Two Tourists Soaked At Camp Nou

It is always an enlight­en­ing and cap­ti­vat­ing expe­ri­ence head­ing to a for­eign coun­try. The sense of the sheer unknown and undis­cov­ered unfold­ing in front of your very eyes is unique to say the least. Barcelona, the heart of Spain’s Cata­lan com­mu­nity is no dif­fer­ent. Spain’s sec­ond biggest town is par­tic­u­larly renowned for its art, with many works of Pablo Picasso and Anto­nio Gaudi stand­ing proudly for the culture-thirsty tourists and locals alike. And then there’s the foot­ball team. Some of the finest foot­ballers ever to kick a foot­ball in anger have worn the famous blue and red stripes of Barcelona. For­ever her­alded names such as Ronaldo, Diego Maradona, Romario and Johan Cruyff have all etched an ever­last­ing legacy with the club. Last week, Dan, a friend from Uni­ver­sity and I decided that our trip to Barcelona was not com­plete with­out a mouth-watering ven­ture to Camp Nou to watch the cur­rent Euro­pean cham­pi­ons take on Seville in La Liga action.

The match was to be played on the Sat­ur­day evening, the day after we landed. We spent the early hours strolling around Gaudi’s almost vio­lently eye catch­ing Sargrada Familia, whilst feel­ing very smug about it being close to 15 degrees, unlike the treach­er­ous, bliz­zard like con­di­tions back home in Eng­land. Like many of Barcelona’s over­pow­er­ing stone struc­tures, this feat of archi­tec­ture purely demands your atten­tion. Cran­ing your neck to the top of the almost never end­ing struc­ture was almost scary in itself. The exte­rior of the faded golden brown build­ing cuts an impres­sive fig­ure. An upturned V shape sup­ports numer­ous thin, cir­cu­lar tow­ers which dom­i­nate nearby skylines.

Through­out our first 24 hours in Barcelona, we noted a sheer enthu­si­asm and pride within the local fans. When we trudged away from Sagrada Familia not want­ing to join a hor­ren­dous queue upstairs, we found many peo­ple hand­ing out fly­ers for the team and talk­ing about the foot­ball with other fans. Like lazy, igno­rant, Eng­lish tourists, Dan and I could just about muster up half a “hola” in Span­ish between us. Thank­fully the locals were more intel­li­gent than two wooden planks glued together and spoke OK Eng­lish. When talk­ing to two girls dressed in lumi­nous peach Barcelona mer­chan­dise, Dan asked where to get off of the metro on the way to the sta­dium. As if luck was shin­ing down on us like the mediocre, breeze filled sun we were feel­ing so cocky over, Camp Nou was on the same line as our hotel. Per­fect! Being the wor­rier than I am, I asked if we could sit any­where, as I had heard it was a bit of a free for all. There were not enough tick­ets left for us to sit together, leav­ing Dan and I a row apart, plonked uncer­e­mo­ni­ously in a scrum of angry, volatile, Span­ish foot­ball fans. As soon as I opened my mouth, the lan­guage bar­rier had been effi­ciently hauled up and the girl answered a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ques­tion to what I had asked, smil­ing back at me dressed in her Day-Glo uni­form. Like so many times on this trip, I hadn’t the heart (or patience) to cor­rect her, and I smiled, thanked her, and Dan and I car­ried on with our appar­ent walk­ing marathon.

That evening, we left the metro at Maria Cristina at about 8pm local time, 2 hours before kick-off at 10pm, which by Eng­lish stan­dards is a bizarre con­cept see­ing as all TV games kick off at 7.45pm or 8pm. After dis­ori­en­ta­tion in the night-time driz­zle arrived, we finally found our route and about 10 min­utes later, we could see Camp Nou tan­ta­lis­ingly pok­ing its head over the road­side fences and ubiq­ui­tous palmtrees.  Although it is a mag­i­cal spec­ta­cle in its own right, Camp Nou is hardly the mod­ern, flashy, “plas­tic bowl” type of sta­dium which is the trend in Eng­land at the moment. The exte­rior fea­tures mam­moth strips of con­crete div­ing ver­ti­cally with blue and red ban­ners hang­ing down. These ban­ners depict the likes of Car­les Puyol, Ger­ard Pique and Lionel Messi, arms around each other and fists raised to con­note mas­culin­ity, cel­e­brat­ing yet another goal or vic­tory. The hun­dreds of stairs spi­ralling towards the pin­na­cle of the sta­dium can be seen between the afore­men­tioned, gar­gan­tuan con­crete slabs on the stadium’s exte­rior. I don’t know about you, but any sign of the inside of the sta­dium from out­side leaves but­ter­flies danc­ing in my stom­ach. We were at the gate and I could hardly wait to get in.

In text­book tourist fash­ion we rushed in to the gate before dither­ing and pon­der­ing over where our seats actu­ally were. We then tack­led the assault course of hun­dreds of stairs as we were of course at the very top. Con­sid­er­ing I am about 5 foot 8 and 9 and a half stone when soak­ing wet, my pathet­i­cally puny frame was in need of a good sit down as Dan rushed off ahead like so many other times on this trip. As we finally reached our block in the encap­su­lat­ing cube of con­crete which is the con­course, we were so high up we had to walk down a set of steps to get to our seats. My heart leapt as we finally caught sight of the red and blue stands which gave way to the pris­tine, eye water­ingly green pitch. As I attempted to soak up my immense sur­round­ings, I then noticed just how high we were. It looked as big and daunt­ing as four or five aver­age sized sta­di­ums placed on each other. We were within a close prox­im­ity to the near­est of the few flood­lights and in the most vul­ner­a­ble spot at the top due to the gush­ing pour­ing of fine but per­sis­tent rain. I started to think to myself “Christ, nobody lean for­ward please.” It is one of those heights where you feel like grav­ity has for­got­ten its pri­mary func­tion and your limbs feel higher than they are sup­posed to be. Despite my immense ver­tigo, the height did add a feel of the­atre as we really were look­ing down as opposed to look­ing at the action.

