Jimmy Burns is an Anglo–Spanish, award winning journalist and acclaimed author with over thirty years behind him as a corespondent and reporter for publications such as The Observer, The Economist and the Financial Times. Since the mid-eighties he has devoted much of his life to writing books about South America and Spain, The Falklands War, Diego Maradona, David Beckham — and FC Barcelona. We’ve talked to the man behind the unofficial blaugrana bible, “Barça: A People’s Passion”.
First of all; what’s the latest news on Jimmy Burns? How are you, and what are you spending your time on? Any new projects?
– Well, I quit my full-time job at the Financial Times in February to free myself up as an author, journalist, and human being. I wanted to have more control over my time and to open myself creatively, if possible making more time for other people, and giving more than I get. It’s meant doing quite a lot of volunteer work for charities like the Anglo–Spanish Society and the environmental group called The Friends of Battersea Park which I am founder of, while writing articles for a variety of outlets like the Guardian and Scotsman in the UK, El Mundo in Spain etc. I continue to follow as many of Barça’s games as I can, mostly on Sky TV, when I am not in Spain, and am pursuing new book projects.
You have a new book coming out these days, entitled «Papa Spy»? Can you tell us what it’s about?
– It’s a book subtitled «Love, Faith & Betrayal in Wartime Spain». It’s the result of a five year investigation into the secret work that my late father did while working in the British embassy in Madrid in World War 2. It’s about the war of espionage and propaganda that the Allies fought against the Nazis in Spain and Portugal — a very underreported aspect of the war which Churchill considered crucial in curbing Hitler’s ambitions with regards to Gibraltar, North Africa, and the Mediterranean ports. It’s already been published in the UK to great reviews, and there is also a US and Spanish edition coming out soon. Hopefully a Norwegian might be persuaded to publish it also!
On to «Barça: A People’s Passion»; how did you come up with the title, and what does it mean to you?
– The title came to me as a result of researching the history of FC Barcelona and then following it at all its levels — management, players, fans — and realizing that it was indeed, as its motto says, much more than a club. It’s a social, cultural, and political phenomenon which is at the core of many people’s existence.
You were born in Madrid, so how did you end up writing a book about FC Barcelona?
– This is something that my poor late mother, who was from Madrid and supported Real Madrid, could never understand!
I belong to a generation that experienced the dictatorship under Franco but also happily saw a transition to the democracy we see today. Growing up as student in the 1970’s I began to take a serious interest in the politics of Spanish football and that drew me into the old rivalry of Barça vs Real Madrid. From the start I always thought that Barça spoke to me more of democracy and poetry in motion on the field and off it, and the arrival of Cruyff first as a player, and then later as a coach, fueled a growing passion for the game as it was played in the Camp Nou.
Can you tell us a little bit about the process behind writing it? How did you do your research? How long did it take you to finish it?
– I wanted to write a book about Barça that went to its very soul and in that way convey to the reader just how tied up the club is with the history, politics, and culture of Catalonia.
I spent a lot of time living and researching in Barcelona, interviewing as many people as I could, looking at documents, travelling with the fans, watching a variety of matches from local encounters to big European clashes, and making sure that I saw the El Clásico in the Camp Nou as well as the Bernabéu.
The book took me about two years to finish.
How did the people you interviewed respond to your book? Was everyone completely forthcoming? Anyone in particular that you remember as being especially forthright or evasive?
– I think I had the advantage that no one — surprisingly — had ever thought of writing a book about Barça quite like mine before. There was nothing written in English and those that were in Spanish, Catalan or in other languages were not what I would call the product of hard work, and objective reporting.
I suppose I brought an English style of detailed biography and investigative journalism to a Spanish or Catalan theme so that people generally responded well when I approached them, and they liked what I wrote.
Cruyff was difficult to get hold of, but when I finally succeeded in getting an introduction to him through a close friend, he was very forthcoming, as were most of the players and managers I talked to. There was one of the club’s official historians who was not particularly helpful because I think he felt threatened by what I was doing. Josep Luís Núñez got very angry when the book was published because I was quite critical of him, particularly for the way he ended up badly treating Cruyff.
But to be fair no one ran away from me and I got all the cooperation from the club itself that I could possibly have hoped for, given that I wanted my book to be independent and non-official.
If you had to do it all over again, is there anything you would have changed or perhaps even left out?
– Writing a book is rather like a love affair — when you are involved in writing it, you are deeply involved, to the exclusion of almost all else. When you have finished you hope and trust you have given it your best shot — you try to put it behind you, and get on with something else. I try to go through life not looking back too much, and with a book try not to rewrite them in my head. If other judge it could have been written better, then I say to them “well, you try and write it, and see what comes out”.
My personal favorite part of the book is probably about the legendary Kubala — from the capture of his signature, to all of his injuries and his somewhat special relationship with former physio Angel Mur. Do you have any favorites? Any parts of the book in particular that you especially enjoyed writing?
– Yes, Kubala and Mur were very special interviewees for me. They were both old and not too healthy and I knew I had to capture their memories before they died. So I caught them in a fading light that was still bright enough to give the book some of its best stories. Without Kubala and Mur it would have been a different book, and not so rewarding to write. I felt honoured in their presence.
I also hugely enjoyed travelling with the Barça fans across Spain, including accompanying them to the Santiago Bernabéu — it was like going into the lion’s den with all these Madrid fans shouting abuse. It was a challenge at the time but I enjoyed writing about the experience afterwards.
