I hate football

I don’t know a lot about football or soccer, how we call it where I come from. There are four things I remember about soccer before I moved to Spain. First, I remember playing soccer in elementary school and the game consisted of kicking boys in the shins so the girls could get the ball and score. Second, I don’t remember going to a soccer game until I was in college. My roommate’s boyfriend played and we went to watch him or actually watch cute guys in shorts. Third, I remember soccer was a girl’s sport at the high school I taught. There were no boy teams. And fourth, I remember one of my students telling me I was moving to the country that had the best soccer player in the world. I asked who that was and he said, Zidine Zidane. Huh? Who? I had no idea who he was, the team he played for or anything related to the subject. Big mistake!

If you don’t know, Spanish people LOVE soccer. They live, eat, and breathe it. Every school year my Spanish students ask me: "Which is your favorite soccer team?" My answer is: "None, I hate football." Their faces look in shock. Of course most of them do not believe me. They think I am just being politically correct to not subscribe to one team. In Spain, you have to belong to a team or people look at you weird. So a sport I initially didn't care for, started becoming a hated subject.

It’s now been two days since the aftermath of "el clasico" (Barcelona vs. Real Madrid) and everywhere you look, people, TV, press are talking about it. I can’t for the life of me understand why this is an important issue when the whole country is going to the gutter due to the crisis. (El Pais newspaper published today that there are 5.3 million people unemployed.) And I’m not even going to acknowledge the fact that these "clasicos" bring out the worst in team members and set bad examples for kids.

Did I mention I hate football?


Unemployment hits record high of over 5 million at end of 2011