Opinions are divided among Barça fans for the new substitute kit. oh well not so new. Some consider that the shirt that Xavi's men wore in their duel against Arsenal, white with only some blue and scarlet details, is little short of a betrayal. Others, on the other hand, welcome the return of a uniform that, for many years, was by no means alien to the entity.. Although, yes, more than 44 years have passed since the last time they wore a similar one in an official match. It was on March 7, 1979, in a first leg of the 1978-79 Cup Winners' Cup quarterfinals, against Ipswich Town, which resulted in a 2-1 defeat.. In its relaunch, curiously against another English team, the Barcelona fans also knelt. In this case, by 5-3 and exhibiting many gaps at the defensive level.

White, however, continued to be very present in the Barça uniforms. The numbers, for many years, until the arrival of the multinational Nike, precisely, were of this color. Surely, the one that stands out the most over blue and scarlet. In the 1992-93 season, however, a bitter controversy broke out with a tone inextricably linked to its great rival, a Real Madrid that, with the new decade, had begun to eat up the ground. Kappa, taking over from Meyba, announced that their revolutionary new kits would have a fine white line crossing the team's usual tones. Although many flew into a rage, curiously, that shirt would end up gaining an important place in the culé imaginary. Above all, after the former Real Madrid president Ramón Mendoza came up with the idea of saying, looking for ridicule, that Barça was a Dream Team, in the style of the US basketball team that won gold at the Barcelona Olympic Games almost without disheveled. The shot, however, would backfire. Unintentionally, he would end up giving that Cruyff team from the early 90s of the last century the name with which he would end up going down in history.. Hristo Stoichkov, highball glass in hand, did not tire of repeating it over and over again in the celebrations of the third consecutive League title for the Catalans.

From the club, in addition, this return to white, with the vintage touch of recovering the shield before the current one, is presented as a tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of Johan Cruyff at the Barça club. And it did, curiously after Ajax negotiated precisely its sale to Real Madrid. It is not difficult to find images of the Dutchman dressed in white, although with the nine instead of the 14 on the back. On the US tour, that first number is still owned by Robert Lewandowski, last summer's star signing.. The other, meanwhile, is the one who looks, at least for the moment, the most exciting arrival of the present: Ilkay Gündogan. The Pole scored Xavi's men's first Barça goal this preseason, while Ferran and Raphinha scored the remaining two in a duel in which they were finally beaten 5-3 by a much more driven Arsenal.

“Obviously we could have played better, but I think we have competed against a great opponent.. We can do better, we have made unforced errors, but it was only the first friendly of the preseason”, said Gündogan who is clear that the machine still needs to be greased. “I have to adapt to my teammates and they to me,” he added.. Xavi, meanwhile, regretted that Arsenal used too much. “His intensity has surprised me a lot, it has not been normal for a preparation match. There have been a lot of tactical fouls and it seemed more like a Champions League game than a friendly”, said the Barcelona coach. «The main reason for the defeat has been the difference in intensity and physical tone. For them it was the fifth game and it has been noticed. We have been timid in defense, but we have accumulated minutes and, despite the fact that the rival was more shot, we have finished well, “said the Barça coach.

4,053 days have passed since Jenni Hermoso put on the Spanish team shirt for the first time. It was June 21, 2012. He made his debut in a match against Turkey in which the national team won 4-0. The Madrid player took the field in the 69th minute, wearing the number 11 on her shirt. In that match he already demonstrated his talent, contributing to the play of the last goal by placing a cross that one of the players from the rival team scored on his own goal.

Well, yesterday Hermoso managed to reach 100 games. She is the second Spanish player who has played the most matches, only behind Alexia Putellas, but that is not only what she achieved in the 5-0 defeat of Zambia. She made a double that keeps her as the team's top scorer, and that has helped her round off another figure, the 50 goals with the national team. Therefore, it is not surprising that she won the award for the best player of the match. But he not only scores goals, he also gives them. The former Atlético de Madrid player assisted Tere Abelleira in the first goal. “Giving the last pass to create chances and for my teammates to score is one of the things I enjoy the most,” she said after the game.

His first goal with the selection

With the national team he scored his first goal in a friendly against Russia in January 2013, in the previous Euro Cup, where he would have a leading role scoring against England and Norway. Very different was his career in the 2015 World Cup. It was the first time he had participated in the competition and his presence was limited to 84 minutes against Costa Rica.

With the arrival of Jorge Vilda to the bench, that same year, Jenni recovered stripes in the team. In the 2017 Euro Cup he played three of the four games, staying out against Austria, and in the 2019 World Cup he played everything, scoring three goals (two against South Africa and one against the United States).. However, his best scoring figure was achieved in February 2021, when the team faced Kazakhstan and achieved a 0-13 victory; five of the goals bore the Madrid stamp.