Kubala, Mur, the ordinary fans — each in their own way capture the soul and spirit of the club.
In the research to your book, you met with several of Barça’s former presidents and board members — how would you compare them to the current Laporta administration? You also met and interviewed Joan Laporta while he was still in opposition to former president Josep Lluís Núñez; what was your impression of him then, before he became president himself?
– I interviewed former presidents that straddled over fifty years of history, so it was a way of trying to convey some of the politics that makes Barça what it is.
They came in all shapes and sizes these presidents and their board members — right-wingers, left-wingers, rich, not so rich… Some were ideological, others pragmatic, all with a common thread: their passion about the club being something special — even a president like Enric Llaudet who fought for Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
They were pretty good at picking star players, not just foreigners but also home-grown talent, and the boards themselves were a mixture of talents — lawyers, businessmen, bankers — that helped the club grow as an institution. This pattern still persists in the Laporta administration although Laporta himself comes across as more ideological than his predecessors, demonstrating, as he has done, for an independent Catalan state.
I first met Laporta when he was a lawyer, little known outside Spain, and not among the big names one came across in Barcelona. I think he was glad to find in me a good listener, prepared to believe in his project which was to make the club more accountable to its membership and fans and give it a global reach as one of the best performing sporting institutions in the world, with a strong sense of its own identity. He was clever in the way he aligned himself with Johan Cruyff, who for many Barça fans remains a symbol of beautiful football played at its best.
Laporta’s first election campaign was an exciting one. He made Núñez his main target, painting him as an authoritarian that had damaged the club’s democratic credentials, and allowed Real Madrid to win more silverware.
You mention the motion of no confidence against Núñez in your book — in which Joan Laporta and the rest of L’Elefant Blau was an integral part of — what did you think about the motion of no confidence raised against Laporta last year?
– The great thing about the club’s motions of no confidence is that they act as a kind of check, an alarm bell if you will, when presidents allow power to go to their heads and lose touch with what people are thinking.
Laporta, I think, has become more arrogant and authoritarian but I also think he knows more about football than Núñez ever did and will probably be remembered as a more successful president. I’m personally glad that Laporta survived his motion of no confidence. He was clever enough to pick Pep Guardiola and trust him with forming a team that could win three major tournaments in one season.
Your book is full of controversies and intimate behind–the–scenes details from the corridors of Camp Nou; do you have any thoughts about what went on last year surrounding the departures of Ronaldinho, Deco and Frank Rijkaard (and Eto’o this summer)?
– I think Ronaldinho caught the Brazilian disease of partying off the pitch more than playing on it, and he dragged Deco with him, and for a while Messi too. It affected the training of all three and their performance impacted negatively on the team.
Messi was justly given a second chance and told to mend his ways, but I think Ronaldinho and Deco were thought to be expendable and told it was time for them to go. The departure of Ronaldinho and Deco provided an opportunity for a whole change of choreography within the team, and a new coach capable of exercising control and discipline. Hence the replacement of Rijkaard by Guardiola.
Eto’o scored some wonderful goals and created others at Barça, but he is not a player who liked being told what to do, and his performance varied enormously. I think he is a difficult player to build a solid team around and I was happy to see him go, as I think was Guardiola.
Why do you think it is that so many of Barça’s all-time greats seem to leave through the back door?
– They get too big for their boots and forget that their main mission is to inspire a team to work together and well.
Time’s up for Joan Laporta next summer, any thoughts about the presidential elections? Sandro Rosell seems to be a strong candidate?
– Laporta is a tough act to follow and even he has not been finding it easy to choose a successor. There has ben quite a lot in-fighting within his board which in a sense plays into Rosell’s hands as the alternative candidate. He is not exactly an outsider. His father was a senior official of the club and Rosell himself has a reputation as someone who knows a lot about the game, how it should it be played and how it should be marketed.
Having worked with Laporta in the past, Rosell knows the current president’s strengths and weaknesses, and will probably bring out some skeletons from the past during his election campaign. One strong card that Laporta has is that he was in charge when Barça won its three cups, but Rosell at present looks the favourite to succeed him.
If we leave the politics for a moment, what do you think about today’s Barça? Is it even better than Cruyff’s «Dream Team»?
– I think the context in which football as a game is played is constantly evolving so comparisons are difficult to make. Players are much more pressurized now and face a bigger challenge on and off the pitch. But I think Barça today, like Cruyff’s ‘Dream Team’, has a great mix of foreign stars and home-grown talent and the football played is poetry in motion — on a good day the best you can see, even in your dreams!
How about Leo Messi? Will he succeed the likes of Ronaldinho, Pelé and Maradona?
– Messi has to be up there already among they great players of football history and you mention three of them — whether he will become the greatest, I have my doubts. I don’t question his talent, but what worries me is his physical vulnerability as a small person who had to be built up, although I think he is better managed than Maradona ever was in Barcelona and I think that is why he has stayed there.
And to round off; what do you think about Barça’s chances of repeating the success from last season?
– It’s tougher now in La Liga because Real Madrid are much better this season — and Barça has had an awkward start in the Champions League with even bigger challenges ahead. Factor in a year in which the World Cup puts special demands on some of Barça’s star players, and the chances of repeating the triple of last season look slim. Barça might just win one cup however! It would be great to have them winning the Champions League in the Bernabéu. One can only hope!
