldbuilding preamble to a climate apocalypse movie, it’s easy to forget about the two things that really matter: European soccer (we are Americans and will not be referring to it as “football,” thank you very much) and delicious food.
This Sunday at 11:15 a.m., Real Madrid and FC Barcelona face off at Camp Nou, Barcelona’s home stadium, in what has historically been one of the fiercest club football matches of the year. In Spain, the day of El Clasico has the feel of a holiday, except with more bad blood and road flares. Abroad, as many as 400 million people watch the game on television. Almost no one is a neutral when El Clasico comes along. Whatever your main team is, you’ve almost certainly got a preference. Madrid-Barcelona is one of those delightful rivalries where the intensity of the hatred is matched by the quality of the football: Madrid has won 33 Spanish championships since La Liga was founded in 1929, Barcelona 25; Madrid has won 13 European championships, and Barcelona 5. Both are among the richest, most popular, and most talented teams (of any sport) in the world. None of that precludes good old-fashioned shithousery, like the iconic 2011 fight where then-Madrid manager Jose Mourinho calmly poked then-Barcelona assistant coach Tito Vilanova in the eye while players brawled around them.
For much of the twentieth century, what separated the two teams’ images was clear enough. During the years of dictatorship, Franco favored Madrid for political reasons, as an example of Spanish nationalist glory (“Real” means “Royal” in Spanish, after all). It didn’t hurt Franco’s cause that Madrid won five European Cups back-to-back in the 1950s. In contrast, Barcelona was seen as scrappier, more anti-establishment: the team has been and continues to be closely identified with Catalan nationalism, so rooting for them was once a genuine act of resistance against Franco’s attempts to homogenize Spain under Castilian language and culture.
Well into the 21st century, Barcelona was still generally considered the good guy, even if they were a little annoying about it. They were defined by homegrown canterano players (i.e. from the academy, like farm teams in baseball) rather than by expensive, glitzy galactico signings (pricey players, often foreign, who were already superstars for other major teams). Barcelona’s lead man was the quiet, unassuming Lionel Messi rather than the brash, arrogant Cristiano Ronaldo; they either had no shirt sponsor, or their shirt sponsor was UNICEF, and they paid for the privilege. In the late aughts through the early 2010s, Barcelona played an untouchable, incredibly influential tiki-taka style of short-and-quick-passing football that centered around dominating possession, defined by players like Andres Iniesta and Xavi and enabled by Messi’s explosive genius. They won a treble — three trophies in one season — in 2009, and then again in 2015, the only team to have done so twice.
In 2018, the tides have ever so slightly shifted. Madrid has won the last three European Champions League titles, the only team to have done that. Barcelona now has about as many galacticos as Madrid and their shirt advertises Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant. Xavi and Iniesta have retired. This will also be the first Clasico in eleven years without either Messi or Ronaldo — Messi is out of the game for three weeks with a fractured arm and Ronaldo has transferred to Juventus. (Ronaldo has also been accused of raping an American woman, Kathryn Mayorga, who recently went public with her story. This is an allegation too serious and important and horrific to appear only in the context of a piece about a soccer rivalry, but we would be remiss to ignore it — as so much of soccer media has.)
The stakes of the game are high, though. Barcelona is top of the table while Madrid languishes in seventh place, but it’s early on in the season. Only four points separate the two. If Barcelona wins, that widens the gap to seven, but if Madrid wins, they’ll squeeze the gap down to one point — and then, as the saying goes, hay liga.
To prepare for this momentous occasion (Barcelona and Madrid only meet twice this season) and because the one thing we love more than raucous sideline brawls is consuming delicious food, we’re going to celebrate by putting together some regionally-inspired cuisines to eat while we watch the match. And so should you! Based on our meticulous research, for those rooting for Barcelona (both of us), you’re on theme if anything you make involves cod. The Catalonians eat a lot of cod, or so we’ve learned from the Internet, which would never lie to us. Maybe try esqueixada, or salt cod salad, which is fun to say and funner to spell (although it features raw fish, so if, like us, you have a $20 weekly grocery budget that you spend at Stop and Shop, maybe be a wee bit careful). The Catalans are also big into canned fish like sardines and anchovies; only indulge if you plan on watching the game alone in a smell-proof room.
If you don’t want fish then try making pa amb tomàquet, which is basically glorified garlic bread spread with a thin layer of fresh tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil and salt. It’s a Barcelona staple (even served in the Barcelona youth academy cafeteria, rumor has it), a central motif of Catalan identity, and so delicious that we will be eating this every day for the rest of our lives. If you want to make something more involved than that then try la bomba, which is a potato croquette served with either a garlic white sauce or a spicy red sauce. The dish is inspired by the grenades thrown by resistance fighters in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, so this dish is literally anti-fascist and therefore good praxis!
If you happen to be rooting for Real Madrid instead (don’t talk to us), then you should make huevos rotos, a fried potato dish, tossed in olive oil and salt, and topped with an over easy egg. We will not be eating this meal this week, but we will eat it the next time we are rooting for Atlético Madrid, because it sounds [bleep]ing delicious and also well within our limited culinary abilities. For something even easier than that, just eat manchego cheese! It’s delicious and very Spanish! Get some from the “fancy” cheese section at Stop and Shop, the one near the bakery — or Elm City Market if you’re feeling ~fluUUuush with cash~. We take our job here very seriously. Ole-le, Ola-la, ser del Barça és el millor que hi ha!