He could have surpassed fifty much earlier if he had not missed the Eurocup last year due to injury. Fortunately, Jenni was able to rejoin the team, and she did so just at the moment when the controversy surrounding Vilda broke out.. The player did not belong to the group of 15 rebels, and tried to stay out of the conflict, but the reality is that she was out of the call on several occasions, until February of this year, when she officially returned.

Key piece in the team

Without a doubt, he is a fundamental pillar in the team.. It has already been verified, and not only in front of the goal but because of the good combination he makes with players like Aitana or Alexia, with whom he shared a dressing room at Barcelona before going to Pachuca, in Mexico.

In fact, Hermoso herself recognized it after the victory against Zambia: “The connection I have with Alexia, Aitana or Mariona goes back many years. In the end you know yourself without speaking. Football is played with the feet and we know very well what we want at all times. I am lucky that, although I am no longer at Barcelona, that remains.”

Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard don't get along either well or badly. They are treated with a respectful asepsis. But three consecutive Tours in a two-way game have already established a type of relationship between them called, with capital letters, RIVALRY. It would be equivalent in cyclocross, which Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert have maintained since youth.

Rivalries… The sport has often thrived on its allure. Its protagonists have needed each other and contributed to raising their modalities to the highest levels of popularity and passion. Perhaps Leo Messi would not have been so Messi without Cristiano Ronaldo; and perhaps Cristiano would not have been so Cristiano without Messi.

A kind of inverse symbiosis that also goes for Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, at the top of Formula 1 between 1988 and 1993. They measured their engines first as ill-matched partners at McLaren and then, separately, one at Ferrari and the other at Williams.

On two wheels, riders of a roaring metallic mare, Dani Pedrosa and Jorge Lorenzo staged a personal antipathy since 2003 with both in 125 cc They didn't even look at each other, even if it was out of the corner of their eyes. They didn't even greet each other, even if it was out of commitment. In 2005, already in 250 cc, they reached the zenith of mutual hostility. “I was dominating the category and he came to take my place” (Pedrosa). “I was motivated by rivalry, and people liked it.” (Lawrence).

ethics and aesthetics

Cycling rivalry -we return to it- brings us back to Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor climbing, shoulder to shoulder, the Puy de Dôme in the 1964 Tour. It rescues Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali from the immediate pre-war and post-war periods. Two men symbolizing two Italys. One secular and leftist and another Catholic and traditional.

The three fights between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, of a ferocity that bespoke mutual animosity, pitted two disparate powers in the ring. To a handsome, provocative, eccentric, tongue-in-cheek genius (a black guy from Kentucky converted to Islam?), and a rude native of racist South Carolina with no rebellious streaks. In Ali's sharp words, an “Uncle Tom”.

Neither could Carl Lewis, elegant, exhibitionist, from a wealthy middle-class cradle, and Ben Johnson, rough, stuttering, withdrawn, an emigrant from Jamaica to Canada, be seen in painting either.. A matter of aesthetics and, given Johnson's bad habits, of ethics, although Lewis was never free from all suspicion.

Between the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the middle-distance racing rivalry between the aristocratic and aloof Sebastian Coe and the plebeian and grim Steve Ovett was something like the reproduction of the class struggle in stadiums.. A very British and literary social dialectic.

ruling party and dissidence

The rivalry in the 1990s between the suave Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat was instead a national as well as a personal feud.. They embodied the bloodless but intense fight between Ethiopia and Kenya for universal dominance in the long-distance events.

That was high politics from Africa to the world. But, in the 1980s and 1990s, Anatoli Karpov, a Russian of the immobilist old guard, and Garry Kasparov, an Azerbaijani supporter of perestroika and glasnost, waged an ideological war between the ruling party on a chessboard. and dissent. Kasparov contributed his own to checkmate the USSR.

Perhaps no rivalry as deep-rooted and long as the one starring, at the height of excellence, by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Also perhaps none so fraternal and respectful of the most exquisite rules of the most exemplary face of the sport. Novak Djokovic, younger than both, was a third in agreement; an equal guest at the most gentlemanly tennis party within the most fierce competition.

In collective sports, the rivalry, in the NBA, between the Celtics and the Lakers led basketball, at the beginning of the 1980s, to a global dimension that had not been surpassed; to an unknown expectation not only in the United States, where, until then, the competition was broadcast on a delayed basis.

The scene was commercially perfect. The East Coast (Boston) vs. the West (Los Angeles). And two men personifying in each team the best of basketball. Larry Bird, white and soberly accurate, in the Celtics. Magic Johnson, black and endowed with the gift of fantasy, in the Lakers. The formula forever opened the NBA to the world.

