WINNING UGLY

Today Barcelona faced Real Madrid for the second time in 5 days. This time the King's Cup trophy was at stake. The last showdown ended in a draw, and today's game was quite even...until the 102nd minute when Ronaldo headed one home. Real prevailed and were crowned winners some 20 minutes later.

For any Barca fan, it is hard not to hate Real and to view them as the evil empire due to their conduct and style of play. Indeed, the Real coach Jose Mourinho is as close as any person can come to a living, breathing Darth Vader.

Like this past weekend's game, Real played a largely defensive game designed to deny Barcelona any opportunity to play its fluid style. There were reckless challenges and fouls by Real ostensibly to rough the Barcelona players up and to break up their rhythm. At one point, a Real player appeared to purposefully step on the leg of David Villa, a Barca player, who was down on the ground. This sadly was not unexpected from Real.

Someone once said, winning is not everything, it is the only thing. Real clearly espouse that same philosophy even if it means winning ugly or winning without any appreciation of the game's beauty. This piece by Rob Hughes in the New York Times says it all.

Getting back to our sci-fi analogy, the past 2 matches have felt like episodes 4 and 5 of the Star Wars trilogy. Round 1 was a moral victory akin to "Star Wars." Round 2 tonight was a searing defeat like the "Empire Strikes Back."

Two more matches, the Champions League semi-finals, with Real are to follow in the next 2 weeks. I hope these matches end like episode 6 of Star Wars, the "Return of the Jedi," with the good guys winning and winning their way. For now, the pitch is closed...