My Two Cents on 2G Scam - An Elaborate Post

Here's a more elaborate & clear post, unlike my previous post, on my understanding of how the licenses and spectrum had been awarded, and my opinions on the different aspects of the 2G scam.

History :
Before 1999, the telecom license was granted on a fixed amount. On 1999, they introduced a system where the telecom operators who would be granted license had to pay a one time "entry fee" which could be fixed by the Department of Telecom, and then share a percentage of their "Adjusted Gross Revenue" as their license fees & spectrum fees every year.

The details of this revenue sharing with effect from April 1 2004 (I could not find the details of the percentages followed before this, nor do I think it would be necessary for my arguments) is given below :
With effect from 1st April 2004, the license fee, excluding spectrum charges for cellular mobile telephone services is 10% of "Adjusted Gross Revenue" (AGR) for Metro Service Areas and category `A' circles, 8% of AGR for category `B' Circles and 6% of AGR for category `C' Circles.

The old cellular licensees (1st and 2nd CMTS licensees - the operators who got licenses between 1994-1998, who were paying a fixed amount every year as license & spectrum fees as against a percentage of revenue shares) in telecom circles have been given additional concession for a period of 4 years w.e.f. 1st April 2004 in the license fee. The license fee, excluding spectrum charges for old cellular licensees (1st and 2nd CMTS licensees) in telecom circles is 8% of "Adjusted Gross Revenue" (AGR) for category `A' circles, 6% of AGR for category `B' Circles and 5% of AGR for category `C' Circles for a period of 4 years w.e.f. 1st April 2004.

In addition to license fees, the CMTS licensees pay spectrum charges on revenue share basis of 2% of AGR for spectrum up to 4.4 MHz. For spectrum beyond 4.2 MHz up to 6.2 MHz, they are required to pay additional charges @1% of AGR. For spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz, which shall be given if the subscriber base is more than 5 Lacs, they are required to pay additional 1% of AGR. Allocation of spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz is subject to availability; however, spectrum allocation would be limited to a maximum of 10MHz + 10MHz per operator in a service area. Such additional allocation could be considered only after a suitable subscriber base, as may be prescribed, is reached.

This is the model which had been followed by A Raja while handing out the licenses during 2007-08 period.

The Scam :
The major misdoings by the Department of Telecom as far as I am aware, are :

1. The entry fee for the telecom operators who were given license & spectrum was fixed at Rs 1651 crores in 2001. The same entry fee was charged in 2007-08 too. The Comptroller & Auditor General's (CAG's) report says that this has resulted in the loss of 176000 crore rupees to the exchequer, the figure quoted worked out by looking at the prices at which the 3G spectrum was auctioned at.
2. The DoT (Department of Telecom) had announced onSeptember 24, 2007 that new licenses & spectrum would be distributed, and those who wanted to apply for the same were supposed to do it on or before Ocotober 1 2007. But then, the cutoff date was abruptly advanced to September 25 2007 - less than 24 hours after it was announced that new sets of licenses & spectrum would be granted. All applications which arrived after September 25 were summarily rejected.
3. Even among the vastly reduced number of applications on account of point(2), the First Come First Served policy was not followed. A few companies were favoured immensely.
4. Licenses granted to a lot of dud/dummy companies - companies which did not conform to the minimum requirements to be met by a licensee. In fact, it is being said that almost 85 out of the 122 licenses granted during this period were given to dud companies.
5. The DoT went ahead with its decision to grant license and allot spectrum without consulting the Cabinet.

My Take On This:
So far, the only point which is being highlighted by the media, and which is on everybody's lips is point(1). But I feel it is the other four points which are graver than the first point.
First of all, I do not understand the concept of having a fixed "entry fee" and then going ahead and charging a percentage of the gross revenue of the operators every year as the license & spectrum fees. Well, some might argue that such "entry fees" are required lest the operator fails to amass huge revenues every year - which will definitely not be because of lack of effort from the operators, as they would definitely try and make profits. They are businessmen after all!! - In such a case, don't you think that this entry fee must be minimal?

