Aventura 4: RCD Espanyol

Wow. That's almost all that I can say now, and all the I could say the first 30 minutes of the game.

Last night I went to a La Liga game, the Spanish professional futbol league, where RCD Espanyol was playing Barcelona.

el estadio

My program has three season tickets to Espanyol, so we went to their stadium.  We were literally 11 rows up from the field, smack dab in the middle of the crazy fans.  And I thought the fans were kind of crazy in the bleachers at Red Sox games? Man, this was something else.  Another world.  Someone was on the loud speaker cheering everyone on, coming up with cheers.  Songs, chants, dances, jumping, gestures, cursing in songs, more songs, shouting, jumping, more shouting.  Not a moment of silence.  I have never been around something so crazy.

yes, these are actually our seats

And yet the funny thing was, for the first 30 minutes of the game, I really didn't even notice the craziness around me.  Being 30 feet from these players, them running right in front of me, seeing their amazing traps and touches on the ball, the passes that thread through many players, the clean side tackles,

think there are even this many guards for the world series, let alone a regular season game?

 Messi checking his shoulder before he gets the ball, seeing the players hug or get mad at each other, two goals from headers coming off of crosses,

  Iniesta dribbling across the field but more like fighting across the field, the game is slowfastslowfast with quick bursts of speed everywhere.

  This game is beautiful. It is so beautiful. I really almost came to tears when I first got there and was watching them warm up.  I couldn't imagine anything more amazing than this group of strangers so joined by this sport, yelling and screaming together watching these other group of amazing players just, play. Wow. I'll end with that again because there's not a better way to describe it. Wow.