Despite Seville dump­ing Barcelona out of the Copa Del Rey in the 5^th round ear­lier that week, the sta­dium was sparsely filled and the fre­quent sight of empty seats around our tier in par­tic­u­lar did not help with acoustics. To be fair, the sta­dium can hold almost 100,000 fans and 63,000 sup­port­ers in atten­dance is hardly a piti­ful turn out. This also meant that Dan and I got to sit wher­ever we wanted in our block. The only down­side of big sta­di­ums is that the amount of peo­ple inside the sta­dium makes it dif­fi­cult to get one chant around the whole ground and cre­ate atmosphere.

How­ever, give the Cata­lan fans their due. As I stood sip­ping the strongest espresso known to man, Dan and I exchanged looks of shock and won­der­ment at the deaf­en­ing whis­tles which greeted the Seville team as they ran out to warm up. It is the type of ani­mos­ity towards an away team which almost evokes an unwanted air of sym­pa­thy. As I watched the Barcelona team run out to applause wor­thy of being for a heroic army on their home­com­ing, I raised my hood to com­bat the now sear­ing rain. If you thought the Eng­lish were adverse to rain, the Span­ish acted as if they had been jet­ted in to the set of Day After Tom­morow, and thrown into the flood’s rap­tur­ous claws. Every­where you looked you saw men sport­ing ridicu­lous pon­chos and using all sorts of objects to keep their head shielded from the down­pour. Dan spot­ted a man near us wear­ing enor­mous, black head­phones and a thick plas­tic bag, hilar­i­ously enough perched del­i­cately on his bald­ing head. To top it all off, he was sat with a som­bre expres­sion on his face as if he was ren­dered bored to the brink of tears by what he was watch­ing. This was one of those moments where you could not help but dis­solve into heav­ing, invol­un­tary spasms of laugh­ter. There was an old bloke, with a face like a smacked arse, sit­ting near us with a plas­tic bag on his head. Hilar­i­ous! Dan of course obliged to take numer­ous pho­tos of the poor sod in ques­tion. This was all on Face­book soon after, obviously.

The first half was a frus­trat­ing one for the reign­ing La Liga cham­pi­ons, they had a wealth of pos­ses­sion, only for the final ball to be insuf­fi­cient, or Thierry Henry or Zla­tan Ibrahi­movic to mis­cue a run and stray off­side. There was of course the surg­ing, almost unbe­liev­able runs of Lionel Messi, who con­stantly drib­bled the ball as if it is stuck to his feet and weaved in and out of rash chal­lenges by men much taller than his mea­gre 5 foot 7 inches. There were also a few flashes of bril­liance in auda­cious, delight­ful flicks by Andreas Ini­esta, who at times looked on a dif­fer­ent planet than the other 21 play­ers on the pitch. The things he does with the ball are so unex­pected and inven­tive. Ini­esta uses every player on the pitch and every part of his boot to cre­ate chances. Ibrahi­movic missed a few oppor­tu­ni­ties which were purely licked with guilt and the home side should have been lead­ing by two or three goals as the referee’s half-time whilst was only a pre­lim­i­nary to yet more unspeak­ably shrill whis­tles from the Barcelona fans. The first half was enter­tain­ing, but La Liga’s lead­ers needed a goal, and badly.

Thank­fully, the goals in the sec­ond half mir­rored the weather, unre­lent­ing. The home side’s inevitable break­through came when a Pique ball across the six yard box was unfor­tu­nately poked in by Sevilla’s Nico­las Escude into the back of his own net on 49 min­utes. 20 min­utes later, Xavi stroked a defence split­ting ball for Pedro to del­i­cately chip home to make it 2–0 with another unsur­pris­ingly grace­ful Barcelona goal. Messi began the dark, wet night on 99 Barcelona goals and decided it was his time to shine under the lights. Pedro rose well and flicked on a Dani Alves cross which left Messi unmarked in the mid­dle. The diminu­tive Argen­tine then calmly cush­ioned the ball on his chest for con­trol, took a touch and placed the ball past Andres Palop in the Sevilla goal. It was an emo­tional expe­ri­ence and an hon­our to see Messi’s 100^th goal for his club. It may be a slightly obscure nugget of a sta­tis­tic, but Dan and I wit­nessed a small slice of Barcelona his­tory that night. Five min­utes later, with Barcelona hav­ing already won the match and the sec­onds tick­ing into injury time, Eric Abidal rolled a ball through the Sevilla defence which Messi again obliged to take and fin­ished well, tap­ping home eas­ily. The for­mi­da­ble Cata­lans had won 4–0, and now all we needed to worry about was dodg­ing crazy scooter dri­vers who appeared com­pletely dumb­founded to actual humans walk­ing across the road on the way home. It was a very long, wet jour­ney back to the hotel, and I didn’t col­lapse on my bed until about 1.30am, but it was worth it for some­thing every foot­ball fan needs to expe­ri­ence once. May the man with a bag on his head “enjoy” many more Camp Nou vis­its like we did.