Auctioning has almost always favoured the wealthy. The auctioning of this entry fee would have favoured the existing operators, or ones who have a flourishing business in other areas from which capital can be diverted here. Any new player's chances would have drastically reduced. The side effects could be lesser competition, lessening the growth of the telecom industry, milder price-wars and so on which would have directly affected the common citizens. There is no need to mention that the auctioning process would have raised the entry fee to be paid by the operators, and any increase in initial costs/investment would result in increased tariffs. So, when a model is in place which would give higher revenue to the Government when the operators' gross revenue is high, is it prudent for the Government to act like a greedy, profit making organization tossing away the concept of "level playing field for all"? Many say that the Government has given away precious national resource for throwaway prices, but isn't there a model already in place which ensures that the Government is going to reap revenue forever from this scarce natural resource?

Another argument, (raised in the comments here), is that the license & spectrum purchased at Rs 1651 crore entry fee by some companies were in turn sold for around 4 times the amount paid. Technically speaking, a stake in the license holding companies was bought and not the license itself. And the companies who did this were companies who shouldn't have got the licenses in the first place - the dud companies I mentioned in point(4) - whose primary
purpose to get this license was to flaunt it to interested foreign telecom operators and make money by inducing them to buy a stake in their company, thus allowing them entry into Indian market. One cannot actually say that the entire money paid was the actual market rate of the "entry fee". It may also be that some other companies were also competing to buy a stake in that company, which would have definitely driven the price of acquisition up.

I still say that, compared to the other bungles of the DoT, the "loss to the exchequer" is not as grave as it is made out to be. It is the other issues like favouritism & flouting the norms while giving out licenses that needs to be focussed on, punished and eliminated from the system first.

My two cents on the 2G scam.

As we all know, a major debate that has been raging on today is about the 2G spectrum & license allotment scam. The major point being bandied about is the supposed Rs 1.76 lakh crore revenue loss to the Government (as calculated by Comptroller & Auditor General [CAG] of India) because of the First Come First Served policy followed by the Government in granting licenses & spectrum to operators. This is the point I am going to discuss in this blog of mine. Of course, I could be completely wrong and would be happy to correct myself if any flaws in my viewpoint are pointed out.

Telecom sector was opened to the private operators on 1994, and there existed a fixed fee for each license then. Then, came the revenue shared license regime in 1999, wherein the operators which were given license had to pay a certain percentage of their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) annually as their license fees & spectrum fees. I believe, the practice of granting licenses on a First Come First Served basis also started from around this time itself, which is what was followed during 2007-08 too - which is in focus in the news nowadays. In 1999, very few licenses and very little spectrum was granted as opposed to 07-08 when many licenses and much of the spectrum was given, and thus the spotlight on the 07-08 period.

In Ratan Tata's letter in reply to Rajeev Chandrasekharan's open letter to him, he mentions that, applying the loss-calculation method of CAG (which they based on the bidding model followed while allocating 3G spectrum) in the license-granting done by the Government in 1999, a supposed loss of Rs 50000 crore had occured then too. But he also mentions that because of the revenue sharing model adopted instead of the bidding model, there has been much growth in the industry and reduced tariffs.

This thought of his provoked me into thinking, are we right in crying foul over the hypothetical loss of revenue to the state exchequer? Was it completely evil to not open the license & spectrum to bidding? The answer, I feel, is no. We must first remember that our Government should not act as a profit making organisation, but must act in a way so as to help the citizens of the country, to preserve equality, to give right of opportunity to everyone. Building networks and telephony infrastructure itself involves humungous amount of money, and, on top of that, if there had been a bidding war for licenses & spectrum from the beginning, we probably would not have seen the likes of Spice Telecom, and probably even Bharti-Airtel in India today, as they had lesser capital to begin with when compared to the likes of Reliance & Tata, who had many other large profit making businesses of their own and were already financially very strong, and thus would have been easily outbid. This would have resulted in lesser cellular operators and lesser competition, and also much higher investment for the operators whose bids would have been successful, as they would have had to pay the spectrum & license amount upfront to the Government. Less Competition plus High Investment equals high call rates. And higher call rates would have discouraged people from using cellphones, thus hampering the growth of this industry, resulting in lesser growth of employment opportunities, poorer poverty alleviation, and so on. But this has not happened because the Revenue sharing model followed while granting licenses has helped such smaller companies immensely, and reduced their initial capital investment by a high degree. And because of the high competition that spawned up, thanks to the above said license & spectrum granting model, we live today in the 0.5 paise per second tariff era.

