Intellectual Spanish paper sees dark forces behind the three-game closure of the Vicente Calderon stadium

The Spoiler is used to reading stories in the Spanish sporting dailies that compensate for a lack of substance with a hefty dose of local indignation, but the reaction of even the serious Spanish papers to UEFA’s closure of Atletico Madrid’s ground is one of quite hilarious paranoid hysteria.

Instead of seeing the punishment as a response to violence and racism, the very solemn national daily El Pais has chosen to interpret the sentence as firm evidence of jealous French and English football bureaucrats ganging up out of spite for Spain’s sporting excellence.

This is the first paragraph of an editorial that appeared this morning, under the headline “The anglo-french axis and the half-hearted Spanish”

“Just one day after England - quite out of the blue - vetoed playing at the Bernabeu on grounds of racism, UEFA, led by Michel Platini, a Frenchman, and Gordon Taylor (David Taylor actually - Gordon Taylor runs the PFA), a Scot, upheld the