You could go to the Camp Nou with its 80,000 subscribers who only go to the big games, or to the Bernabéu, where you are more likely to be sitting next to Tom Cruise or surrounded by bachelor parties than true Madrid fans, but if you want an experience Unforgettable of La Liga, how about a visit to San Mamés, home of Athletic Bilbao?
Instead of galactics, you will see a team whose players may not be household names (and with names like Goikoetxea, Etxeberria and Aldekoaotalora, this is not surprising), but who certainly inspires passion in their fans.
We were in town to see Bobby Robson’s Barcelona team visit, a kickoff game on Saturday night. ‘La Catedral’ has the advantage of being right in the center of the city, at the end of Licenciado Poza, a street full of bars that a couple of hours before the start were full of red and white-clad Bilbao citizens of all ages.
We chose one of the bars, elbowed our way through the crowd and ordered a round of zurritos, little measures of beer that allow you to have a drink, chat, and move on to the next place in the space of ten minutes. Each bar was decked out with flags and scarves, and everyone was confident despite the prospect of a tough match ahead against the league leaders with one Brazilian named Ronaldo, who was scoring an obscene number of goals that season.
At one of the bars closest to the ground we picked up our half-time snack, a chorizo sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil, and headed for our door. San Mamés is not the largest field in Spain, and it is not the most impressive stadium, but once inside, everything revolves around the atmosphere. Seating goes all the way to the touchline, every available surface was covered with a red and white striped flag or the Basque ikurriña, and the roof of the stands did a great job of keeping up the chorus of whistles that accompanied every bad decision made. by the referee, or rather every decision that was against the home team. Spanish soccer fans like to whistle, usually mixed with shouts of ‘Vete a casa, inutil’ (‘Go home, useless’, surprisingly popular considering how creative Spaniards can be with their swear words).
Barcelona scored first, and the lack of visiting fans that characterizes La Liga matches made the stadium strangely quiet as the Barça players celebrated. It didn’t take long for the locals to get behind their team vocally and on the referee’s back. Athletic was still a zero down at halftime, and when the rain started to fall as everyone in the stadium unwrapped their sandwiches and got inside, things were not looking very good. Fortunately, Athletic got the tie in the middle of the second half and when their golden boy, Julen Guerrero, put them ahead ten minutes later, the stadium exploded. The man next to me in a huge black beret handed me his boot and indicated that I should have a drink. Rather than achieve a perfect arc from the wineskin to the mouth, I spilled some red wine all over my white T-shirt and handed it back to him. He seemed impressed.
Bilbao held on to win, and the stadium emptied back to the streets with the slow chant of ‘Athleeeetic! Athleeeeetic! ‘. Some firecrackers went off and in a town used to living under the threat of terrorism, this seemed to disconcert some people, but we didn’t notice any problems. And the Basque police, the ertzaintza (in Basque it means ‘robocop’, I suppose), it seemed they could handle anything.
It was then that I realized the beauty of a Saturday night game in a city center stadium, the game turned out to be just the beginning of a fantastic and very long night. Bilbaoans do not need the excuse of a victory against one of the two great clubs to corner a foreigner and explain for the umpteenth time the unique history and local politics of their beloved club. They also wanted to point out how Athletic considers itself an English-style team, rather than a Spanish team (hence the missing ‘o’), and the few words of Basque that we had collected were a pleasure.
Several of the bars lining Pozas featured the game’s highlights and, in particular, a montage of scraped shots, bad controls and wayward passes from Ronaldo, each of which drew a round of cheers from drinkers.
As often happens these days, the days of San Mamés are numbered. The plans for the new stadium look pretty impressive and retain that all-important central location, but I am definitely planning to return to La Catedral before I see its final service. It will probably not be to see Athletic in the Champions League, the exclusively Basque politics makes it increasingly difficult for them to compete with the resources of the biggest Spanish clubs, but this only makes the victories against the Barcelonas of this world a pleasure. much sweeter.