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I’m not a huge football fan, but I found this book to be interesting.

It’s an interesting review of Spanish football by expat Richard Bretnall, as written by him after travelling the country and after he investigated the history behind Spanish football.

Via the medium of football, Richard manages to get closer to Spain and it’s traditions.

Here’s his description, which is better than any I could write:

Fed up by life in a country losing its soul, sorely disenchanted by its football, and uncluttered by any ties other than his beloved club whose season ticket he still retains, Richard Brentnall took a plunge in March 2007, leaving England for southern Spain.

Embracing a new culture within this fresh, expansive lease of life, he held a particular hope: to be enabled to feel something different deep inside that would resuscitate his lifelong love of the game. Once upon a time in England, dreams of glory were realisable by anyone, and the atmosphere on match days had been raw.

The most serious affliction suffered by English football wasn’t so-called hooliganism but that futility brought about by money’s murdering of a once level playing field. It was accompanied by a ‘health and safety’ culture that saw vim in the stands largely suffocated by orange anoraks itching for prey.

Brentnall hoped this different corner would provide match day experiences to warm the cockles of his heart again and provide a scene whereby ambition could still genuinely be chased. His exploration took him the length and breadth of Spain – from Almeria to the Basque Country, to Galicia to find out how Compostela’s fans dealt with their team’s spectacular plummet from the top flight to the regional leagues, from Seville to the Bernabeu, to Huelva to see where it all began.

On Friday night, a young 23 year lad called David Zamora, playing football in the local league at Turre old football stadium, collapsed and died during the match. He was pronounced dead at Huercal Overa hospital.

He had a small heart problem from birth, but lead a strict life and had a perfect bill of health. He was a regular player in the league.

I know his elder sister, and my heart goes out to his family.

Nicolás Uclés, the venerable head of Almería football who has been behind the scenes for the last 30 years and is one of the reasons why football here is so well run (so it seems, I don’t follow it myself) was arrested in a dramatic police operation at 1,30 yesterday morning after police kicked his door in and dragged him away.

In a statement issued, he admits to having downloaded around 4,000 porn clips from the net (I’m no expert, but I would say that is a LOT of porn) but denies having downloaded any illegal images.

Ideal says that it is rumoured that he was denounced by one of his own technicians who spotted suspicious traffic on the internal network. Certainly it seems as if his own organisation have dropped him like a hot potato.

The Andaluz Football Fed has come in to the offices and changed the locks, it seems.

Full story here

Today’s row is over the high pitched whistling emitted by Basque and Catalans which drowned out the national hymn played before yesterday’s football match between Athletic and Barça. Fans screamed nationalist abuse, let off air horns and generally drowned out the national anthem and the King (who also attended).

However, the sports director of RTVE, the national broadcaster, ordered that the live transmission of the match be cut off due to the protest and switched to the Bilbao studio, until the anthem ended and the fans settled back down.

This has lead to a surge of complaints from members of the public, who say either that the anthem should have been transmitted in full (despite the background noise) or that RTVE have censured a nationalist protest in the best Franco style. In all, an almighty row.

This has lead to the head of the sports director of RTVE, Julián Reyes, who has just been fired by Javier Pons, the head of RTVE.

It has also lead to me getting a very short haircut, as Damien from Turre was so incensed by this that he clipped a tad too short.

It also lead to a nasty riot in Barcelona which ended up with around 50 people in jail.

A gentleman in a wheelchair has been fined 3.001€ & banned from sporting events for 6 months after he tried to start a riot at the Meditterranean Games Football Stadium in Almería during last Sundays match against A Coruña.

It seems that an official asked him to move his wheelchair away from an emergency exit he was blocking, and asked him to move to the wheelchair area (which is front row anyway, and apparantly fewer than 20 meters away). He refused, claiming that he had attended every match for the last two years in the spot and liked it.

The official called a policeman over, who repeated the request. It seems that the chappie then got nasty, and started screaming that the police were attacking him. A crowd formed, people started pushing, the police had to call for backup to calm the situation, and the chap in a wheelchair was (I was going to say frogmarched) to the police station. CCTV cameras later proved the officials had acted correctly.