The Kids in the Upper Deck

I’m perched on a bar stool at El Parador Cervecería across from Vicente Calderon Stadium two hours before game time, nursing my cerveza grande in a giant plastic cup. The brunette next to me? Sipping an orange juice.  She’s decked out in the trademark red, white and blue jersey of Atlético Madrid; I have opted for a only-slightly-less-gaudy red warm-up jacket and matching team scarf. 

In many countries my outfit would be mercilessly mocked and ridiculed, but here? Muy, muy guapo.

The girl looks at my jacket out of the corner of her eye as she opens her mouth and bites her sandwich. I smile and nod at her jersey. Clearly we’ve bonded.

 Her name is Paula. She is a big Atlético fan. She’s six years old.

These European soccer hooligans are just adorable.

“Do you know what time they open the gates?” Dad asks me in Spanish, as he and his wife take turns steadying Paula on the barstool. Apparently I look like someone who knows. “Three thirty?”

Of course I have no idea but automatically assume my default mode of faking it with conviction. “No, at three, I think,” Complete guess but let the man dream. Mom gives me a worried-looking nod, calculating how they are going to entertain a six-year-old in a bar for another 45 minutes. Paula doesn’t seem particularly concerned.

They say that in Spain, soccer (or football, as anyone outside of North America calls it) is a religion.  If that’s the case, it looks like I just walked into the early service Sunday School.

In eight days, an early morning, pre-arranged rumble on a bridge outside Vicente Calderon stadium between radical Atlético and Deportivo supporters will leave a man dead, after he falls - or is thrown - into the river during the fight. Twenty fans will be arrested.

But today I'm seeing none of this.

Where are the screaming fanatics? Where are the drunken brawls? With multiple families and kids under twelve, El Parador looks less like a testosterone-infused sports bar than it does a tram stop at Disney World.

I’ve been hanging out here with Paula and her parents for the past half hour, waiting for the start of the Spanish La Liga matchup between hometown Atlético Madrid and the visitors from Malaga.  An Oscar Mayer hot dog cooker (“The Genuine Hot Dog of America!”) sits on the bar to the right of us, rotating a set of maroon-colored wieners. Fortunately no one appears to be eating them.

Dad asks me another question about the stadium that I can’t really understand and I probably couldn’t answer if I did. I decide to fess up. “Actually, this is my first game.”

“Ours, too,” Mom tells me.  She gestures toward Paula. “She really wanted to come. She loves football.”

Paula says nothing, but seems to be eying up the hot dogs. I nod and take another swallow of cerveza. Dad looks at his watch. 

At this point a drunken brawl looks extremely unlikely.

*          *          *

It is true that in Spain, Sports is essentially synonymous with Football. There is no other sport that really means anything.  Basketball occasionally gets a 30-second mention on the TV sports report, but I suspect only because the Spanish Gasol brothers (Pau and Marc) currently play in the NBA. After that, it’s ten seconds of tennis, ten seconds of Grand Prix auto racing, and the motocross results.

That’s not a joke; they actually give the motocross results.

No, if you’re a sports fan in Spain, it’s all about football.  And in Spanish football, it’s all about La Liga, the top 20-team division of professional football clubs. La Liga translates simply as “The League,” as in “What other league could you possibly be talking about?” 

However, “Competitive Balance” – something to which American professional sports leagues at least pay lip service – is not a concept that translates at all to La Liga, either in language or spirit. In the 83 seasons of La Liga (since 1929, with a couple years off for an ugly Civil War), the league has been won 54 times by two clubs: Real Madrid, and Barcelona.

 

In the past 10 years, either Real Madrid or Barcelona has been crowned the champion all but once.  The undisputed two best players in the world play for these two teams: Lionel Messi for Barcelona; Cristian Renaldo for Real Madrid. Both clubs have a worldwide fan base and by far have the most money of any team in the country.  It’s like Apple and Microsoft, Nadal and Djokovic, Presley and Sinatra. And then everybody else.

On the outside of this embarrassment of riches looking in is Madrid’s “other” football team: Club Atlético de Madrid, or more simply, Atlético. If Real Madrid are the Yankees and Barcelona are the Red Sox, then Atlético are the Spanish equivalent of the New York Mets.

