Not the playing fields of Eton

I remember sport, things sporting, at school with a mix of horror and shame. Rugby was shivering on frost hardened mud with my hands down my shorts waiting to be crushed. On my cricketing skills my report noted that I would do better if I didn't run away from the ball. At university I did a fair bit of sailing and canoeing but they never captivated me nor did I show any particular skill for them. Between then and now I have generally avoided anything that involves wearing shorts, Lycra, oddly shaped sunglasses, vests or neoprene; in fact anything that smacks of sexual fetish or sweat.

Yesterday though, for some strange reason I spectated at two sporting events. No neoprene you understand. Street clothes for me and well away from the activity. Just watching.

You know that round here there is a local language, a lot like Catalan. I usually call that language Valenciano. The Spanish that the world speaks is called Castellano. It can become a bit odd at times - why do I say Valenciano, which is a Castellano word, rather than say Valencià, which is the name of the language in the language or just translate directly into English and say Valencian or Castilian? 

The next town down the road from us is called Monòver in Valenciano and Monóvar in Castellano. That's where I went to watch a sort of handball game yesterday. Despite Monòver producing nearly all its publicity in Valenciano I can, normally, get the gist of what they're saying and if I get stuck Google translate set to Catalan bails me out. The poster said 1 Autonòmic de Galotxes de Monòver and showed some people playing a version of handball. Fair enough I thought the game is called galotxes. When I was there, I began to wonder if the courts were the galotxes and the sport was called pilota because on the walls were things like Galotxa Antonio Marhuenda (so something named for Antonio) and Galocha Oficial De la Matinal (La Matinal sounds like a club so this is their official Galocha). It's probably the first time that I've been to something on purpose and not known what I saw!

The games were a bit boring to be honest - it was played by hitting a squishy tennis sized ball over a net rather than against a wall but those reverse shots from the back wall were allowed. As a spectator I had no idea who was winning and who was playing well. There were lots of quite heavy people, plenty of middle aged players, a few women but, not too surprisingly, the fastest and most competitive game I saw was between two teams of fit young men.

The football I've been threatening to do for a while. Someone who Maggie knows plays in the local Brass Band and he and his wife go to the games of Pinoso FC. They said they'd take me along and they were good for their word. The Pinoso team did really well last season and were set for promotion to some sort of league that, whilst it was still pretty low, was good for such a small town. I guessed, though I don't know, that it was a bit like the old Fourth Division. Anyway there was some political argy bargy about funding with the town hall and the team folded. More argy bargy and it reformed but by now their place in the division was gone and they had to start again from scratch in the deepest pits of the lowest leagues - well Grupo XI de la 2ª Regional sounds pretty modest to me.

It's the sort of ground you'd expect. They do well to have grass given our climate. There is a covered stand along the length of the pitch with plastic seats on concrete terraces and otherwise it's all pretty open. No fancy scoreboards, the dugouts are bus shelter style and just 3€ to watch. Season tickets are 10€. Maybe a couple of hundred people watching though I may be being a bit over enthusiastic. Despite the five nil scoreline it was hardly an action packed game but at least I knew what was going on.

That's probably enough sport for a while though.

Peace and Love

Back in 1993, in a football game between La Coruña and Sevilla, there was an incident between Diego Maradona and Alberto Albístegui. The physiotherapist for Sevilla went out to help Maradona but by the time he got there Maradona was back on his feet and no worse for wear. The La Coruña player, Albístegui, was bleeding though, so the Seville physio gave him a hand. Back on the touchline the Sevilla coach, Carlos Salvador Bilardo, was incensed by the behaviour of his medic. He was shouting the equivalent of "For God sake Domingo (name of the physio), who gives a toss about the other side!, the ones in the coloured shirts are ours, Pisalo, pisalo!" Now pisalo means something like stamp on him, stamp on him. It was one of those football stories that became legend.

As a result, during the nineties, it was not unusual to hear chants from the Spanish terraces of “Pisalo, pisalo!” when the fans thought a certain type of play was called for.

1994/95 season Cup-winners Cup. Chelsea against Zaragoza. Chelsea aren't doing well. The terraces turn to fighting. The Spanish police wade in truncheons a go go and the uninvolved Zaragoza fans begin to chant "Pisalo, pisalo," in support of the police action.

The legend is that the Chelsea supporters heard the Spaniards chanting and thought they were saying "Peace and Love!, Peace and Love!". Suitably shame faced the Chelsea supporters settled down. It was in the British newspapers the next day so it must be true.

Thank you Alex for that little gem to add to my cultural knowledge of Spain from his language learning podcast of this week.

Being pushed and going

It was Dave's birthday last week. He invited us to his birthday barbecue and, following the hallowed tradition, whilst we were captive, Sara sold me a ticket in a World Cup sweep. Come on Morocco!

Spain play their first match tomorrow. To be honest it would be dead easy to be unaware that the World Cup, Copa Mundial or, more usually, just el Mundial is about to start. There are clues - like lots of adverts on the telly for big screen TVs and dead giveaways like the adverts for Coca Cola reminding you to get your supplies in before kick off. But, if you just were to simply wander around you would hardly be assailed by World Cup offers. None of the petrol companies, for instance, are giving away World Cup medals, youngsters aren't exchanging World Cup stickers and if the bicolour is flying higher than usual I would associate it with something anti Catalan rather than something pro Spanish squad. If there is massive support out there for la Selección Española, the national football team, la Roja, a name which comes from the traditional red kit, I seem to have missed it. Perhaps it will start tomorrow in Sochi at the Fisht Stadium.

If my Spanish nationality exam were to demand a 500 word essay on Spanish football I'd be hard pressed. I am vaguely interested in the World Cup though; as an event. It's just the same when, during the Olympics, I find myself watching, and caring about, the hockey. So, I'm chopping up the cucumber for the salad and on the radio they say that Julen Lopetegui, the national team coach, has got the boot. He's taken on the manager's job left open by Zidane at Real Madrid. My initial thought was that this was sheer madness. Presumably the squad has been training with this bloke, presumably their strategies, the ones they have been practising, were designed by the same man and, after all, it was he who had the final say in choosing the squad. I mean it's not as though it's a scandal taking another job. I presume he was willing to work out his notice. He'd not signed up with another national side and, so far as I know, he's paid his taxes. Why didn't they just let him do his job until the moment when the squad's World Cup was finished?

I was interested enough to have a look online for the printed version. The replacement is a man called Fernando Hierro who was the Sporting Director with the Spanish Football Federation. That presumably means that he's been there, alongside Lopetegui, in the plans so far. That sounded a little better. The article also gave me other pointers. It said that the news of the coach going to Real Madrid had left "players indignant and perplexed, particularly those who do not play for the capital’s team." So now we have it. It's about club football.

There was a strange symmetry to the football news. Whilst the no confidence motion was in progress, against the Partido Popular and its leader Mariano Rajoy, the one that led to a new Spanish Government,  Zinedine Zidane the Real Madrid manager, chose to resign. The number of tweets, WhatsApp and Facebook memes that mixed the events was legion. Yesterday the new Culture Minister, Máxim Huerta, who is best known as a morning TV show presenter and author with a very active presence on social media, resigned when it turned out he'd had a bit of a run in with the tax man. He'd routed some of his earnings through a company and, in court, he lost his argument with the Revenue. A bit against the grain in Spanish politics he resigned within 11 hours of the news breaking. So this time the memes were Lopetegui and Huerta rather than Zidane and Rajoy.

The photo by the way is of one of the security guards working at the play-off game between Valladolid and Numancia. He looks a lot like Rajoy. New work for the ex-president?