There is that guy.
He is wearing Cristiano Ronaldo’s shirt. It shows the name, Ronaldo, on his back, and also the Portuguese player’s number on the Portuguese uniform, number 7.
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The guy is dressed in red like the lovers of la roja, but he doesn’t fool anyone: he is wearing Portuguese red.
Among the red crowd, his Portuguese red stands out.
I approach him and ask:
–Why are you wearing that shirt?
–Because Cristiano is the best –he answers me.
He speaks to me in perfect Spanish, and then he leaves and disappears into the crowd, undoubtedly convinced of what he just told La Vanguardia.
“Cristiano is the best,” the man told me, he says it and remains so calm on this late afternoon-evening when 30,000 fans have gathered to watch two colossal players, the best of their generation, Messi and Lamine Yamal, children of La Masia, geniuses who have been much talked about these days in the city.
Among the crowd, a guy dressed in Portugal: “Because Cristiano Ronaldo is the best,” he tells me
I see Ronaldo losing himself and fading into the red tide and I think that guy is something like an island.
The guy is an island in the sea, which is more or less where we are: we are at the Marina Platform of the Fòrum and from the stage, bird’s eye view, the crowd is red, Spanish red, like the famous fury that left a couple of decades ago and is no longer the same, Spanish football is no longer furia roja, now it is a nuanced and speckled red, speckled with blue and white, the colors of the albiceleste: this world is global, it belongs to everyone and not to some colors or countries, it is advisable that some former head of government assimilates and metabolizes it.
(…)
From the stage, bird’s eye view, I proceed to estimate by eye.
I count red shirts, of course discounting our dear Cristiano Ronaldo.
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I count: one Spanish shirt, two, three, four… okay, reader, I won’t continue.
I estimate there will be about a hundred red uniforms (or white, since the Spanish second kit is also a must), for every albiceleste one, and that’s why I think someone has tricked me, since the organizers had chosen this place, the immense maritime platform, for a reason:
–Because the Argentine community in Barcelona is very numerous. And there will be many people and we will need a lot of space.
So that’s why we are here.
The Argentine community is here, in Barcelona, but tonight it is a reduced community, it is like the wonderful minority perica, which also goes in blue and white but here it doesn’t matter.
Without many incidents
Three arrested and 29 people assisted
The Mossos d’Esquadra arrested three people during the operation, two for the violent theft of a mobile phone on the ronda de Sant Pau and the third for the theft of a backpack. In addition, the Mossos administratively reported one person for disobedience. On the other hand, the (SEM) provided 29 assists, of which 24 were minor and five less serious.
(True, among the crowd, the scanner does not distinguish shirts of Pere Milla, Puado or Kike García, my favorite perico).
I wonder if the Argentine community had seen it coming, and that’s why they anticipated and met the day before, at the Moll de la Fusta: on Saturday, thousands of Argentines had carried out the flag-waving and that’s why yesterday, the Barcelona Argentine community preferred to watch the events from the sofa, with mate and barbecue, to avoid the big party that the red fans, with their flags and scarves, red themselves and with vuvuzela like in the old days, ended up throwing in the Barcelona night, a big party like the nights of Primavera Sound, which happen here more often than football.
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