EL CLOUGHIO
A look ahead to today’s showdown between Nottingham Forest and Derby
AITOR Karanka has been involved in so many ‘El Clasico’ games as a Real Madrid player and assistant manager he has trouble counting them. He tried on Friday, 48 hours before his first ‘El Cloughio’ local derby, and gave up, with a smile. “My first season as assistant there were, oh, five games? Two in the league, two in the Champions League, one in the final of the Cup. “The following season there were six. So I think we played more than 10 games in three years I was assistant,” he calculated. We never got into his playing days against Barcelona, the most memorable of which was the game of 2000 when Luis Figo went back to Barca for the first time as a Real Madrid player. Karanka, a central defender or full-back for Real, said at the time, ‘There was never a game like it’. Now it’s new territory, a fierce battle by the Trent. One thing is for sure, Karanka wasn’t able to walk the streets of Madrid before a Barcelona game as he’s walked around Nottingham city centre this week ahead of the home bash, sorry clash, with Derby. “I think it is important to live in the city where I work,” says Karanka who has a home in Nottingham in the week while his family are in Harrogate, their base since he came to England from Spain to manager Middlesbrough less than four and a half years ago. “Talking to the fans is better now than it was three weeks or four weeks ago because we are doing better. I like to be involved with the fans,” he adds. “But no, I could not walk around Madrid before we play Barcelona. This is different, no?
“The game, though, it is the same. It was important for the Real Madrid and Barcelona supporters and it is just as important for the Nottingham Forest and Derby supporters.
Important
“It is the biggest game for the Forest supporters and as the manager I have to do my best for them, for them to trust us.”
Karanka’s only taste of derby day in England is a 2-1 win at Sunderland in Boro’s first month back in the Premier League in August 2016.
Be warned. It’s different in the East Mids, me duck.
There have been near punch-ups on the touchline, Forest’s Billy Davies accusing Derby boss Nigel Clough of kneeing him in the back.
Robbie Savage went wild waving a black and white Derby scarf as he danced around the pitch after an FA Cup replay win.
Nearly suicidal
was Nathan Tyson picking up a corner flag after a Forest home win and waving it at Derby’s fans. “It all kicked off and I remem ber thinking ‘Oh my God, what have I done,” ” said Tyson. But Karanka has seen worse. Much worse.
After playing 93 games for Real Madrid in five years at the club and winning the Chameague three times, he became manager Jose Mourassistant. He was on the bench in 2011 when all hell broke loose. El Clasico became a touchline
punch up that made Davies v Clough look a mere undercard fight.
In a Super Cup final there was a mass brawl, three players sent off and Mourinho got a five-game ban for striding over to Barca’s assistant manager Tito Vilanova and poking him in the eye. The nearest a Forest manag- er has ever got to that is Brian Clough smacking his own fans over the head after they flooded on to the pitch at the end of a League Cup win over QPR.
Clough put Derby and Forest on the world football map with what he achieved for both clubs, but that does not mean that there is friendship at either end of the A52.
After he’d left Derby and eventually managed Forest, Clough drove down that road in his blue Merc from home to work and the fact that he won two European Cups more for the Reds than he did for the Rams is one of the things that fired the jealousy and rivalry.
Rivalry
There’s the Brian Clough Trophy to play for in this game in memorial to him and Karanka, sitting with two European stars on his red training top, is looking to give Forest their first local derby win since November 2015 when Nelson Oliveira’s fifthminute 18-yarder was enough.
Real Madrid v Barcelona is a game which has the world looking in. Forest and Derby can be fierce enough to set Sherwood Forest on fire.
“My experience from El Clasico can help me in my first derby here,” says Karanka. ”I have been at Nottingham Forest only two months but I know about this derby. I know about Brian Clough. I know what to win means to the people.
“I take experience from every single situation. When I was a player I was on the bench one time in the Champions League because I had been sent off. You have to learn from that.”
From trying to stop Messi, Karanka is now trying to stop Vydra.
Derby are in what has become their traditional promotion wobble, without a win in six games, while Karanka has got Forest on the move, unbeaten in five.
It’s set up for Forest. Captain Ben Watson says he wants to celebrate his first taste of this game by denting Derby’s promotion hopes.
“The atmosphere will be rocking,” says Watson. “It’s the bragging rights, friends, family. It will be hostile but we need to keep our heads. Keep 11 players on the pitch.
“It’s the biggest derby I have played in. I will take pride and pleasure in denting Derby’s promotion bid. We want to win the game. We want to continue the run we are on.”
Karanka, with all that inside knowledge of what it’s like to be at the centre of one of the biggest games in football, is cool.
“Whether I am calm it depends on the game,” he says. “The most important thing for me is that the people go home after the game and we speak about what happened on the pitch, not what happened off it or in the dugout.
Fireworks
“I want to win this game and then just be speaking about that. “There were fireworks in the El Clasico. In that moment there were bad things in the dugouts. But it is past. Everyone who was there has learned from what happened. “Everyone doesn’t want to recall that because it wasn’t good for anybody. It has to be forgotten. “As I have said, after this derby I want to come here, to this room again, and just talk about the game. The people deserve to come to the stadium to watch a good game. “The Bernabeu is a massive stadium. Here, instead of there being 98,000 people, there will be 28,000 or 29,000 but with the same passion, the same desire. “For me, the best trophy on Sunday is that I can go home and see my family and have dinner very pleased because the people are feeling the team is still improving and we have won the derby.”