Like the Mets of baseball, Atlético plays in the biggest market in the country.  But in comparison to their rich cousins Real Madrid, who play their home games in an historic, prestigious 81,000-seat stadium regally referred to as El Bernabéu,  Atlético plays in Estadio Vicente Calderon, a dowdy concrete stadium down by the river, on the working-class side of town.  It’s the only sports stadium I’ve ever seen that actually has a highway running underneath it.

It’s like old Shea Stadium in Queens. Minus a toxic waste dump or two.

But like the Mets, Atlético historically (if not currently) is not entirely hopeless. With less money and less prestige, they still try their best to keep up with the Big Boys. Every now and then – say, once every couple of decades – they actually go on an improbable run and win the whole thing, leaving the spoiled fans of Real and Barcelona fuming with rage.  One of those improbable runs happened last year, giving Atlético the championship for the first time since 1996.

When I moved to New York in the late Nineties, I turned my nose up at the dynasty-building Yankees and became a Mets fan, ushering in heartbreak for years to come. And of course when I came to Madrid - for reasons I will leave a psycho-analyst to determine - I knew immediately that, like the Mets, Atlético was the team for me.

*          *          *

I previously had been to one European football match, 17 or so years ago, in Belgium. But I’m not sure that really counts.

I was taken to my first match by Geert – a silver-haired Belgian banker by day who after hours transformed into a leather-clad, earring-wearing, beer-swilling, Iron Maiden-loving head banger.  Geert had invited me and my half-Irish friend Jim to a game featuring Geert’s favorite club, Anderlecht, which at the time apparently represented the best Belgian football had to offer.

While I’m sure he meant well, it was Geert who confirmed my suspicion that a soccer game – in Belgium, at least – was nothing more than an organized excuse to drink. As if they needed another one.

We spent the hour leading up to the Anderlecht game with Geert and his friends hitting as many bars around the stadium as possible, slamming down a Stella and quickly heading out to find the next round.  By kickoff time Jim and I - no strangers to beer consumption, trust me - were being ridiculed as lightweight Americans because we were unable to ingest a gallon of alcohol in 45 minutes or less. 

Predictably, the Anderlecht match ended in a 0-0 tie, confirming the worst American stereotypes about European soccer.  I may have napped through most of of the second half. The rest of the crowd, exclusively young men who looked as if they had hit twice as many bars as we had, seemed lobotomized, impassively staring down at the field waiting for the something to happen, knowing in their hearts it was probably wasn’t going to.

But comparing La Liga  – one of world’s richest and most prestigious professional sports leagues - to Belgian soccer circa 1997 is a little like comparing the Lord of the Rings trilogy to a community theater production of Godspell, performed free of charge in a church basement in Altoona.  In the world of soccer, La Liga is the big time. I knew that, even if I wasn’t watching Barcelona or Real Madrid, a football game in Spain was going to be different.

I had no idea the difference would involve kids, more kids, cigars, air horns, scarves, vomitoriums, and molestation by a security guard. Just did not see that coming.

*          *          *

I’m really not sure what’s up with the scarves. A ridiculous number of red, white and blue team scarves hang from dozens of identical souvenir stands lining the perimeter of Vicente Calderon Stadium, like ham hocks at the pork store. You can also buy an Atlético flag or maybe a cap, but it seems to be all the about the scarf. I stopped counting at a billion.

Yes, I bought a scarf, but I’m the American neophyte at his first Spanish soccer game. Who are the other 999,999 scarves for?  The stadium only holds 52,000; how many scarves can a person possibly wear? It’s not even cold.

Leave it to the Spanish to combine sports paraphernalia with male fashion accessories.  I look, but fail to find the matching Atlético cufflinks and cummerbund.

*          *          *

An hour before game time I spot a half dozen of powder-blue-and-white-clad Malaga supporters milling around one of the gates. Unlike the Atlético fans who all seem to have offspring in tow, the visitors from Malaga are all guys in their early 20s, showing their unease in enemy territory by talking a little too loudly and slapping each other on the back a little too often.

Nearby an Atlético Dad is buying a bag of something that looks like caramel corn for his three-year-old daughter, while her eight-year-old brother stands to the side, brandishing a rolled-up Atlético flag on a pointy poll.  Police cars – just slightly larger than those utilized by clowns at the circus – are deployed in the street. Tension hangs in the air; my finely honed journalistic instinct tells me this place is a powder keg ready to explode.

