Liga Fever

I was at the ‘Derbi Catalan’ on Saturday night – at Espanyol’s ground up on the top of the Montjuic hill overlooking the north side of Barcelona.  The Catalan press had been drumming the game up all week, and were really going for it by the Friday, describing the game as potentially the most evenly-contested in the recent history of the encounters.  Poorer neighbours Espanyol, after struggling for most of last season, have started reasonably well, and although their ten points from six games was overshadowed by Barça’s sixteen, you got the point.  The programme printed for the game pushed the same point, that it was ‘El derbi més igualtat de les darreres temporades’ – which I presume means something like ‘The most even derby in recent seasons’.  The folks in Barcelona labour under the curious belief that everyone understands their language – an almost endearing habit that has at least ensured the development and current healthy state of Catalan.  Whatever – they certainly know how to put on a show.  Walking up in the dark from the Plaça España towards the Olympic Stadium on the hill, there was an absolute bedlam of lights and music as the city celebrated the 75^th anniversary of the  Montjuic fountain.  Coloured cascades spewed and frothed up into the night, classical music pounded out into the air and blue laser lights cut pathways into the black sky above the Palau Nacional.  Folks waved sparklers and swayed along to the music, as if oblivious to the fact that 300 feet further up the ascent a football crowd was also gathering.

The Estadi Olimpic was actually built back in 1936 for an alternative Olympics to the notorious one being held over in Berlin, and was redeveloped for the 1992 event.   It may not be a great football stadium, but since Espanyol decided to make it their temporary home after the Sarrià finally closed they can boast probably the most stunning setting of any football ground in Europe.  Problem is that you can easily get caught out up there, on a night match.  The game started at 10 p.m., and although the day had been warm in the city, by the end of the game, as the midnight chimes drew near, my thin jacket was being cut to shreds by the piercing night winds that were howling around the top of the shallow-sided Olympic bowl.

The other problem had occurred earlier on, during the climb up to the stadium.  As you get higher and higher, past the Miró, past the Palace, past several more wonderful fountains, the elevators take you onto an ever narrowing path that leads you through the woods up to the summit.  At a small bar on a bend of this path, a group of Espanyol fans were sitting, watching carefully for any Barça fans unwise enough to go to the game.  It reminded me of that series of Cath Tate postcards in which aliens, having visited Earth, swap observations with each other regarding their experiences.  In one of my favourites, two aliens hover above our planet, one of them having just made a visit.  One of them asks, ‘Well – intelligent life or not?’, to which the other replies ‘Those with brains seem ok.  Those with testicles I’m not too sure about….’.   Watching the group of Espanyol fans mercilessly abuse any Barcelona fan who walked peacefully past was enough to make one ashamed of being male.  Nibbling on a cheese and ham sandwich and sipping a beer to one side, I watched while kids as young as nine or ten, hand in hand with dad, were subjected to some really nasty stuff.  Amusingly, after some twenty minutes of this spectacle, two enormous skinheads out of your worst nightmares emerged onto the path, Barça scarves dangling conspicuously from their bomber-jacketed sleeves.  The group of Espanyol fans went mysteriously silent, and failed to utter another word until the two chaps had waddled out of sight.  Ah Brave New World, that hath such people in it!

Enough.  Onto the game.  Barça won 1-0, courtesy of a weird but spectacular early strike from the excellent Deco, and Espanyol were truly awful.  Tamudo looked traumatised by his experience in Lithuania in midweek, De la Peña was well shackled by Marquez, and there was precious little threat from anyone else.  It still seems odd to watch De La Peña play against Barça, the team in which he rose so spectacularly to prominence, but Xavi Hernandez is a worthy successor.  Whilst everyone else strolled around indifferently, Xavi always looked purposeful – turning the direction of the play in an instant, and always looking neat and tidy in his distribution.  He’s taken a while to develop, but he suddenly looks the most accomplished of Spain’s midfielders.

