"Futbol or Soccer?"

Now, for a dose of reality - the 900 fans, who’ve each paid $3 to watch today’s matches, are cheering on 10 and 11 year old boys. These are the piqueños, the youth teams of these great clubs. I am travelling on a soccer pilgrimage with my family and confirming that the world’s game has a face that is both very familiar and very different in this European country.

My experience of the game stretches back to 1966 when ABC Wide World of Sports broadcast the World Cup final between England and Germany and enlightened my generation. I was hooked. However, it was extremely difficult for an 11 year old boy in Minnesota to feed a soccer addiction. Over the years, I moved to a new neighborhood where some of the boys played in a backyard and by 1969 I even managed to find a store where I could buy a soccer ball.

When I traveled around the USA, my yardstick of civilization was whether I could find a soccer field anywhere in the town. The change here has been unbelievable. So, when a new friend offered my family a place to stay in Spain all I could do was to pinch myself and pack the suitcases for two weeks in soccer heaven.

It was clear we weren’t in the US anymore when walking through the airport, soccer souvenirs were everywhere. Thinking I had just discovered one of the greatest soccer shops on the planet, I stuffed my pockets and bags not realizing that I had no clue what we were about to experience.

My first dose of Spanish soccer reality took effect on the drive to the home of our hosts. During the trip I found the nicest collection of Barcelona scarves I had seen anywhere – at a gas station. Here in Northern California I have adjusted to seeing ginseng and herbs for sale at gas stations but soccer souvenirs? Cool.

When we arrived in the medieval town where we were staying, the first thing we did after carrying our bags into the house was to join two local boys in the town plaza in an international match. The U-14 Spanish and American boys side demolished the two U-12 American girls despite their 45 year old veteran support. Our pitch was a 10 x 15 yard dirt space with benches for goals.

These local boys, just like the boys on the youth teams of the big clubs I watched later, had very good technical skills. Only one young player really stood out with his remarkable skills. After watching Carlos Couto of Figueres roasting Barcelona defenders all afternoon it was no surprise to learn that this fall he will probably join the Barcelona youth team. The other players would not have been out of place on any good Class I team here in California.

There was, however, a major difference. The tactical awareness of these boys was much much better than the highest level American youth players at the same age. Everybody worked off the ball and knew what they had to do to help their team succeed. Seeing such creative, intelligent and skillful play in children this age was an absolute delight.

Undoubtedly the reason these children understand the game so well is because they live in a futbol environment. They play all the time and see the game on the television. In fact it is pretty much impossible to avoid soccer in Spain. While in many European countries the level of soccer has fallen in recent years, this is not true in Spain. Many feel that the deterioration of soccer in certain European countries arises from the fact that children just don’t play as much. They don’t have places to play. They’d rather play electronic games. When they do play it is almost entirely under the guidance of a coach and parental organization. While as a soccer coach I certainly believe there is a place for coaching and training drills but the seeds of creativity and technical excellence are planted and start to grow in the backyards and streets. Spanish kids still play everywhere they can find a patch of dirt. In northern Spain we almost never saw a soccer field with grass outside of a stadium. This inconvenience doesn’t stop the Spaniards. In fact, signs saying “No Soccer Playing Allowed” were posted in many very small open spaces in some of the most popular city parks of Barcelona for the safety of the unsuspecting tourists walking through who didn’t want to join in a game.

The whole country was flooded with futbol merchandise. In a little beach town, for example, we went into a store to buy a volleyball and looked up to see they were also selling an inflatable boat that was a six foot long Barça crest! The 108,000 member Barcelona futbol club owns two stadiums (the second team has to play in a little 50,000 seater), a university and many other professional sports teams. Although we enjoyed the special Barça Centenary Exhibition across town, the Barça museum at the Camp Nou was even better. After finding our way through the 30 tour buses and browsing the museum displays of trophies, photographs, beautiful old posters, and the boots of famous players we entered the virtual reality of the real Barça store. Barça pajamas, toothpaste, bicycles, underwear and candy were all there for the buying. I was disappointed that the only soccer ties for sale where tacky polyester ones. What is snobbish tie-monger to do? I passed on the crystal goblets even though they could have been personally engraved with my name.

As a soccer materialist I loved the shopping, but appropriately the highlight of the trip was on the field and what an experience it was! It is hard to believe our good fortune to have been there for such an incredible game. Also I can’t forget to thank Frans Hoek and Andrew Ziemer for helping us get tickets.

I have had some pretty incredible soccer spectator experiences from literally rocking the stadium as part of a crowd of 45,000 loving the Minnesota Kicks 9-2 playoff slaughter of the star-studded New York Cosmos in 1978, to the 1994 Men’s and 1999 Women’s World Cups. Although those experiences and others were fantastic, the Barcelona- Chelsea European Champions League Quarterfinal might have been even more special.

Barça had been struggling through a stretch of horrendously bad form getting blown out in three consecutive games. They were down 1-3 from the first leg so although we were excited just to be in the Camp Nou to experience a game we expected Barça’s run at the Champions League title to come to an end that night. Wrong! Barça’s dramatic recovery from their 1-3 away deficit was achieved with an extremely impressive display of incredibly skillful attacking soccer. It was very hard to imagine any team playing better or how this one could ever lose.

Just as striking as the quality of the play was the depth of feeling shared between this professional sports team and its supporters. In America, where 10 years seems like a very long time, it is difficult to explain how closely connected the people there are to their one hundred year old team. Telling you there were one hundred thousand gasping, screaming fans doesn’t adequately describe it because even those who don’t go to the game and claim not to care that much about futbol still argue about the merits of the coaches player selections. The spectators in the stadium voice their displeasure over the quality of play. It doesn’t require a bad pass to bring moans from the crowd. A player who chooses a safe lateral pass while a marginally better attacking option slips by brings down a chorus of whistles from the crowd who expect style as well as results. This is startling for me as “sophisticated” soccer crowds in the US have only recently dropped their habit of applauding long kicks up the field finally realizing that simply being able to boom the ball isn’t a good measure of a player’s ability.