But this doesn't mean that the Government would have completely lost out if the industry grew big (which it has done today). The Revenue Sharing model has effected in more revenue for the coffers of the Government as the industry has been growing, i.e. the more gross revenue for the operators, the more money the Government gains. The "flawed" model that we have been crying about, the CAG has been complaining about, actually cannot get any better, isn't it? The farsightedness of the people who have brought in this system must be wholeheartedly commended.

Now, let us come to the particular case of license & spectrum allotment in 2007-08. Here, A Raja and his cronies have been accused of being partial in granting spectrum & licenses. They have allegedly favoured Reliance Communications the most, according to the report of CAG, by granting them licenses and spectrum ahead of the people/groups who had applied before them. Also, due diligence was not carried put while handing out licenses to new companies, with 85 out of 122 licenses given not meeting the criteria set by the Department of Telecom while granting licenses. Now, these are the points we need to cry and protest about, and not the supposed loss to the exchequer. The perpetrators, who arm-twisted the system to favour a specific group, and the benefactors of this are the ones that must be looked down upon and brought to book, rather than blaming the revenue sharing model that has helped our country in general, and telecom industry in particular, so immensely.

Roundup of the latest gameweek.

TGIS!!
Nah, the last word doesn't stand for Saturday, nor Sunday. Thank God It's Spain - that's what it is. The ruckus created around the scheduling harakiri of the Osasuna Barca match could have ended up with Barcelona forfeiting their match to Osasuna. The RFEF (Real Federación Española de Fútbol) had happily assured Barcelona that their match is postponed (due to the air strike) to Sunday without consulting Osasuna on this matter, and when they got back to Barcelona at 1500GMT saying that the schedule is unchanged, they were left with less than 4 hours to assemble their squad and make the 480 km journey. The impeccable professionals as they are, the Barca squad assembled quickly on short notice and they left on the 1600GMT scheduled AVE train which goes to Madrid from Barcelona, with Pedro Rodriguez missing out on performing the famous DDLJ scene by unfortunately arriving at the station only a few seconds before its departure. The team got down at Zaragoza and made the remaining 180 km journey by bus, thus arriving at Pamplona at 1902GMT, 2 minutes after the scheduled kickoff. A 480 km journey in only 3 hours!! An unimaginable feat in India even if one is travelling by Kingfisher's Deccan Airlines. Heck, I take more than 3 hours to travel even 30 km in Bangalore. Thank God It's Spain! The Osasuna Barcelona match, which was postponed by 45 minutes, ended with the score reading 0-3, and no prizes for guessing who won.

By the way, I feel it was some Madridista who set this all up. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if it turns out to be true, after all Real Madrid has cronies everywhere, who are on their toes to help the club, like the Madrid City Council which financially helped Real Madrid to wipe out their old debts by buying their training ground for an exorbitant amount in 2001. Shame on you Yeddy. Forget A Raja, you couldn't even beat Real Madrid? No donuts for you next time.

I expected better from Valencia against Madrid, they had the perfect opportunity to earn my eternal appreciation by winning their two matches this week - against Madrid & Manchester United. They did pretty well, but the red card to Albelda turned the match in Madrid's favour & Ronaldo found his shooting boots at the appropriate time to dispatch Valencia to a 2-0 defeat. I hope Valencia doesn't bottle up against United. Meanwhile, Villareal continued to stay afloat in the higher, ethereal levels of La Liga reserved only for Madrid & Barca with a 1-0 win against last year's title pretenders at this stage - Sevilla. I think nobody has told them yet that SUBMARINES ARE SUPPOSED TO FREAKING SINK!!

The Basque derby between Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao was won by the former (yippeee!!). A former Liverpool lad - the 19 year old Mikel San Jose had a hand in both goals, literally in the first which resulted in a penalty which Xabi Prieto coolly finished, and a failed clearance for the second, which ended up on the back of his own net - Xabi Prieto again providing the cross. In between, the exciting youngster Antoine Griezmann managed to hit the bar from 2 yards out with an open goal begging to be hit to, when a little bit of composure would have done the trick. Probably, he thinks he can live up to the billing of being an "exciting youngster" by being permanently excited. Real Sociedad are now sitting at a fanciful 6th place, and I'm going to enjoy that while it lasts.

