fishydreams

On the way back from the river last night I heard on the radio that the final of the Champions League was underway and that Barcelona was beating Juventus by a goal. Football matches don´t come any bigger than this one. Both teams were set up to take the “treble” should they win this final.

I figured that I might catch the end of the game at Masia bar in Villafranco and so pulled up and shouted a pint and a tapa of boquerones en vinagre. There were three televisions blasting out the game. One was in the main part of the bar. The biggest screen was in a kind of function room behind the bar. It was pretty quiet in there – just a three or four expat types. The third telly was in a little covered extension out the front. This was where the action was. Everyone bunched up at the tables offering the best view of the game but there was some space on the tables on the opposite side and I decided to settle there.

I arrived in the 79th minute. At some stage when I was driving down the A357 Juventus had equalised. It was dark outside by then so I phoned home to say I would be late. I had just got through on the phone when Barcelona scored a second. The place erupted. The wall of sound was so dense I had to abandon the call.

You should have heard the noise everyone was making. They were yelling and thumping the tables. It was so crazy that when the owner walked in with a tray of drinks I thought he might try to ask the guys to tone it down a little. Instead he served the drinks and then let the empty metal tray fall to the floor where it made a terrific crashing sound and everyone was momentarily startled. He was looking pretty pleased with himself. This, it turned out, was simply his own personal contribution to the din.

It´s easy to get cynical about football. Trinny often moans that the top players earn silly money while people in vital jobs like nurses and teachers hit brick walls in terms of pay and it´s probably fair to say that everyone is annoyed when they realise that they probably need to work at least a couple of years to match what the top footballers earn in a week.

And of course people are milking the game at every level. The satellite people make us pay to watch key games and the ruling football elite of FIFA are a bunch of corrupt, self-serving sons of bitches. We´ve all suspected this for ages but now it seems that their number is finally up. Heads have been rolling this last week or two and no doubt there are more to follow. In the next rung of the ladder, football clubs raise ticket prices and swap football kit to ensure that kids pay enough for their heroes to drive around town in Lamborghinis.

Football teaches us the lesson, just as well as anything else, that life is not the way it should be. It is simply the way that it is. People are greedy. We live in a free market economy. If an ambulance driver says he wants a pay raise because he is struggling to cover his mortgage you tell him to bugger off. If Lionel Messi says he is not happy because the towels in the changing rooms are not fluffy enough you send someone down to the shops to sort it out. Pronto. That´s not the way it ought to be it is just the way it is.

In Masai they had their own cheerleader. He was so much fun that I sat as close as I could to him. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a bit of a beer gut. He sounded as though he had had his larynx removed surgically and had a megaphone inserted in its place. Every now and then the would run up in front of the telly and turn around to the audience and get them going with some chant. It all ended with a bunch of table thumping.

A one goal lead is never a safe thing in football and there was still some tension in the room as the clock ticked down. Then Neymar scored with a minute on the clock and everyone went nuts. Absolutely nuts. I had the foresight to settle up my bill in the 87th minute because I thought it would be pandemonium after the game had ended and that´s how things worked out. I headed out into the night while everyone was in a state of rapture. Their team has just won the Champion´s League. It was Saturday night. No work tomorrow. They had a few quid in their pockets and the beer was flowing. What more could you ask for?

All eyes on Barcelona