Barca, the toast of Santa Monica
We scurried into the comforting, cave-like darkness from the bright midday Santa Monica sunshine to pay homage to the reigning deities of the world’s game. Barcelona and Chelsea, titans of the Spanish and English leagues, clashed Wednesday in Europe’s Champions League. It’s the sort of dream matchup that can affect global productivity, transfixing not just Europe but also interrupting the workday in Latin America and keeping millions of avid fans across Asia up at odd hours of the night. Such a game has even been known to alter the work habits of certain newspaper editors in North America.
Ye Olde King’s Head tavern is a perfect venue for those of us in the “fifth column” of sport -- a defiant, 30-year-old monument to the ability of the English to remain English while “exiled in the barbarous regions of the world,” as Evelyn Waugh put it in “The Loved One,” his novel about Englishmen in Hollywood. On any given Saturday morning during the Premier League season, the tavern is filled with agonized Manchester United, Arsenal or Chelsea fans eating bangers and carrying on tribal feuds from the old country. For me, partaking in this foreign ritual feels less seditious in Los Angeles than it has felt in other cities where I’ve lived, mainly because here everyone seems to belong to some exotic diaspora.
Amusingly, the pub last summer was bought by an Irishman, Donal Tavey. Initial dismay seems to have quieted down among his English clientele; Tavey has made clear he has no secret plot to turn the place into an Irish pub. “Actually, they are quite similar in the end, aren’t they?” he asked philosophically during halftime. “What’s the difference, really, between an English and an Irish pub?”
That kind of perspective only comes an ocean and a continent away from the Isles. Still, it’s a good thing the tavern has two bar areas, so that Tavey could show both the Irish and English World Cup qualifiers last fall simultaneously, without too much fraternizing between fans. And come the actual World Cup in June, Tavey will have deployed another platoon of plasma screens throughout the joint.
The tavern’s die-hard English patrons may yet decide this foreign owner is OK in the end, much like Chelsea fans who were initially apoplectic that their team had been bought by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich eventually came to appreciate his endless resources. He’s got players on the bench who were signed for tens of millions.
But I am rooting for Barcelona, as I have since I was a kid, back in the days when it was widely referred to as the world’s richest sports franchise, and when it became an outpost of Dutch artistry at the feet of Johann Cruyff. Barcelona’s success also drove Franco’s henchmen in Madrid crazy, which was another plus. The team mirrors the city, really: cosmopolitan, stylish and purposeful.
Incidentally, my son Sebastian will someday play for Barcelona, and he will buy his father a fabulous condo in the city. At the tender age of 17 months, “goal” is one of his favorite words, and he has even scored a couple in the hallway. I won’t presume to determine now what position he will ultimately play, or which barrio he will buy his crazy dad’s condo in. I won’t be one of those domineering parents who tries to steer his kid down a predetermined path.
But for now it’s Brazil’s Ronaldinho, the world’s best player, who is the fitting anchor of today’s Barca team, preserving the ideal that it’s not just about winning, it’s about winning with flair and exuberance. As the team did against Chelsea, 2-1.
Andres Martinez