The present history of Spain in 90 minutes

The crowd anticipated a comeback from a miserable 4-1 defeat in Dortmund last week. It was so palpable you could almost taste it. "We can do it!" screamed the fans. "We will do it!" screamed the players. But no one comes back  from a 4-1 deficit in the blink of an eye or without a lot of personal sacrifice.

Is this beginning to sound politically familiar yet? It dawned on me that the parallels between football and politics are inescapable.

"We have 90 minutes left," said a few players, "and that's a lot of time."

Zapatero must have thought the same thing when Paul Krugman, recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, told him that Spain's economy was headed down a slippery slope. "Krugman doesn't know anything about Spain. We are in the Champions League of world economies," averred Zapatero. Of course, this was back in 2007, and back then, Spain had come off very good years and posted a budget surplus - on paper. But the chinks in the armor were starting to show. Zapatero thought he could ride out the crisis with the money that he had on account.  

"We have a surplus of talent on our squad. We'll be able to ride this out to victory," affirmed club officials.

Then, as now, people wanted to believe. They put their trust on their public officials and wanted desperately to believe the crisis was a wave they would be able to ride back in to shore.

The match started well with Madrid on the attack and squandering three clear chances in less than 10 minutes.

I say squander because that's exactly what it was, much like the way the government squandered away the opportunity to correct the situation when it still had the chance, initiating public works of no intrinsic value simply to say that they were creating employment. 

The crowd was going wild, hoping against hope their team might pull off the miracle.

It was the same kind of hope people displayed when Zapatero decided to call elections in November of 2011. Tired of the government's lies and mismanagement, the people put all their hope on the centrist Partido Popular (PP) who, in the final months of the socialist administration, promised not to raise VAT or reduce pensions. 

But the scoreboard remained static; nothing was happening. And soon, the team fell into an all too familiar lethargy on the field, as if resigned to the futility of their pipe dream. The crowd seemed to feel it, too. The team no longer controlled the mid field so convincingly.

This too is what happened once the PP were voted in. The impetus with which they had started their administration soon petered out. Their campaign promises turned out to be empty promises when the very first thing they did was raise taxes. 

In the end, the outcome was predictable. Madrid put up a last ditch effort that came up just short, losing by a 3-4 goal aggregate. It was too little, too late. Players apologized and lamented their misfortune by stating that they had left their skin on the pitch and given it their all. The fans left disappointed and angry.

As with politics, the ones who end up suffering and footing the bill for the mismanagement caused by club officials are the fans, not the executive committee, not the managers, and certainly not the players. All will still get paid their millions, just like the public officials and bankers who dragged us into this mess in the first place. And with thick-skinned unabashedness, they will tell you they are deeply sorry.

You want to know about Spanish politics? Watch a football match, any match.