As a spectacle, any atmosphere there might have been was killed off by the sheer open magnitude of the stadium, its gently curving walls panning back out into the night and allowing the noise to float away, muffled up into the huge black sky above.  Try as it might, the place just doesn’t look right for a football match.  The dark perimeter track cuts the players off from the stands, so that from the top of the bowl they look like subbuteo players on a dining table.  When Deco scored, no-one seemed to notice at first.  The action seemed so far away, in some other space-time continuum, that there was a mysterious gap in time between the ball hitting the net and the gradual grumbling and groaning that bubbled up from the home spectators.  The stadium was only two-thirds full at most, and as derbies go in Spain, the atmosphere in no way compares with the anarchic madness of Seville v Betis, the Real Madrid v Atlético matches, even the Galician encounters.  Most Barça fans had stayed at home to watch the game on TV, fearful, one suspects, of the hardcore Brigadas Blanquiazules fans who do not have the friendliest of reputations.

The relationship between the two sets of fans is a complicated one, and is not easy to explain unless you live in the community.  Espanyol (or Español as it was spelt up to 1994) were founded exactly a year after their more illustrious neighbours, and have only been out of the top flight for four seasons since 1928 when the professional league began.  For a team on their more limited resources and much smaller fan base, that represents a considerable achievement.  They’ve had their moments, winning the first King’s Cup of the professional era in 1929, winning it again in the millennium season with a UEFA Cup final appearance in 1988 sandwiched in-between.  But in purely sporting terms, they’ve never been really rated as a rival to Barça – who of course have always been more focused on their dog-eat-dog affair with Real Madrid.  The name ‘Español’ is obvious in its cultural and political connotations, in the city that is the flagship for all things Catalan.  In terms of being provocative, it’s a bit like naming a team ‘Orange United’ to play in the local Dublin league.  The usual notion that the team was founded to attract the working-class immigrant vote in the city is not strictly true, since the founding member was the son of the University rector, and anyway, immigrants to the city have always found identification with Barça the more logically integrating move –  but it is nevertheless true that the club eventually attracted a right-wing element in Catalan circles that simply didn’t buy into the ‘Catalanista’ credo.  But it’s a tricky one.  Espanyol fans emphasise the fact that they too, are Catalans – but with a different interpretation of what that means.  It certainly makes for a fascinating mix, but the atmosphere at the derby was slightly edgy, as if it was desperately looking for a fight.  But over what I’m not sure.

In terms of the football, Barça were massively superior.  They suddenly look solid at the back again, and even with several players out injured, the midfield is a neat and threatening collective.  Unless they suffer a big drop in form or confidence, they could go all the way.    It looked like an evenly-contested derby before the kick-off, but ninety minutes later reality had kicked in.  Espanyol are scheduled to move into a new home in the 2005-2006 season, down in the suburbs of Cornella.  They’ll be hoping it can give them back some atmosphere and identity, as in the good old days of Sarrià.  Meanwhile, the season ahead looks like being another struggle, made even worse by their neighbour’s recovery.

Phil Ball, October 2004

As you trudge gamely up the gradual slope of Albuferas in the district of Vallecas, past chain shops, cheap shops, cell-phone accessory shops, boarded-up shops, gaming parlours and dozens of small bars and cafes, you pick up that narrower sense of what it really feels like to live in a capital city – in this case Madrid – as opposed to simply imagining from the outside that everything is the Castellana, or Sol, or the Parque del Retiro. Vallecas used to be a town, but is now an official district in the south of Madrid, with around 300,000 inhabitants.  Nevertheless, there’s an immediate and messy sense of community, something in the sticky autumn air that suggests that the place has its own identity.  It’s late afternoon, everyone and his grandmother is out, and everything seems to be pointing to the top of Albuferas where Rayo Vallecano’s little stadium is alleged to be.  I’ve walked up from my hotel on Avenida de Barcelona – a strange-sounding street in this district, and everyone I’ve asked has insisted that it really is there.

Well, I know it’s there, of course – in this age of Google Maps and digital paraphernalia, but I’ve deliberately been asking for directions in order to sniff out the attitude of the community towards its team.  It always works, and here, in this unpretentious, multicultural and obviously working-class neighbourhood, the people I ask are all keen to help.  ‘Just keep going and you can’t miss it!’ an elderly couple enthuse, in stereo.  ‘We’re not going today because we’ve just been to a wedding!’ the wife adds, as if this is vital information.  ‘Ah!  Congratulations on tying the knot at last’ I quip, at which the tiny bow-legged husband, who has seen better days, lets out a spittle-infused guffaw.  ‘Muy bueno!’ (good one!) he cackles, and points me to the pilgrimage-site at the top of the hill.