EPL:
Monday night (or Tuesday morning - whichever way you want to call it) I sat down to watch Liverpool - Aston Villa match with former Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier returning to Anfield, but representing the visiting team. I switched on the TV, armed with 2 hours of sleep gained at office, and discovered something eerie. The Cablewallah was probably testing a new sort of pendulum which swings to one side for around 12 seconds, and to the other for around 5, and tied the wire connecting the switch giving cable signals to our locality to that pendulum. It was quite amusing watching the TV screen come alive for exactly 12.3095 seconds, and go blip (when I was young - probably around 3-4 years old, whenever I used to see this screen on TV I used to think that it were little insects who had gone inside it) for exactly 4.9978 seconds, and seeing this cycle repeat over and over and over again. Yup, I timed it, it was helluva more fun than watching Long Ball Roy's team play, which actually won 3-0 without either Gerrard or Torres on the pitch!!

Needless to say, all the goals arrived during one of those 5 second intervals. For the first one, I recollect seeing Meireles thumping the ball from a corner into the box, Skrtel heading it back into the penalty area, Ngog diving, and at that precise moment, the insects invaded my TV screen. I was screaming "Penalty" in my head, wondering who pushed Ngog. When the insects left, I saw Pool players celebrating and hugging Ngog, and I started wondering how on earth can a penalty be awarded, argued upon, referee abused, penalty taken and scored all in a matter of 5 seconds. Then the replay was aired - I saw the punt from the corner, Skrtel heading, and Ngog, oh I see, diving to head the ball coming his way, and, insects again.

With what I could make out from the match, I believe Babel played well, Maxi Rodriguez learnt to shoot, and Stephen Ireland was woeful. The player of the season for Manchester City seems to have lost his fire somewhere on his way to Villa Park from Eastlands. He probably needs to start playing for his country to rediscover his lost desire. Ireland and Ireland are looking so made for each other right now!!

Elsewhere, Nasri's double, Beckford's head, and frozen Blackpool pitch ensured Arsenal went on top of the standings, followed by United who are a point behind not having played this weekend because of the unplayable pitch conditions of Blackpool, and the ever declining Chelsea who are a further point behind.

By the way, it was a loooong time since the notorious, tragically humurous board of Newcastle United played a joke. Christening their 118 year old stadium with a beautiful name - "SportsDirect.com @ St. James' Park Stadium" was 1 year ago. They pulled off one this week - The manager Chris Hughton was sacked. I hope they are not done yet and pull off another one by hiring me in his place.

Serie A:
Serie A is not EPL. Chievo is not Blackpool. Their match against Roma went ahead despite the pitch being worse than a haphazardly dug up Bannerghatta Road. But, after taking a 2-0 lead, Roma have only themselves to blame for allowing Chievo back into the match and drop 2 valuable points. That is particularly hard to digest for Giallorossi given the fact that bitter rivals Lazio are sitting pretty at 2nd position, a cool 7 points ahead, after defeating last year's champions Inter Milan. I don't know why Inter coach Rafa Benitez sets up his defensive line further up the pitch, and expects his 35 year old defenders and 34.9 year old defensive midfielders to hare back like Usain Bolt every time the opposition counter-attacks, and still stay absolutely fresh for 90 minutes and not concede a goal, scoring some themselves at the opposite end. I suspect Bryan Adams' "18 till I die" is his favourite song, and the source of inspiration for his tactics.

Brescia's board thinks that their team, which just got promoted to top flight this year , is mighty enough to sweep away the table toppers AC Milan with just their little fingers. So when they were shockingly defeated 3-0 by Milan, they were terribly upset and promptly sacked their coach. Juventus, coming after an unglamorous exit from Europa Cup in the group stages itself, kept themselves alive in the title race defeating Catania 3-1 away.

The Monday night match between 4th placed Napoli and 6th placed Palermo was won by Napoli, courtesy a Maggio goal assisted by former Palermo man, and my star of the Serie A season so far, Edinson Cavani. When he was bought for 16 million Euros by Napoli from Palermo, I scratched my head trying to figure out why Napoli stupidly spent so much for this non-starter for Uruguayan national team. It turns out I was the idiot. He has been a revelation this season, dovetailing extremely well with Ezequiel Lavezzi & Marek Hamsik, forming a lethal attacking triumvirate for Napoli. As of now, Cavani is the joint highest scorer in Serie A and is looking every cent worthy of his 16 million Euros price tag.

