Football in Spain

Football here is very strange.

Spanish football in general is great. The quality is superb, just look at the World Cup and European Cup. Club football for a foreigner is really hard to get your head around. More so as it is mixed in with politics, or is politics mixed in with football.

I am a Real Madrid fan. I am because my house is 500 meters from the stadium. Because my son goes to the summer campus and we have met a number of the players who are all really great people.

Some false assumptions about me being a Real Madrid fan include: I do not support Franco, I am not posh or rich, and I am not influenced by fashion (I support Ipswich in the UK)

What is strange is that it is perfectly acceptable here to have second team, which is generally Barcelona or Madrid (unless you are a fan of Atletico Madrid, when no one compares).

Lets take Asturias, if you are living in Oviedo and your first team is Oviedo, then your second team has to be Madrid. If you are a few kilometers down the road in Gijon, your second team will be Barcelona. Why?

I can understand after years under a dictatorship, why Barcelona wish to distance itself from the capital (I am Welsh after all), but does this really affect the people in Gijon and their natural hate towards Real Madrid.

I can sort of see the connection between Real Madrid and being posh, it is an expensive area and the tickets are expensive. But then Chelsea isn’t a poor borough and tickets are twice those of Madrid.

I can almost see the political link with Franco, as rumor has it that Di Stefano was meant to have moved to Barcelona and Franco interjected and made him move to Madrid. My wife is a close friend of his daughter and says that is completely false, but then she is a Real Madrid fan.

I do understand this perception of arrogance that Madrid fans might have, but then they are fans of the most successful club in history and one of the richest, if not the richest in the current climate. Lets be honest, they could probably sell a couple of players and buy Liverpool FC.

So we come to the crux of things. I have decided that it is the Real part of the team. After all, their “best mates” are Real Club Español. So if you support a team with Real in it, you are allowed to support Real Madrid. If you support a team without the Real, you support Barcelona.

If you have Real in your team, you are a rich, right wing Francist (despite the fact that Franco was neither a King or supported one) and if not you are a left wing, union supporting, blue collar worker.

Perhaps this is not the case and I would very much welcome your input.