Instead, it grows ever bigger - each encounter adds yet more morbo. Paul Gascoigne's flute playing in an Old Firm game is a good example of the phenomenon, suggests Ball - Spaniards immediately understood it as a classic act of morbo. Real Madrid, meanwhile, are a powerful symbol of centralism, and of Spanish nationalism against the independence of the periphery. Real Madrid versus Barcelona is, of course, the classic case of morbo, invested with a political significance greater than any match in the world. Impressively researched though Burns's book was, it accepted these characterisations at face value.
Ball is more convincing.
He highlights some of the ways in which Real Madrid's success was utilised by Franco, and those occasions when the r gime did indeed interfere to tilt the balance in Real's favour. But he rejects that favourite Bar a allegation that the success of Madrid was built solely upon coercion, and pokes fun at the cul s' triumphalist self-perception. The Big Two aren't the only ones more realistically re-evaluated. Ball also explains how Athletic Bilbao's exclusively Basque tradition has only been maintained at the expense of the other clubs in Euskadi, which can no longer pursue such a policy and are more than a little aggrieved by Bilbao's monopolisation of Basqueness. So much for a Basque-only history.