Europa League Group K Match 2 Dec 2010: Steaua Bucuresti vs Liverpool

Stadionul Steaua : Steaua Bucuresti 1; Liverpool FC 1. A non-glamorous match, but an important match nevertheless for a Reds supporter.

The opening 15 min minutes offered nothing, and just as I was about to doze off came the first chance, and it fell to Steaua. A pinpoint cross found Bicfalvi free right at the face of the goal, and with the goal at his mercy, he could only head over. 4 minutes later, Jovanovic showed how it's done. It started off with a long punt to Babel, who headed it to Joe Cole, who passes it to Jovanovic, who dealt with some defenders who'd closed on him and passed it to Babel who was running down the right flank. Babel then made some dummies, wrong footing the defender covering him and made space to deliver a cross, which arrived perfectly for the unmarked Jovanovic to head into the far corner of the goal.

I've always maintained that Babel must be used as a right winger rather than a striker or a left winger, and yesterday's performance added credence to it. He always looked sharper yesterday when going down the right, and his crosses have always been way better than many who are currently in Liverpool. He has got pace, which is a trait one looks for in wingers in modern day football, and he also tries dummying and wrong footing defenders, which ends up pathetically most of the time, but atleast he tries, the intent is there. With more opportunities he could get better at it. He also has a phenomenal long range shot. What he does not have is the intelligence to make a run at the opportune moment, and his imperfection in playing one-twos - he either passes it late or hits the ball too hard. This last skill doesn't seem to be required now - Roy Hodgson is at helm. And Jovanovic? He could very well be Dirk Kuyt Part-2. His reaction & gestures after the goal, which I interpreted as "I love Liverpool. And I'm here to stay, not go away." which is a good sign to see, especially when people are predicting a catastrophic season for Liverpool.

After the goal, in typical Roy Hodgson style, Liverpool started sitting back, content with only defending and hacking the ball clear hoping Babel would get the ball in control and launch a successful counter attack, which he nearly did in the 26th minute. A clearance, from Martin Kelly?, should have been easily dealt by the Steaua defender who comfortably got underneath the ball, but misjudged his header, and to make matters worse lost his balance too, thus allowing Babel to snatch the ball and run clear down the left. He then placed an unerring pass to Joe Cole who arrived in the box, and instead of the shot past the goalkeeper which should have followed, he ended up horribly misjudging the pace of the ball, and the chance was lost. Steaua did start dominating possession after Jovanovic's goal but threats arrived mainly from the wings. The Liverpudlian full backs and centre backs though dealt with many of them comfortably, and though Steaua got 8 corners in the first half, compared to Liverpool's one, they could not create any good chance except one towards the end of the half, and what a chance it was!! A Steaua player attacking from the left wing arrived in the box beating Kelly and placed a decent low pass to Stancu who was just outside the 6 yard box. But he put his shot wide of the left hand post with a gaping goal in front of him.

The second half started with Angelov replacing Bicfalvi, and he made a very positive impact for Steaua. Suddenly, Steaua started controlling the midfield and started looking as the superior side, with Angelov at the heart of their many moves. They had a few shots at goal from a long distance and placed a few dangerous through balls which were desperately intercepted by Liverpool defenders. The wings were still the main source of Steaua's attack, and a good chance was carved out from the left with Gerardo Alves' decent header after an excellent cross only finding Pepe Reina's hands who collected it comfortably. But Pepe was not in such a confident mood ten minutes later when he let a tame header from Eder Bonfim squirm under his hands to gift Steaua an equaliser.

Pepe Reina, who has been a very reliable goalkeeper since he joined Liverpool, which was highlighted better when he was the only solid rock behind an unhelping, shaky defence last season, has been out of sorts this season. His confidence while stepping out of his line for crossed balls, holding on to high balls played into his area have all been short of his usual standards. The howler against Arsenal in the first league match didn't help, nor did his howlers for Spain in their friendly against Argentina in Buenos Aires early in the season. But instead of bouncing back strongly from such poor displays, his confidence has been ebbing away. Probably a few words of encouragement from our "man-management expert, unlike Benitez" manager might have helped, but looking at Pepe's performances I believe Roy has failed at it, as he has done in a number of other things. The lack of wins and constant pounding at his goal by the opposition because of Roy's liking of his team sitting back and soaking up the pressure can only add to his misery, which certainly has been battering his confidence of late. I sincerely hope he'll be back to his best sooner than later, as we need him so, more so now when our top 2 defenders Carragher & Agger have been injured.

