Got Futbol?

My time in Spain wouldn't be complete without some sort of futbol experience. As you probably know, Spain lives and breathes soccer over here. I have now experienced two tournaments where Barcelona won. First they won the Spanish Cup, and I thought that celebration was crazy. Well, yesterday they won the European Cup and THAT was even more of a crazy celebration. The experience of watching the game was very similar to watching the SuperBowl in the US. I went to a bar that was packed to the point of stading room only and when Barcelona won, most everyone went crazy. However, what was not the same was the post-celebration.

The celebration in Barcelona looked absolutely crazy. I'm still in Salamanca and most of the people here support Real Madrid, so I can't imagine what the celebration would have been like if Madrid had won, but here's a bit of what it looked like. The Spanish people take the party directly to the streets. They find the nearest plaza and begin to chant, sing, drink, dance, yell, etc. They also drive around honking their car horns, yelling out the cars and waving the team colors. Now this probably sounds pretty normal, we've seen these in the US after whatever team wins the SuperBowl, WorldSeries, etc. However, once again, this is Salamanca. In Colorado Springs, you don't see crazy partying in the streets when the Red Sox win the WorldSeries or anything. This is National.

I can't really imagine any sport in the United States that would evoke such a reaction. There isn't any one sport where everyone would be so elated if the US won a big match. We don't have any sport that we excell at enough that we would dominate or even really be considered a threat in global competition. Yes, there is basketball, and in the last Olympics, the US men had run for their money from Spain, however, this didn't evoke a National basketball fever like soccer does here. In part, I feel like the US misses out on the thrill of international competition because soccer is not the dominate sport. Here, soccer is like the weather, when you don't know what to talk about with a person, you talk about soccer. This however, may be changing as soccer does seem to be becoming more popular - we don't have the term "soccer mom" for nothing. It will be interesting to see if we ever end up living in world where the US becomes a soccer nation but until then, !Vaya Barcelona!