Last week the Spanish press was packed full of build-up to the Manchester derby. There was a particular interest in Spain given the Jose Mourinho and Pep Guardiola dynamic, but the match was covered around the world.
For a domestic league match, the coverage was unprecedented, and that includes coverage of Spain’s El Clasico.
There was always going to be a moment when the Spanish media thought ‘Hang on a minute, El Classico is the boss’, and for Marca that moment has come.
On the newspaper’s Thursday back page, it’s explained that whilst England may have invented the game, and also invented the best way to make money from it, the best teams and footballers are in Spain.
Marca say Real Madrid and Barcelona are the two best teams in the world, with the best players. Whilst they concede it’s possible the matches between Manchester United and Manchester City could displace El Clasico for a few years, they feel that’s very unlikely.
The Spanish newspaper say that as much as ‘mourinhistas, guardiolistas, antimourinhistas and antiguardiolistas’ circle around the match and give it added attention, the best players will always generate more attention than the best managers, ‘because Pogba is not Modric and Silva is not Messi’.
They’ve got a point, El Clasico probably does remain king, for political dynamic off the pitch as well, but Marca probably hyped up the Manchester derby as much as anyone else.
There were double page spread articles several days before the game, covering every aspect as much as they would their own El Clasico, Marca arguably covered it more than English newspapers. They can hardly complain if that hype generated attention.
