Barca: A People's Passion
Extract
"English eyes blink in the brightness of a floodlit Camp
Nou, at the sheer scale of the five-tiered terracing glowing under
the
black sky. The stadium has been dug deep into the earth, its turf
elevated to give every game played on it the aura of a spectacle.
In the changing room, players are preparing to take the final journey:
along a small passageway lined with paintings by Catalan modern artists,
and down the tunnel, with its chapel on the right and its iron grid
down the middle separating the teams. Thirty-four steps down seem
eternal, then eight steps up…Players emerge from the catacombs
to conduct gladiatorial battle before the roar of the coliseum.
There are only minutes left before kick-off, and the eyes of the
Barca fans are still on the video screen, with its flashes of skills
and greatness, breeding a sense of invincibility before the enemy.
The English, distributed around the stadium in small groups and couples,
watch the heaving, whirling mass of foreign humanity around them,
a vortex that allows for no dissent, that relegates the token hundred-odd
Real Madrid fans to the most isolated heights of the Camp Nou-to
be mocked there-and absorbs the visiting tourist into the adulation
of a universal club. There is no space for neutrality, but the bias
of the crowd is overwhelming, its fanaticism disquieting."
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