Erik’s Blog

We began World Cup final Sunday evening by heading to nearby Laredo, where we’d heard there might be a big screen set up on the beach. We were certain that we couldn’t take a 15.5 month old child to an enclosed space with Spanish fans because she’d die of fright from all the screams. We discovered that the beach screen was only a rumor, and the real big screen was in the old town hall square. We took one look at how packed the square was with people and turned around and headed back towards Colindres, but not before spotting a group of old ladies wearing red-yellow-red striped headbands singing A Por Ellos.

Once back in our home town, we chose our favorite soccer-viewing bar, El Vapor (The Steam), which is only about two hundred meters from our house. The twin brother of our friend with the restaurant in Laredo was already seated at a prime table, and he informed us that he was leaving before the game began and promised us his table. We would spend the game outside on the sidewalk looking into the bar through the glass to a projected screen. And it was a good thing we were outside, because, well, let’s just say that inside the bar, it lived up to its name.
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Ice cold beer cans glistening with condensation…what better way to celebrate Holland and Spain making it to the finals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. One of them will win their first ever World Cup. Who will it be? I don’t know, but I’m going to be drinking some ice cold lager and enjoying every minute of the game.
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Over the course of the World Cup 2010, I have seen increased traffic to my utterly useless page about Spanish soccer chants. So I have decided to write this page to actually inform the curious internet searchers about what those crazy Spanish soccer fans are on about.
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Today I walked into my local grocery store and said with a wink, “Hey, do you guys sell German flags? I want to hang one on my balcony.” (Hanging the Spanish flag on one’s balcony is a common way to show support for the Spanish World Cup team who will face off against Germany tomorrow in the semi-finals.) My grocer friend, Andrés, said, “Have you heard the story of Pulpo Paul (Paul the Octopus)?” I assumed he was about to tell me a didactic Aesop-esque fairy tale about why one shouldn’t be such a cheeky jerk, but he turns to the checkout computer and pulls up this internet video to show me…
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I enjoy watching soccer. Aside from the occasional beautifully executed maneuver, however, soccer, like all sports, is boring as hell if you don’t care who wins. My biggest problem with soccer is mustering enough energy to care who wins. I did a better job this past year following the Spanish Liga, choosing allegiance with the local team, Racing Santander, even reading the sports newspaper, Marca, in a bar at least once a week. But the effort required to keep up with player trades, injuries, and rumors is more than a little exhausting…all in an attempt to generate some emotional attachment to teams or players.
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Recently there was a soccer match that I wanted to watch, but that was not broadcast on my basic cable television. Investigating around the internet for a site that would stream the live game, I stumbled upon a very well designed website called watchlivefootball.tv. If you go there, you will see a nice listing of today’s fixtures with the time the match starts, the players, past results for each team, and the logos for each team as well as the league or tournament the game belongs to. It looks very professional. On each match page, there is a video player. When you click play, you are presented with this:
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The other day I noticed an interesting article in Spain’s sports newspaper, MARCA. The article starts something like this like this:

Yeste walks towards the corner flag for a corner kick after two attacks on goal by Athletic Bilbao. He hasn’t yet set the ball down when a shout is heard from the far end of the bar: Gooooooal!!! Seconds afterwards, Yeste kicks the ball, which deflects off Lass in the first row, and Llorente scores the goal.

All the excitement of watching a soccer match has been ruined. What just happened?
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One thing I learned when I moved to Europe is that I really, really suck at foosball. The pub culture in Denmark, England and Spain has resulted in a very high average foosball skill level of any 20-40-year-old you find in a bar. I can probably beat the majority of ten-year-olds, but any older than that and you should bet on my opponent. This one foosball table at my in-laws social club always attracts my eye. I love the worn look of the wooden players. What better subject to play around with aperture and depth of field?
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It’s not much, but over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed several visitors coming to my blog, particularly from Germany and Austria, searching for things like "What does ‘a por ellos‘ mean?" and "What does ‘podemos‘ mean?" The answers to those questions are, indeed, here on my blog, here and here respectively. These two phrases that people are searching for are the two main Spanish soccer chants. Obviously the Spanish soccer team got some attention lately, particularly in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. It’s just neat when current events affect my traffic. I’m already starting to get hits for next week’s San Fermin festival.
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Wow! What a night! Who knew that an optimistic attitude like Podemos would really work? I was wondering the whole time if they would stop using that word for the Euro 2008 coverage if Spain got knocked out of the tournament. But I guess we’ll never know.

We were going to go to a local bar with people our age (although we know very few of them) to watch the final, like we had with many of the previous Euro 2008 games. But then we got invited by some of our older salsa dancing friends to a bar in Laredo to watch the game. We knew it was going to be a lower-key crowd, and therefore a little less fun, but we don’t have that many friends that call us to invite us for things like this, so we decided that in the long run it was better to go with them. (more…)