After Bonfim's equaliser, Liverpool got up from their slumber and started attacking with verve, and pressured the Steaua defence for the next 5-10 minutes. A Kyrgiakos header from a Dani Pacheco corner which hit the cross bar was the best chance they conjured in this period of time. After this short spurt of attacking play, it was back to good old Roy style of sitting back and defending. Steaua attacked for the remainder of the match creating some half chances which fizzed away and a very good chance which Stancu shot just wide. The match tapered out to a draw, and as the other match in the group between FC Utrecht & Napoli also ended in a draw, but a thrilling 3-3 draw unlike this one, Liverpool has gone through to the next pre-quarterfinals with still a match left in this group.

Liverpool's Performance :

The defence did well, though they let 2 free headers for Bicfalvi in the 1st half, and Gerardo Alves in the 2nd, and that chance of Stancu at the end of 1st half. Considering it was 18 year old Danny Wilson's first match, he did pretty well. He showed very good composure and looks like he has a very bright future. Martin Kelly was solid in defence, but was uninspiring in attack, which a fullback is supposed to do in today's football. Being only 19 years of age, he has time on his side and can only get better. Aurelio is still some way away from his best form, and it was showing yesterday. It was an average performance from him. Kyrgiakos should take much of the blame for allowing that free header of Bicfalvi and the glorious chance of Stancu. Though in the attacking third, his header which hit the crossbar once again showed us how effective he could be in setpieces for Liverpool, and can add a new dimension to our very average attack.

The midfield went missing yesterday. The central midfielders Shelvey and Poulsen were invisible for most of the game. No wonder Steaua dominated possession. The 18 year old Shelvey atleast is young, and has some way to go before he can dish out good performances, but Poulsen, a Roy signing, should have done better. It is increasingly looking like a very pathetic signing, and 5 and a quarter million down the drain, not to mention the wages too. Among the wingers, Jovanovic looked lively and good, scoring in the first half, but he disappeared in the second. His replacement, the 19 yr old Eccleston showed some promise. Pacheco had a game to forget, and apart from his excellent corner kicks and good composure on the ball, he showed nothing worthy to talk about. But the 19 year old "El Asasin" who won the Golden Boot award in the UEFA U-19 championships, surely is a good talent, and needs to be given more playing time to improve if we do not want him to be wasted in the way Babel was.

Joe Cole had a very very poor outing. Less said the better. Right from missing a glorious chance to send Liverpool 2-0 up in the first half, to playing misplaced passes when presented with good counter-attacking opportunities, he was downright abject.

Babel though, had a good game. He was strong in the air winning many of the long balls (sigh!) punted upfield by defenders, created 2 good opportunities, one of which was converted, and placed some good crosses. He must have acquitted himself well with this performance.

El Clasico of 29 Nov 2010

Camp Nou : Barcelona 5, Real Madrid 0. A very well deserved scoreline. And Jose Mourinho suffers the biggest defeat of his illustrious career. A very satisfying night for the blaugrana & anti-madridistas and one to forget for the biggest club on earth.

Barcelona started off unsurprisingly as the livelier side and most of the game was played in Real Madrid's half. Initially I felt that Real Madrid employed a decent enough tactic - man mark the Barcelona's midfielders and don't allow them to pass. But it is to the credit of Barcelona midfield generals that they were unperturbed by such personal attention and went about their job with ease. One thing I observed was, to prevent the man-marking Madrid players from intercepting their passes, they were hitting their passes hard, and what ball control the Barca players displayed!! Hard hit passes are damn difficult to control, and the Barca players were controlling it as though it was as natural to them as Didier Drogba diving.

