Força Barça!

My weekend turned out better than expected as my roommate found some good tickets to the FC Barcelona v. Sevilla game!  We bought tickets to go in December but as that is really a long ways away we were really anxious to go to a game sooner.  So he got online and then bam, two tickets!

I was really excited to go.  My favorite fútbol player, David Villa, plays for Barcelona, as does (perhaps) the best player in the world, Lionel Messi.  It was also going to be my first live fútbol match so I was super pumped to go.

As we only live about a half-mile from the stadium (Camp Nou) we left our apartment and took a nice walk up to the stadium.  We get there and of course there’s a lot of people, and not surprisingly we ran into a lot of English-speakers; this is because FC Barcelona is a very international team, they have over 5 million fans of facebook and their website is also in English.

Once we got in the stadium and to our seats I almost had a heart attack; it was much more beautiful than I could have possibly imagined!  However, what made the stadium complete was the atmosphere created by the fans.  Behind us we had a father and his kid who were definietely engaging in some father/son bonding.  Each time a FCB player touch the ball the father would yell the player’s name (“MESSSSI!”  “Bien juega Villa!”) while the son would boo the other team (for the record, “booo” is one of those words that crosses the language barrier).  And then in front of us we had a group of 20-year olds that were acting like they were in high school.  Throughout the entire game they would rip pages out of the program, build paper airplanes out of them and then throw them; most of them actually went pretty far and I laughed every time they threw one.

They also had some pretty cool chants and cheers.  Before the start of the game they played FC Barcelona’s anthem to which everybody in the stadium sang along.  Here’s the song from youtube:

When you combine the fans with all the cheers/chants (Da-da-dadada-dadada-Barça!) you get a perfect atmosphere for a fútbol game. 

Also, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned since being in Barcelona it’s that everybody loves Lionel Messi.  He’s from Argentina but you would think he was a local by the way people talk about how they love him.  He scored two goals during the game to which the people would chant his name a move their arms in a bowing motion. 

In the end, the score was 5-0 with Barça winning of course.  David Villa and Messi had two goals apiece which I was really excited about.  I can’t wait to go to more games!

Here’s my video clip from the match, right after David Villa scored his second goal:

You can also check out my facebook album here (which of course I will update as I got to more games)

Barça, Barça, Baaarça!