As if on cue, a battalion of police with batons and riot helmets hustle past me double time, as if they all just ate a plate of bad chorizo. They’re joined by two helmeted policemen on horseback, trotting around the end of the stadium toward the highway underpass beneath the stands.  This is it! I run after them with my camera, trying to listen for anyone yelling “DRUNKEN MELEE!!” in Spanish. Whatever that would be.

When I reach the underpass, lights are flashing in the tunnel and the police are shooing picture-snapping Atlético fans away from a red, white and blue bus parked under the stands. The Atlético team, apparently, has arrived at the stadium. 

Disappointingly, no one in the tunnel appears to be fighting, and/or drunk. Not even the players.

*          *          *

As I enter the stadium, the security guards give me renewed hope that the authorities at least believe chaos is just a smuggled-in smoke bomb away.  This is a far cry from the half-hearted bag check at American sporting events, where they seem most concerned about unauthorized umbrellas or a contraband bag of Dorito’s.

I’m not carrying a bag, purse or backpack, so instead I get a full-body pat down.  Not the perfunctory pat down you get at the airport if you set off the metal detector; I suspect this is closer to what you experience when you check in for your first day at prison. Another couple inches further up my leg and I’m going to ask the guard if he plans to buy me dinner.

Yes, that is a cell phone in my pocket. And no, I’m not just happy to see you.

*          *          *

I look at my ticket to figure out where I'm sitting. I see that my seat, apparently, is located in Vomitorio 34.  Which means there are at least 33 more vomitorios. Should I be concerned that my seat is located in a vomitorium? Is this somehow connected to the Oscar Mayer hot dogs they are selling across the street? Did I pay extra for this?

My seat, it turns out, is almost as far away from the field as it can possibly be without actually being located outside of the stadium. When I enter Vomitorio 34 and show the usher my ticket, she just laughs and points up the concrete stairs. As in “WAY the hell up there, Pal. Just keep climbing.”

Vomitorio 34, Section 519, Row 16, is in the second-to-last in the stadium, just under the press box. It might be in the shade, on some other day. But with the 4:00 p.m. start time I will be staring into a blinding sun for at least the first half of the game. I am baking in my warm up jacket and my scarf.

But by American standards, the seat is … not really that bad.  I paid 40 Euro for the ticket, about 50 bucks. At an American football game, I’d be sitting at about the 40-yard line, and paying what? Three or four times this price? And vomiting probably wouldn’t even be allowed, let alone encouraged.

I lean back, drape my arms over the adjoining chairs, and prop up my feet in the still-empty row in front of me. I feel like I’m living large, soaking in the sun and the scene through my Ray-bans in the vomitorio under the press box of Vicente Calderon Stadium. 

That is until the kids arrive.

*          *          *

Three things of note that have not yet been banned in Spanish football stadiums: cigars, children under the age of 12, and air horns. Thankfully they have not yet imported the vuvuzela.

It’s an odd sensation, having cigar smoke blown in your face. Kind of like being stuck on a motorcycle in the Holland tunnel in the middle of summer, behind a diesel tractor-trailer with a bad muffler.  I feel like I’m at a poker game, taking place in 1958.

The cigar smoke in this case comes from three seats down, billowing out of an 80-year-old man who apparently decided to treat his 27 grandchildren to a Saturday afternoon soccer game. Two of the kids – Kike and Pepe, I learn – are in the seats to the left of me.  Honestly I have no idea whether Kike and Pepe have any connection to the cigar-puffing, Fidel Castro impersonator. All I know is there otherwise seems to be a dearth of supervising adults in the general vicinity.

Kike and Pepe are at that age – I don’t know, 5? 6? – where they don’t really give a crap about the actual sporting event taking place on the field. Yeah there are a bunch of guys running around kicking a ball yadda yadda yadda okay we got it whatever. It’s much, much more fun for a boy at that age to throw peanut shells in the hair of the people in front of them, giggle and hide, and then puncture an eardrum by blowing an air horn.

Paula would never do this.

“Hey!”

Kike and Pepe have just blown their air horn into the ear of a visibly pissed Russian with a crewcut in the row in front of us.  The Russian kid apparently speaks no Spanish, so he begins yelling in broken English. To the delight of Kike and Pepe, who know just enough English to giggle and hurl back the insults of a six year old that transcend all cultural divides.

“What is your name?” Kiki asks the Russian slowly in English.

“Me, I am Nikolai.”

Kiki and and Pepe both laugh. “You’re stupid.”

