When two men are talking about soccer, 99% of the time, the conversation will end either with a fist exchange or with one of them basically ending the conversation because he is out of humor and he can’t take it anymore. Rivalry is basically one of the biggest things when talking about soccer. You always want the best for the team you support and you will defend it with your life. Some people are more competitive than others, but all true passionate soccer fans have that inside themselves. Your team can never lose a match without getting robbed and never gets helped by the referees when beating the rival team. Rivalry games are the best, for example, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, Juventus vs. Milan, Bayern Munich vs. Borussia Dortmund, Benfica vs. Porto, Chelsea vs. Manchester United, and in my country Saprissa vs. Liga Deportiva Alajuelense. The hype you get the whole week before your team plays against their biggest rival that weekend is totally indescribable. From discussing and betting money with your friends to reading your teams and the rival’s team pre news or pre thoughts saying the best about their team and how they’ve come more prepared for the game.

The bias is always, always there. Internet news, magazines, newspaper news, own team advertisements, TV advertisements, and even conversations are fully surrounded by bias. This because you only say good things about your team, never about the other, that is like not being super fan or something.

Recently, on November 6th, Barcelona played Sevilla on a very controversial game, with Barcelona getting the win 2-1 in a very close and “rough” game during the whole 90 minutes played.

 

These two articles were published with a two-day difference. They talk about the same match, the one mentioned before. Let’s play a quick game here. The two articles above are from two different Spanish sports magazines. One is from “Marca” who is known for being a big Real Madrid supporter, and the other one is from “Mundo Deportivo”, who is a big Barça supporter. Before I tell you which one is which, try to guess it just by looking at the title and the picture; it really isn’t difficult at all.

Done? Pretty easy right? I hope you got them right and just in case that you didn’t, the one in the left-hand side is Marca’s article and the one on the right-hand side is the Mundo Deportivo’s article.

Analyzing first the Marca advertisement, in that picture above we can clearly see two types of bias. Bias by headline is the first thing you see when looking at this image. They start their article saying “La liga uphold Messi booking” rather than saying “The best player in the world helped his team beating Sevilla”. They give more emphasis to the bad or negative things, the fact of Messi getting booked because of losing time, rather than congratulating him about his amazing performance, goal, and assist. This headline clearly shows how Marca is a big Madrid supporter and does not like Barça, nor Messi at all. Then, the picture they have on their article (photo above) is bias by photos, and it again shows how Marca is not happy about the Barcelona win. You can see this comparing the two pictures above, in the Marca one, Messi is wasting time, claiming something to the reff, and even has his cleat on his hand. His face looks angry and as if something was wrong. On the other picture Messi is celebrating his goal. Once you go into the article (link at the end of blog) you can see how the only thing they talk about is Messi losing time, not the game itself, which shows bias by spin.

The Mundo Deportivo article also has bias by headline, “Messi: Barcelona star continues fantastic Sevilla goal record”. They are saying Messi is Barcelona’s star, which he clearly is, but people sometimes may say different. They say his record is fantastic which also is since he has scored 27 goals against Sevilla. As I said before, bias by photo is also present in this article since they have a picture of Messi celebrating his goal, being happy, not angry with the referee. Once you go into this article (link at the end of blog) you can see two more pictures. In the first one, Messi is taking on a defender, demonstrating his quality as a player. Then, a picture showing his 500-goal record, where again he is celebrating one of his five hundreds. Above this third picture, bias by statistics is present. The article has the five teams who Messi has scored the most to, Sevilla being the first on the list with 27, and Osasuna and Athletic Club tied with 19.

Apart from being probably two of the five most read sports magazines in the world, the bias they put into their article can sometimes affect them. I believe that this sites talk so bad about each other’s teams because they only take their country into account. In Spain, well obviously, Barça fans read only Mundo Deportivo and Real Madrid fans read only Marca, but when people not from Spain read it, is were I think it could affect them. Many people stop reading Marca and decide just not to read anything because they are big Barça fans, but they don’t know Mundo Deportivo, and they prefer not to read anything that all than just to hear critics about their team or how their team got the game “given”.

I can honestly say, by previous personal experience, that when your team loses to their biggest rival, you really don’t want to hear anything about it, and when you see some pictures or news of that game on Facebook or something, saying bad stuff about your team, turns out really annoying and you don’t go back to that page that talked bad about your team in a while. I could imagine how good it would be to see a team congratulating the other after a “Clasico” saying how good of a match it was and how it was so equal. No, probably not. I would never want that honestly. The feelings you get when your team wins as I said are indescribable. Going out and celebrating with friends, and getting to bother other friends is just the best time you have on your life. You meet new people, hug people you don’t event know, and you end up with your pocket full of new money you just earned from your friend.

Marca: http://www.marca.com/en/football/barcelona/2016/11/09/58231c63e5fdea30078b4576.html

Mundo Deportivo:

http://en.as.com/en/2016/11/06/football/1478466733_770240.html