Real Madrid Closing In On Title

Atleti got stuffed 3-0 away from home versus Villareal on Saturday night. Unfortunately for Mexican coach Javier Aguirre he was booked to appear on TeleMadrid for a full hour’s grilling on the following afternoon’s sports show. Cunningly, the producers decided to show all three goals in slow-motion replay and ask Aguirre to comment on each one, describing, if he could, the fallibilities of his defensive line-up. He coped well, in the sense that he didn’t shirk blame and explained how he saw things with frankness. But he was sweating a bit under the gills by the end of it.

Sunday night was cold, squally and with intermittent showers, but it proved to be a balmy night in the micro-climate of the Estadio Bernabeu as Real turned on the old-school form and won at a canter, beating Sevilla 3-1. In doing so they opened up a six point gap on nearest contenders Villareal and a seven point one on faltering Barcelona, with just 8 matches left to play.

Heinze’s first league goal for Real put the hosts ahead in the seventh minute only for Kanoute to level the scores on 37 minutes. However, captain Raul scored his 290th goal for Real to make him the club’s joint second all-time top-scorer along with Carlos Alonso Santillana, as he chases Alfredo di Stefano’s mark of 307. Higuain added a third as Real ended a sequence of two successive league defeats. “It was a complete game from my team from defence right through to the attack,” Bernd Schuster, Real coach, said.

As the final whistle blew the contentment of the Real supporters was evinced in a growling but generous roll of cheers that circled the stadium and rumbled your feet through the concrete. Six up, eight to go. You could taste the satisfaction. People filed out unusually quietly and without haste. Happy to smile at each other and let people pass. As I walked past the supporters clubs buses, stationed out on Ramon y Cajal, I was greeted with a thumbs up by young lad with one of those jester-like funny hats, in the purple and white of Real. I guess he thought I was a Madrileno too. That’s pretty cool.

The British Are Coming

The last couple of days have seen  some ceremonies in Madrid marking the two hundredth anniversary of the start of ‘Peninsula War’ – the fight against the French Empire that began with Napoleons troops capturing Barcelona and finally resulted in the eventual expulsion of Napoleon’s armies from Spain, and later his defeat at Waterloo.
The local TV station (Telemadrid)  covered the various celebrations quite fully and TVE1 did an interesting item from a museum that houses old military uniforms of the various participants. Both channels mentioned Wellington and the role the British played – although not perhaps as much as should be warranted. We were also shown a dinner set (complete with tea cups and china plates) that Wellington used during the campaign, that’s now housed in a glass case in the museum.

I can just imagine The Iron Duke taking elevenses in between skirmishes on the plains outside Salamanca.

Television in Spain

¡Hola! ¿Qué Tal? Another working day. About 18:30 Madrid-Uno’s eyes gave up on staring at a computer screen, so, healthily, he decided to watch a television screen instead.

Madrid-Uno finds watching TV helps his Spanish. In particular, he finds the most helpful progs are the game shows, the news and the football coverage.

The game shows are good because there’s lots of asking questions and, ‘cos it’s a game show, the questions are usually set-up for idiots. Which, in Spanish at least, Madrid-Uno is. Tonight there was a choice of four game shows including: Allá Tú on the Cuatro channel, a fairly simple game which would be called ‘It’s Up To You’ in English; Metro a Metro on TeleMadrid, a quiz based around the Metro underground system; and Lingo on La Sexta.

The news is good because the presenters’ speak clearly and one can match the day’s events to the inflexion in the news presenters voice – grave, surprised, mucho serio, false levity for humorous story at end of show, etc.

The football is good for two reasons. Firstly, since all footballers, all over the world say the same thing after every match (the boys done good, we fought hard and came away with a result, bollocks was that offside, etc.,) Madrid-Uno can understand surprisingly large chunks of the dialogue. And secondly, because Spanish football commentators are absolutely bonkers! These guys make Jonathan Pearce look somnolescent. They chatter and joke, gossip and laugh amongst themselves constantly and when they really take-off during times of incident you lose them completely and instead have to just sit back and listen to the musical torrent of invective / joy / fear / gloating. Much to Madrid-Uno’s delight he also found that the Spanish really do use the word caramba! – as in: “Paco beats one man, he beats another, he shoots, Aye Caramba! Off the post.” Madrid-Uno’s friend Zipper told him a great story about a famous Spanish football commentator. Spain were playing Italy in an important qualification match back in the 1980s and at somepoint the Iti’s scored. The commentator supposedly exclaimed, in full Ron Atkinson blunder mode, “Balls! Cut off their balls! Those cheating sons of Italian bitches!” hehe.

Useful Tip

A useful tip for learning Spanish, passed on by Misterio, is to switch on the teletext for deaf people when watching a film on TV. Although the translations are not exact it really helps you to link the pronounced words to how they are spelt. Don’t do this when you have Spanish friends over though… It really annoys ‘em!