Immediately upon entering the stadium I felt a rush of adrenaline, which I must have caught from the scarf- and flag-wearing fanatics that packed in the stairwells and stadium rows to occupy every last seat because I never fancied myself much of a futbol follower. But, all lit up and bustling with the energy of tens of thousands of people, the stadium is an exciting sight to behold.
Our tickets were cheap enough - I hear the really close ones go for hundreds of euro - and I quickly learned that it doesn't really matter what seat your ticket indicated because everyone just sits with their friends and family in whichever row they choose in their given section, which works well for students like us who all bought single tickets. So we all got to sit together in our relative sections and got ready to see FC Barcelona defeat Getafe, a club from the city of Getafe near Madrid rated 7th and going in with a record of 10 and 9.
FC Barcelona took immediate control of the ball and Messi scored within the first 7 min. And the crowd went crazy. For those of you who don't know (which excludes everyone who went to Buenos Aires with me last summer), Messi is the 22 year-old Argentina-born football tour de force. (Oh dear. Now I'm incorporating French expressions alongside my Catalan and Spanish ones. Try to keep up.) Arguably the best footballer on the planet, Messi is to football what Michael Jordan was to basketball in his prime: a legend.
But an early red card against FC Barcelona hottie Gerard Piqué mixed things up a bit, challenging FC Barcelona's control of the ball for the rest of the game.
Thanks to all of this early drama, I picked up the necessary vocabulary in no time. If a player from Getafe did something we did not like, we screamed "¡Tarjeta! ¡Tarjeta!" And if the player did get a card, no matter what color, we yelled "¡Fuera! ¡Fuera!" Finally, we showed mild disapproval of the referee's perspective by chanting, "¡Puta! ¡Puta madre!" Other orations included musical odes to Messi, "¡Barça! ¡Barça! ¡Baaaaaaaaaarça!" and the anthem (see title link).
Once I got that down, I truly fit in 100% with my surroundings. After all, as any non-American must admit, we may be Ugly Americans, but we sure as hell know how to root for a team.
Speaking of which, I can't help but to impart a little capitalistic knowledge on my Catalonians. Immediately outside of the actual field, Camp Nou is a jail. Walking into this mass of concrete, one must commit herself to over 2 hours of fasting and incredible discomfort if she did not dress for the escalation in wind chill (I mean, how was I supposed to know?). There is only one food stand for every 10 sections of stadium seating, it is staffed with 3 less-than-motivated employees, and it serves floppy hot-dogs with globs of mustard in ill-fitting baguettes and coffee, which must suffice as a hand-warmer in the event that one lacks the foresight to purchase overpriced FC Barcelona shwag prior to entering the stadium.
Um. Can anyone say "opportunity"?
I have to come up with three potential business opportunities for my Entrepreneurship class on Tuesday and last night's game was inspiration enough: Food: papas bravas, nachos, popcorn, hamburgers; Drink: coffee, soda, water, and Estrella; Garb: jerseys, hats, gloves, scarves, flags, sweatbands, teddy bears and shoelaces for crying out loud. It'd be a hit.
And it only goes up from there. Membership clubs, box seating, half-time shoes, special fan sections, we'll do it up just like they do in America. No one will even have time to watch the game, they'll be so distracted by all of the wonderful consumerism around them!
Fortunately, for Spain, football is enough. They don't need a mess of overpriced nonsense to keep them engaged because the players are brilliant, the spirit is raw, and football is not a game, it's a national demonstration of love and honor. The players are paid well, but they seem to remain relatively humble as any scandal not only shames them but also their team, their family, and their country.
Another red card and a last minute goal by Getafe later, FC Barcelona won 2-1, and I have a newfound passion for football. What a thrill! In a word: sensational. And I have my FC Barcelona shirt to prove it.
<3
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