The higher up the avenue I get, the more the strewn street cafes contain Rayo fans, with their distinctive white shirt and its thick red diagonal stripe, placed onto a previously white shirt in 1950 in homage to River Plate.  Some fans wear the posher-looking away strip, with its black background, but everyone wears the kit, in some shape or form. Fans of Real Sociedad, today’s visitors, wear blue and white stripes and mingle into the thicker mass of people who are gathered up at the traffic lights where the avenue narrows and the squat little walls of the stadium at last come into view.  The Estadio Teresa Rivero, named after the wife of the ex-president and cartoon-like villain Ruiz Mateos, is something of a legend among La Liga’s more appreciative band of ground-hoppers, and it is to my eternal regret that the place has somehow managed to ignore my own advances, after all these years of wandering around Spain in search of football’s holy grail.  My only excuse is that the schedules have never coincided, the runes have always failed to show.  It’s just one of those things, but today I‘ve nipped down on a quick flight from San Sebastián, sacrificing my own son’s game against Barakaldo to finally attend the legendary Rayo Vallecano gig.

I stop at the lights and look across. The east side of the stadium seems indistinct from the tight urban sprawl that surrounds it, like a semi-natural phenomenon that has grown up through the cracks in the road.  Chaos presides.  There are souvenir stalls, sweet stalls, vans selling churros, and higgledy-piggledy queues of folks waiting to get in.  I squeeze through the masses and enter the official shop to buy a club ‘monedero’ (wallet) for my son but devastatingly, the woman at the counter informs me that there has never been a Rayo wallet.  They have key-rings, mugs and what looks like a Che Guevara hat with a club badge on it, but no wallets.  I express my disappointment as my WhatsApp chirrups that the Barakaldo match back home has finished 0-0.

Excuse me for writing this phrase before, but the greatest moment for any football nerd is the moment when you finally emerge into the noise and colour of an unknown sporting arena.  And despite the creeping standardisation of the football experience, no stadium is ever remotely the same.  The second you emerge into Rayo’s peculiar arena, you’re getting the latest snapshot of 87 years of a particular neighbourhood’s emotional repository.  The ground is famously three-sided, with the southern goal simply a white wall, behind which two apartment blocks stand with the best views in town.  As I take in the initial scene, I can see that several of the apartments’ windows are open, and that the folks inside are settling down for the game.  The absence of Canal Plus satellite dishes on the building is therefore significant.

My ticket says Row 4 Seat 20, but when I reach my place an entire family, clad in Rayo’s colours, is already installed there, all nibbling furiously on pipas (sunflower seeds) and smoking like industrial chimneys.  I indicate to the youngish mother that someone is in my place, but far from this causing a problem she immediately apologises and offers up her little daughter in a sort of sacrifice.  ‘You – out of there now!’ she chivvies the young girl, but I protest that it isn’t necessary, and that I can sit next to her (the mother) in the free seat that ends the row.  ‘Sure – fine’, the woman  nods, approving of this solution.  ‘Nobody ever sits there anyway’ and I settle down on the margins, as the new member of the family.

The low angle of the late afternoon sun stains the pitch with shadows, and it’s quite difficult not to squint, but the stadium seems tightly-packed and straining at the leash. The away supporters, in surprisingly large numbers considering that Real Sociedad played in Leverkusen in the Champions League three days previously, are over to my left, but over to the right, behind the goal where the Rayo Ultras gather, there appear to be no seats at all, an illusion created by the fact that the occupants of this famous section prefer to stand.  Dotted amongst them there are Real Sociedad supporters.  Here the Basques are made welcome, unlike some other grounds in Spain.