Nikolai’s eyes bulge to the size of pies. For a moment I believe his head might actually explode. “I STUPID??? I STUPID?? YOU STUPID!! YOU!!”

The kids love this. They laugh and laugh and laugh. Meanwhile on the field, Atlético has scored its first goal. Kiki and Pepe could not possibly care less.

*          *          *

While the game so far may not have quite reached the level of a religious experience, I do notice about halfway through the first half that Jesus is sitting in front of me.

Turns out he’s an Atlético fan. I wonder how that is going to go over in Barcelona, and at the stadium across town.

*          *          *

Like the denizens of the Dawg Pound in Cleveland or the Cheeseheads in the end zone of Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, the serious fans – the inebriated ones with painted faces and life-long season tickets - sit at each end of the field behind the goal posts, with arguably the worst view in the stadium. 

Regardless of whatever is happening on the field, it appears that the primary activity behind the goal posts is to sing and chant in unison.  All kinds of chants, all kinds of songs. I can’t decipher a single lyric, but so far I have heard chants sung (or, perhaps, songs chanted) to the tune of “My Darling Clementine,” Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer, and “Da Doo Ron Ron” by The Crystals.

Evidently the playlist at Vicente Calderon has not been updated since a decade or so before Franco died.

A few minutes before the end of the half, Atlético scores its second goal, further depressing the contingent of Malaga supporters relegated to the ghetto of a single section in the far corner of the stadium.  The Atlético fans stand and wave their scarves, as the end zone chants something to the tune of the Polovetzian Dance No. 2 by Borodin.

Back in Vomitorio 34, Nikolai continues his debate with Kike and Pepe.

“You stupid!!”

“No, you are.”

“No, you!”

 Jesus looks on impassively, and opens a bag of peanuts.

*          *          *

Midway through the second half. The Atlético fans are growing nervous, as Malaga kicks in a goal almost as if by accident, narrowing the score to 2-1.

It’s as if everyone is just waiting for a tie to ruin their afternoon.  Who wants to leave the stadium chanting “Yay! We didn’t lose to each other!”  What are the drunken-brawl chances in that?

Here under the press box, the niños are also antsy, but it has nothing to do with the game score.  There are, after all, only so many peanut shells you can throw and Russians you can annoy before boredom sets in.

Kike’s Dad finally makes himself known from the row behind us and steps in to try to put an end to the tormenting of Nikolai. My personal opinion is that anyone who argues with a six year old at a football game for 45 minutes pretty much gets what he deserves, but I’m also ready for the exercise of a little parental control.

“Kike,” Dad says, confiscating the air horn, “mira el partido.”  Watch the game.

The look on Kike’s face switches from unbridled joy to the grimace of a crushed soul, as if Dad just announced that there is no Santa Claus. Or whoever it is that delivers Christmas presents in Spain.

Watch the game? Am I being punished for a war crime? Why do you hate me?

After being prohibited from torturing foreign nationals, Kike initiates the sporting event version of Are We There, Yet?,  swiveling around every five minutes to ask Dad when the game will be over so they can get the hell out of there.

“Veinte minutos, Kike.”

“Quince minutos, Kike.”

“Diez minutos, Kike.”

Pepe on the sly tries to coax his friend into re-instigating hostilities with Nikolai, but Kike’s heart is just not in it anymore.  If you can’t deafen an innocent stranger with an air horn what’s the point, really?

With six minutes left to go Atlético scores another goal, making the game 3-1, the soccer equivalent of an emphatic beat down.

Scarves are waved. The end zone chants. Kike asks Dad how much time is left. Jesus sits quietly, eating his peanuts.

*          *          *

When the final whistle blows, Atlético walks away with a tidy victory, keeping them within striking distance of Real and Barcelona in La Liga standings. In all likelihood they won’t pass either of those teams, but stranger things have happened. Hell, they happened last year.

With the 3-1 route I hold out hope that humiliated Malaga fans will charge the field or set off a smoke bomb, something to provoke the riot police with the horses and clown cars. But defeat is accepted in a disappointingly civilized manner, as the boys in their blue and white jerseys obediently file from their segregated upper deck corner and out of the stadium.

The riot police look bored. The horses the police are riding look bored. The kids being dragged home may not necessarily be bored, but most of them clearly need a nap.

A fine Saturday afternoon in Madrid, unless you’re a Malaga fan.  The drunken brawl is still a week away.