Ah, this reminds me how they've grown and become more lethal than that team which played against Chelsea 2 years ago. Chelsea then, had closed down on the Barca midfield players stifling them, and the hard-hit passes were not a part of the Barca armoury back then, thus, becoming ineffective against such a tactic (though they went thru to the finals in the end). The beauty of hitting passes hard is, even if you get a small space in between the opposition players, you can squeeze a pass through fast enough before the opposition has time to intercept it. But passing is the easier part, controlling it perfectly is one hell of a job, and Barca players showed us how to do it with grace and elan yesterday.

Coming to the match, it all started with the lovely curling shot by Messi which bounced off the post, not dissimilar to the disallowed goal of Ronaldo in the recent friendly against Spain, only that this one was much more elegant and difficult. Then you had the first goal coming from the work of the magical twins - Xavi and Iniesta. There seems to be an eerie sort of telepathic communication between these two, and it came to the fore once again yesterday, Iniesta hitting a hard through ball to pick out Xavi. It missed Xavi by the littlest of margins, but a failed attempt to intercept it by Marcelo presented Xavi with a tap in chance, which he did perfectly, avoiding the onrushing Casillas. The next goal came from super play from David Villa. A long cross across the pitch from the right channel found Villa free on the left. He still had work to do taking on Ramos. He slowly pushed into the box, went to the byline and crossed, which Casillas could only get a hand to, and the ball fell kindly to Pedro who had made a run into the box shaking away from his marker Marcelo, and he made no mistakes in tapping the ball in. All of this within the first 20 minutes of play, and Madrid, who had hardly mustered any attack of their own, except a deflected shot of Di Maria, found themselves staring down a possible big-margin defeat. Barcelona stepped off the gas for the rest of the first half, and except for the Ronaldo free kick which was agonisingly close, there were just 2 other talking points in the first half.

The first was the Ronaldo - Guardiola incident , in which Ronaldo was a bit unlucky I feel. The ball went out of play, kicked out by a Barca player and Pep was at hand and took the ball. Ronaldo requested Pep for the ball, but Pep was reluctant and was looking at the referee to direct him whom to give the ball to, when it was clear that it was a Madrid throw in. Thus when Pep turned his hand away from Ronaldo and threw the ball towards the general direction of the referee, an already frustrated Ronaldo slightly pushed Guardiola. All the brouhaha which followed was unfortunately aimed at Ronaldo, though one can say it was equally Pep's fault too. From a different perspective, one can say the way Barca players reacted to that "act of disrespect" by Ronaldo towards their coach clearly shows how much they love their coach which is a good sign to see in any sporting team/setup.
The second one was the penalty claim when Ronaldo was supposedly brought down by Valdes. Well, in today's non-video technology aided decision making process in football, lots of blatant penalty claims go unrewarded. But yesterday's was definitely not an obvious one. I could not gauge properly as to who had a touch of the ball, but although Ronaldo had a clear control of the ball, I felt Valdes did get a touch of it, and it would have been harsh if the penalty had been awarded to Real.

The second half also started with Barca appearing as the livelier and more dangerous side, inspite of the introduction of Lass Diarra in place of the ineffective Ozil to break up Barca's midfield play, and they were again rewarded with 2 goals in the opening 15 minutes. Two sublime through balls by Messi, overshadowed by Villa's excellent timing of his run for the first goal, and supreme finishing for the second, put the match beyond Real madrid's grasp. What followed was Madrid doing damage control coupled with Barca stepping off the gas again. A few attempts by Real to keep ball and eke out chances resulted in nothing. Apart from a few free kicks from dangerous positions, Barca defence dealt with the paltry & insipid Real Madrid attacking threat comfortably. Arbeloa, a defensive full back, was brought in place of Marcelo, an attacking full back, which clearly showed Real's intention of shoring up its defence rather than have a go at Barca and try to make a good fist of this match. Barca was quite happy keeping possession rather than try and create more chances. Only Messi was trying hard to get a goal for himself, trying many of his mesmerising zig-zag runs which all ended up with nothing. On one such occassion, he had a perfect opportunity to set up a free unmarked Villa for his hat-trick, but chose unwisely to shoot, with no returns. Then came the Barca substitutions - all 3 goal scorers replaced with Krkic, Keita & Jeffren. Krkic had 2 good opportunities to get on the scoresheet but couldn't convert any - one, a stinging shot but straight at Casillas who parried it away, and the other, losing balance when he was put clean through. But he made amends (as though that was necessary) by providing a neat low cross after some good work down the right channel taking on Arbeloa, which Jeffren promptly buried past Casillas, triggering celebrations all around Nou Camp. There was still time for further humiliation of Real Madrid when Messi was hacked down from behind in a distasteful, unsporting manner by a lunging Lassana Diarra & a frustrated Sergio Ramos. Ramos then went ahead and pushed Puyol on his face who came to confront him, and was promptly red carded by the referee. Thankfully Messi was back on his feet, and though he was limping, no major injury appears to have happened to him.

