Real Madrid and Barcelona’s clash over ‘club of the regime’ is toxic

Super League-conspiring best buddies, raging together against everything from the financial clout of the Premier League, to the power of UEFA, Real Madrid and Barcelona have been walking hand-in-hand for the last couple of years.

But that special relationship is now a bin fire after Joan Laporta used the dreaded phrase ‘club of the regime’ in his two-hour long press conference on Monday.

He didn’t exactly call them the club of the regime, he said ‘they were considered the club of the regime’ but the four words still hung in the air on Monday, toxic and pungent.

The regime referred to is of course the dictatorship of Francisco Franco from 1936 to 1975. And in just a matter of hours on Monday Real Madrid had responded with a four minute video that asked the question: ‘Who is the club of the regime?’.

The video set about making a case for Barcelona having had ties to Franco. 

Real Madrid pieced together a video to hit back at Barcelona for ‘the club of the regime’ jibe

Florentino Perez (left) has stopped travelling to Barcelona for Clasico matches amid tensions

It made the point that the Nou Camp was inaugurated by Franco’s Minister General, Jose Solis with a mass celebrated on the pitch to the strains of the Spanish anthem.

The list continued with references to Barcelona awarding a medal to Franco and making him an honorary member in 1965.

‘Barcelona was saved three times from bankruptcy and won eight leagues and nine ‘Copas del Generalisimo’ it went on.

And for every supposed favour done to Barcelona the video showed a slight towards Real Madrid from the same era.

‘Under Franco, Real Madrid took 15 years to win the league,’ the video says. 

It ends with former president Santiago Bernabeu saying: ‘When I hear that Real Madrid has been the team of the regime, it makes me want to s**t on the father of the person who said it’.

If that last bit seems vulgar, bear in mind ‘sh*ting on this’ and ‘sh*ting on the other’ just tends to be standard turns of phrase, part of the idiosyncrasies of Spanish swearing.

The examples given by the video can be debated just as Laporta’s incendiary phrase can be argued over. 

It would, for example, have been impossible for Barcelona to have opened their new ground without a presence from the Franco government – they were opening it in Franco’s Spain, they would have had little choice in the matter.

Barcelona chief Joan Laporta defended his club by going on the attack against Real Madrid

But beyond the debate one thing though is perfectly clear – Madrid and Barcelona’s love-in is over.

The two rivals began to move closer together at the end of the pandemic. Both clubs had had their economies destroyed by the losses to match day revenue caused by shut stadiums and a temporary end to football tourism.

Real Madrid decided it was time to push the ‘start’ button on their long-held aspiration to take over the running of the Champions League cutting out the UEFA middle-man. Barcelona were willing accomplices and, along with Juventus, are the sole survivors of the original failed coup.

Madrid and Barça also joined forces when LaLiga hatched a financial plan with investment fund CVC in which all the clubs in Spain’s top two divisions would get a lump sum in exchange for giving up a percentage of future telelvsion rights earnings.

Both Real Madrid and Barcelona opted out of the scheme believing they could go their own way and find better financial terms in the process. 

There are some grounds to believe it was Barcelona’s rejection of the plan that led to their U-turn on being able to afford Lionel Messi’s new contract – or put in more conspiracy theory terms: had they played along with LaLiga’s plan they might have found it easy to register a new contract for Messi, once they pulled out, it became impossible.

He has claimed Barcelona’s rivals Real Madrid have historically been ‘favoured’ by officials

Things between the two clubs began to crumble once the corruption scandal emerged. Real Madrid responded by throwing its weight behind the prosecution’s case against Barcelona and Laporta accused them of monumental cynicism in doing so.

At the last couple of Clasicos Madrid president Florentino Perez has not gone to the Nou Camp and therefore there has been no traditional pre-match meal.

After Laporta’s rant on Monday, and Madrid’s response it does not look like they will be sharing a table any time soon.

‘We joined the Super League because we want to reorganise football not because of who the other clubs were,’ said Laporta on Monday. They certainly make very uncomfortable co-conspirators now.