Pep Guardiola, experienced samurai of the press conferences at the Bernabéu —You know, the fucking master, Xosé, what’s your camera…—, he advised Xabi Alonso on Tuesday to piss on his own. “And since he doesn’t pee cologne, he will do it well,” he later concluded. You already have the headline, he told the Madrid journalists, whom years before, in that same room, he had baptized Central Lechera. The reality, however, is that everything eschatological mixes badly in the title. And, furthermore, it was not clear who the slap was intended for. Which one was Alonso supposed to have pissed on until now? With Florentino’s, did Guardiola mean? In any case, looking at the first moments of the match, it seemed that Xabi listened to his teacher and used his own physiology to face the match. Without Mbappé, fundamentally. Pressing up, with Carreras converted into Cafu.
Beyond the metaphor, of very Catalan semiotics and eschatology, when the referee blew the half-time whistle, there was no way to determine who was peeing on. Xabi tried the first few minutes. But he didn’t realize that at that moment Guardiola, who had spent the press conference leaning back, grown up as he only does when he goes to the Bernabéu, was already taking the piss that Madrid usually does. That is, on the contrary, with a little luck, without playing for big things. Winning without fully deserving it all the time. And when that didn’t go well, pissing with Doku, one of his stars, that extraordinary Belgian winger that Txiki pulled out of his sleeve before leaving. Because if one dispenses with cheap self-help stories, one can find enormous advantages in resorting to someone else’s for certain companies.
For example, I would like to piss on Santiago Segurola or Ramon Besa when I start writing this column. Also with that of Leila Guerriero or that of Noelia Ramírez, who has just published Nobody expected me here (Anagrama, 2025), a fantastic book, in part, also about that impossible mission of achieving being yourself. But I agree and, above all, readers have to resign themselves to what there is. I have the advantage that in the company where I work, until now, I have been able to choose. But I suspect that neither Xabi Alonso nor whoever comes next, if that happens soon, will the same thing happen to him.
The problem with Real Madrid, beyond the demands of the box or the micropolitics of the bench, is that it always has to piss on it. Yesterday, when the team played best, what was recognized was not a certain style, nor that choral model that Xabi implemented in Leverkusen. What there was was the same old Madrid, suffocating, epic. A team that overflows with waves of ambition capable of drowning the rival in their area. A style that has not so much to do with the board, but with victory and crushing.
The drawback of these intangibles, however, is always the same. Cruyff summed it up once regarding another matter: if they didn’t understand why we won, how would they know why we lost. And, in some way, Ronaldo Nazario responded years later: “We lost because we didn’t win.” And that, I fear, will always be the same at Real Madrid. It is very difficult to build a signature team at the Bernabéu. Piss with yours. And that is neither good nor bad in itself. It’s just the history of the club.
