COLUMN: La Liga’s Retro weekend was a success, and a reminder of what we’ve lost

COLUMN: La Liga’s Retro weekend was a success, and a reminder of what we’ve lost

La Liga’s first ever Retro Weekend was a lovely thing: the old kits, the walkout music, the big flashing ‘R’ for the TV replays. Villarreal dressed as Juan Roman Riquelme went to Bilbao to face Athletic Club who wore thick 1970s stripes. Beautifully nostalgic, although I imagine they flew. Now that we fully understand how climate change works, footballers fly everywhere. 

Alaves (almost) reprised Spanish football’s best ever kit from their 2001 UEFA Cup final; I imagine data protection laws now stop them from printing the name of every socio on the shirt. Sevilla won, which was very old school of them. Although, some of Atletico Madrid’s players on Saturday were so young they might genuinely have thought a kit from 2022 qualifies as retro. And, to top it off, legends such as Santi Cazorla, Iago Aspas, Kike Garcia and Christhian Stuani all appeared in their clubs’ match day squads! 

There was a lot of love for old style TV graphics and for the co-commentators such as Graham Hunter and Terry Gibson, who genuinely know stuff about Spanish football, gleaned from years of, you know, watching it. How did we survive in a world without YouTube influencers-turned-football pundits who don’t own a TV?

The referees joined in – but only as far as their outfits. Defenders weren’t allowed to crunch through the back of attackers (good thing) or use their arms for leverage while jumping in the penalty area (bad thing). Osasuna’s Jorge Herrando flopped in front of an opponent who was trying to clear the ball and was rewarded with a penalty as he covered his mouth and smirked to a teammate: very 2026. 

Not everything about the old days was better. No one is misty eyed about an eight-lane running track separating Real Sociedad’s players from their paying spectators. No one, I hope, wants to go back to suitcases of cash changing hands to encourage mid-table teams to play properly at the end of a season. You might well think today’s La Liga players are overpaid but it wasn’t very long ago that they frequently weren’t paid at all. 

It was entirely predictable that Real Madrid curmudgeonly refused to take part in a novel promotional idea from the league in which they play. Or that Barcelona, while supportive in principle, couldn’t possibly get a shirt ready without a month of conference calls to Nike’s Vice-President of Nostalgia. Rayo Vallecano would have loved to, but their kits are all hand sewn by a lady who lives round the corner, and she couldn’t do a whole new set without more notice. Their fortnightly retro contribution is obliging supporters to queue up and buy a ticket from a window at the ground.

I think Retro Weekend will be back and that Barca’s players will look delightful. After all, nostalgia is a growing business. Why: because of the pace of change in our technological era can be disconcerting and is often experienced as loss. That is in society and in football.

Obviously, footballers age and squads must develop but the cost of rapid change is a lack of identification between players and fans. Kits change but does it have to be every season? And do they have to be so expensive? And what’s in it for TV viewers when their favourite leagues shift from one broadcast platform to another? A lot of social media reaction to La Liga’s Retro Weekend from the British Isles has been reminiscence about Revista de Liga and the days of Spanish football on Sky Sports.

The classic Revista format was cancelled before La Liga took the rights away from Sky because audience research suggested magazine shows didn’t drive subscriptions. I don’t know exactly how you would conduct that research and be certain you were getting the right answers. There was an emotional connection between viewers and the terrific presenters and experts on that show. Its cancellation definitely felt like a loss. 

Let’s avoid heavying our hearts too much: La Liga right now has fantastic star players, youth system products making their way in the teams of solvent clubs, and stadiums that don’t look like they were abandoned halfway through construction. It would be lovely if they could get the TV deals right and get more people watching. Anyway, I’m off to enjoy the quarter-finals of the European Cup. Wait a minute, how come Atletico Madrid are in it, they’re not the Spanish champions?!