That disaster will remain in the history books: last year, in the last World Cup, Spain was not in any final, where swimmers from Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Chile, Bosnia, Egypt or Israel were.. It hasn't happened since 1998. This time it won't happen. This Thursday Hugo González will compete in the final of the 200-meter styles of the Fukuoka World Cup (2:03 p.m., Teledeporte) and he will also do so with options to win a medal. hope returns.

The team is still missing, with no more representatives in the finals, but at least its only star is back. González, the young man who claimed the void of Mireia Belmonte with three medals in the 2021 European Championships, was gray at the Tokyo Olympics and failed in the last World Cup, but not this time. This Wednesday, in the semifinals, he won his batch and was among the applicants with the fourth best time. One of his rivals, the Frenchman Leon Marchand, seems untouchable, especially after breaking Michael Phelps's world record in the 400-meter medley, but the rest are close..

So close that this year he has already beaten some in the NCAA. In March, after the Finals of the US university league, a splendid performance by González in the World Cup was already predicted, but as so many times there was suspense about his presence. Already a graduate in Computer Engineering from the University of Berkeley, he was asking for help to continue training there -alongside Marchand himself, for example- and the negotiations with the Spanish Federation (RFEN) were not easy, as always. On the table, once again, the possibility of his early retirement, at 24 years of age. But finally there was no drama.

“The medals are going to be fought”

With the help of the Team Spain Elite program and a flashy sponsorship -Iberia-, González continued with his preparation in the United States and the RFEN agreed to summon him for this World Cup despite not meeting their criteria. “Exceptionally” was selected and the swimmer responded this Wednesday with his pass to the final of the 200 medley meters

“The work has come out, this is a sport that is marked over time and sometimes you don't see all the work behind it, neither mine nor that of my teammates,” said the Spaniard after the semifinals, when he also dared with a prediction: “The podium? The silver and bronze are going to be fought. It will be a very fast race.”. As usual, González's strategy will consist of staying among the first in the butterfly, taking the lead in the backstroke, his specialty, and then holding out in the breaststroke and crawl.. In addition to Marchand, in these last sets the opponents to follow will be the British Tom Deam and Duncan Scott, current Olympic champion and runner-up in the 200-meter freestyle, and a specialist in styles such as the Japanese Daiya Sato, who competes at home.

González's objective was to be in the final -which also qualifies him directly for the 2024 Paris Games- and it has already been achieved, but now he wants more. A medal of his would be the first Spanish in a World Cup since 2017, when Mireia Belmonte hung three in one go. Hope returns.

nine minutes. That was the time it took for Spain to take the lead in their second World Cup match against Zambia.

Tere Abelleira scored an authentic goal from the edge of the area after a magnificent combination from the entire team. The goal was a sample of the concentration and mastery with which Jorge Vilda's girls took to the field.

As happened in the match against Costa Rica, after a few minutes Spain scored again. The second goal had the signature of Jenni Hermoso. The attacker took advantage of a cross to the far post from Alexia Putellas and managed to beat Sakala. It was somewhat very special, since the player was playing her 100th game in the national team's jersey.

Spain wanted the third since they knew that the more goals they scored, the easier it was to finish the group stage as first. Especially considering that Japan had won their second game against Costa Rica 2-0. Even so, in the first half there was no more luck, and that in minute 37 Hermoso scored again but the goal did not go up to the scoreboard because it was in an illegal position.

The Spanish team returned from the break especially animated. They wanted to enjoy and thrash. And said and done. In 1968 came the third goal that left Zambia even more without options, if they ever had them. Eva Navarro put the ball to Alba Redondo and the Levante striker scored to practically seal the game.

But Vilda's girls seem to have gotten used to scoring two by two, and two minutes later Jenni Hermoso put the fourth on the scoreboard, after the ball hit the post and the soccer player picked up the rebound and scored her personal double. It took him a long time to celebrate, since the play had to be reviewed by VAR, since the referee had initially annulled the goal, but it finally went up on the scoreboard.

And I wouldn't be the last to be checked. Almost at the end of the match, Alba Redondo scored the fifth, which gave Spain the lead in the group. Despite the great result, the team concluded the match with bad news. Athenea del Castillo felt discomfort, and despite the fact that from the bench they warned her not to force herself because there was little left for the end. The player ended up lying on the ground and having to be attended by the assists,

ZAMBIA COULD NOT DO ANYTHING

For its part, Zambia did not create too much danger. From time to time he tried to surprise Misa with plays against, but both the defense and the goalkeeper herself were very attentive to cut off the danger. In the previous one they saw themselves with the possibility of surprising and getting their first three points in this World Cup. And although in the second half they came out more focused and more willing to attack, the reality was that Spain practically locked them in their field.

The worst news for the Africans, apart from the fact that they are eliminated from the competition, was Susan Banda's injury in the 29th minute. The pivot tried to continue but it was impossible and he had to retire. Without a doubt, the loss was quite sensitive since it was one of the main dangers of the Zambian team.