The place holds 14,000, and although there are only some 10,000 inside, it feels packed and noisy, as if it were a major social event.  Rayo were great last year, and almost made it into Europe, but this season, saddled by La Liga’s smallest annual budget of 7 million euros (which is half of Cristiano Ronaldo’s salary) and the usual book-balancing exodus of players (Leo Baptistao to Atlético, Javi Fuego to Valencia, Piti to Granada, José Casado to Malaga, Jordi Figueras to Betis and Jordi Amat to Swansea) the team lies bottom of the table, with three points from seven games – and those points coming from a 3-0 win against Elche on the opening day.  Amazingly, coach Paco Jemez took Rayo to 3rd in the European league table of ball possession last season (58 percent average), surpassed only by Bayern and Barcelona.  Now his new team is having difficulties settling down, but you wouldn’t know that there was any problem, once the game gets under way.  The fans’ identification with the team is total, and my adopted family hollers with excitement every time Rayo pass the half-way line. This is quite often, of course, because although it may be an optical illusion, the pitch seems tiny and Real Sociedad are having difficulties coping with it.  Preferring a high-line pressing midfield, the twin pivots are simply not in the game, annulled by Rayo’s defenders’ ability to knock longish balls into the limited space behind the centre-backs, eliminating any fussy midfield stuff.  It takes Sociedad’s technically more gifted players about 20 minutes, but then they work it out and begin to look the better side.

On 24 minutes the ‘Bukanero’ contingent of the Rayo fans behind the goal begin to bounce and chant, and basically continue until the end of the game. The noise is deafening, coming from such a relatively small bunch. The previous 23 minutes of silence is in protest at the Spanish federation’s timetabling of certain games at 23.00 hours, which included the Rayo v Levante game earlier this season.  The Bukaneros are a bit different, ‘ultras’ whose founding principles are ‘In defence of our team, our neighbourhood and always free from racism and fascism, values which we will never represent’.  The Rayo fans in general are seen as left-leaning, in contrast to some of the more thuggish far-right elements at Atlético, and the prawn-sandwich set at the Bernabéu.  The anarchist-vegan ska band (how’s that for a truck-load of principles?) from the 1990s known as ‘Ska-P’ were popular in Spain and of course supported Rayo, penning a popular song about them entitled ‘Como un rayo’ (Like a lightning flash).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHeW2kBaFIs

As the game trundles on, Real’s Imanol Agirretxe inexplicably heads the ball over the Bukanero crossbar when it was far easier to score, and my family collectively slump into their seats with relief.  ‘Lucky for you he’s rubbish today!’ I offer, like some vicar offering a calming cup of tea.  The mum laughs, exploding a cloud of smoke from her lungs into my eyes.  ‘So you’re supporting them eh?’ she says, winking.  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone!’  But there is no threat, no suggestion of potential violence anywhere.  For example, a youth to my right is frothing with testosterone, and when Carlos Vela goes down rather too easily under a challenge, the youth springs up and shouts ‘Venga maricon!’ (Get up you poofter!), upon which his father calmly intercedes.  ‘Don’t say that’ he advises.  ‘You don’t say that kind of thing anymore at matches, and besides, you might hurt the player’s feelings.  He might be gay’, he says, all in a measured schoolmaster tone. He says this in front of his hairy working-class mates, as if such discourse were perfectly normal in such a context. I want to add that Vela is not gay, but decide to stay out of the conversation.  The boy mutters ‘cojones’ (bollocks) under his breath, but it’s an interesting moment.

To cut to the chase, Sociedad or Agirretxe) spurn a host of chances and then Rayo get themselves a penalty, in the 88^th minute, when Jonathan Viera goes down under a challenge from keeper Claudio Bravo.  Under the shadow of the Bukaneros, the referee decides not to risk anarchist revolution and points to the spot.  My family (and the rest of the Rayo-clad stadium) go completely wild.  ‘Calm down’ I joke.  ‘You haven’t scored yet’.  At this, the mother lets go another smoke-fuelled gem that basically sums up the whole Rayo thing. ‘I know!’ she screams above the din. ‘That’s why we’re celebrating now.  He’ll probably miss!’

But he doesn’t miss, and the folks go home happy. For once, I don’t mind that my team has lost.  Walking down Albuferas with the crowd, I get into conversation with three Madrid-living Brits, who all profess themselves die-hard Rayo fans.  One of them (a Blackburn fan) offers his own simple conclusion. ‘It’s a real football stadium, a place where the cameras would prefer not to go.  But once you’ve been there, why the hell would you ever want to go to the Bernabéu?’   Why indeed?

Phil Ball