Messi's theatrics :
Theatrics and play acting is something you associate Ronaldo with, rather than Messi. But yesterday, it was Messi's turn to show his abominable side. The play acting during his flare-up with Carvalho was particularly abhorrent and unbecoming of what he stands for, and was deservedly yellow-carded for it.

Star of the Show :
Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez. "Err, who's he?" you may ask. He was the referee yesterday, and it was a near perfect performance from him and the linesmen, from getting the decisions right to the handling of tense situations. In today's world where referees & linesmen get a lot of stick for even average performances, we must also acknowledge their performance when they have a good day out on the pitch. Kudos to Senor Gonzalez and the linesmen for giving us an opportunity to talk only about football and not snarl at controversial decisions which have almost become omnipresent today.

What went wrong for Real Madrid?
Well, according to me,

1. Not parking the bus. The man-marking strategy was a total failure - Barca players had to take care of only 1 opposition player. Beat him, and you gain acres of space to do your magic, or worse - in case of strikers, run off your marker's shoulder - that way you beat offside trap as well as your marker at the same time.
2. Ozil, Benzema and Ronaldo always stayed up front hoping for a quick counter attack, and never dropped back to support their defensive midfield of Khedira & Alonso. Thus, though on paper Madrid were a 5 man midfield, Barca's 3 were able to boss easily.
3. David Villa. He has settled into this team very quickly and seems to be in sync with his teammates, probably as he'd played with them regularly in the national team, unlike last year's expensive flop Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Villa's clever runs away from his markers & beating the offside traps did the most damage to Real yesterday, apart from, of course, his stupendous finishing ability.
4. Absence of Higuain. Looking at yesterday's match where Real hardly had any meaningful possession, it might not have been as great a factor as the others. But he is better than Benzema in many ways. He is quicker (which is a major trait if you want to play conter-attacking football), has played more with this team (and thus has a better understanding with his teammates than Benzema), and is definitely more confident with the ball and in front of the goal than Benzema. He has become an important part of this galactico team, and has proved that he has that zing in him which can produce a magical moment which could alter the course of a match. Well if Benzema also has that magic in him, he still has to prove it - in La Liga atleast.
5. Playing both Khedira and Alonso in the midfield. Well, none is a tough tackling midfielder, which is exactly what you need to disrupt Barcelona's play. Inter's Cambiasso last year and Chelsea's Essien 2 years ago were successful in doing so. I expected Mourinho, him being acknowledged as a "master tactician" by many, to play Lassana Diarra instead of Khedira in the midfield. In hindsight, I don't believe it would have been very effective anyways, as evident from the next point I am going to make, but still it would definitely have been much much better than playing Khedira in that position. I wonder what has happened to Fernando Gago, though. When last seen, he had the right build to have made this game more physical.
6. The referee. No no, I'm not saying his decisions were against Real Madrid, nay, I must say this was one of the bestest refereeing I have seen in recent times, which deserves to be showered many more praises if you add the fact that this was a very very high tension, high pressure match with the crowd breathing down the ref's neck. But brandishing yellow cards for even the softest of fouls actually plays into the hands of the pass and move peppered with many one-twos style of play of Barcelona players. A slight misjudgement while tackling, and you end up in the ref's books. When playing with such a referee on the field, you tend to be less physical and less confident while tackling, fearing that you'll be carded. The Xabi Alonso & David Villa yellow cards were perfect examples, which even in the Champions' League would have been just an uncarded foul, unless it was a repeat offence by the fouling player.
   

All in all, a very good match, and though it is still early to say who'll win the La Liga, more so with only 2 points difference between the two sides, it must be agreed that Barcelona are deserved leaders at this stage of the season.