Like so many love stories, this one began in a crowded room. And if our eyes didn’t exactly meet, for me it was definitely what they call here un flechazo. Un coup de foudre if you’d prefer. (I’m not sure there is an English version of the phrase, which might say something about us.)
It was September 21st last year, in a bar close to the Plaza Pumarejo. My wife and I had arrived in our new home of Seville five days earlier, ready for the start of her first term as an English teacher and we were well aware that high on our list of tasks for the first few weeks – 1) open a bank account, 2) find IKEA, 3) find the IKEA kitchenware department, etc – was to choose a football team. Sevilla or Betis? By chance, our first Sunday in the city offered up the first derbi of the season, a perfect opportunity to compare and contrast.
And – off the field, at least – it was no contest.
The bar, as you can imagine, was packed, and it was easy enough to divine the allegiances of the various customers.
In the red corner, supporting Sevilla, were, well, football fans. Exactly as one would expect: confident-looking young men in their 20s and 30s standing by the bar with their arms crossed across their authentic replica shirts muttering wry comments to each other.
But the green side of the room, rooting for Betis, was a different world altogether. Sad-eyed old men with impressively droopy moustaches. Angsty university students. Middle-aged ladies keeping one eye on the game and another on fidgety green-and-white bedecked grandsons. A couple of teenage girls with wet-look perms and ever-buzzing mobile phones.
A cross-section enough to excite any geologist.
Five minutes in, a homeless man, who’d managed to pick up a Betis scarf from somewhere, wandered in from the Plaza and asked for a glass of water while he turned to watch the game. A tired-looking barman pushed it across to him. The man and his untouched glass of water didn´t move for the next hour and a half. No-one tried to make him.
Long before the end, I was smitten. It was a terrible game – one of those goalless draws in which both sides were lucky to score nil – but I´d found the answer to my question. Sevilla or Betis? To be honest, the verdiblancos had me at “hola”. There was just something hard to resist about the Béticos and Béticas, a kind of world-weary charm that had almost nothing to do with the football. (Besides, I've always wanted a droopy moustache.)
Whatever the reason, I went from agnostic to fervent apostle in a manner of minutes (a conversion which has since been demoted to second most dramatic in the history of Spanish football).
In the near year since then, I´ve had no reason to regret my decision (that was really no decision at all). Yes, Real Betis Balompié went on to reveal themselves as not just an awful football team, but also a disastrously run organisation headed by a avaricious nincompoop. I´ve seen three-goal leads thrown away, six goals conceded before half-timeand countless last-minute letdowns. I was there when the club´s best player managed to seriously injure himself celebrating a goal, I´ve watched fans throwing eggs at the playersand I´ve seen news of their eventual relegation splashed across the front page of every newspaper in Spain. In short, it´s been miserable.
And yet... Whenever I tell anyone I like and admire in Seville that I consider myself a Bético, they smile and shrug and say, “¡Hombre, claro!” Which roughly translates as “Duh!”
And yet... Those same likeable and admirable people are always careful to ensure I understand the unofficial club motto: “El Betis manque pierda” – Betis though they may lose – a doleful juxtaposition of Andaluz dialect and subjunctive voice which manages to wrap up the twin concepts of fidelity and fatalism in one neat package.
And yet... I´ve found YouTube footage of rapsand flamencosongs and whole history lessons dedicated to El Betis, seen singers and writers and bullfighters and academics all admit to the same fatal weakness, and read serious journalists in traditionally minded old newspapers reference Lorca in their paeans to the club.
And yet... I celebrated in a tiny bar alongside tattooed lesbians and bewhiskered captains of industry – Béticas and Béticos one and all – when the verdiblancos snatched a barely believable victory in the second derby of the season.
And yet... I´ve walked the gorgeous streets of Seville, sweltered in the Andalucian heat, heard flamenco rhythms being clapped out in unseen dance studios, smelt the orange blossom drifting on the breeze. And on those same days I´ve seen green-and-white ribbons on the bridles of horses giving tourists trips through the cobbled streets around the Giralda. spotted Betis radios on the shelves of neighbourhood tapas bars and watched whole families of Béticos playing football in the Parque del Alamillo. Seville – the city – is the best place I´ve ever lived or could imagine living, and Betis are as much a part of its fabric as Triana tiles, the Guadalquivir and Cruzcampo beer.
And yet... I´ve joined 59,999 others on the streets of Seville on June 15th, partly to protest against the current ownership and its terrible mismanagement, but mostly to celebrate everything that Beticismo is about, everything that I´ve spent a year falling for. That evening was the most fun I´ve had in ages.
On reflexion, it hasn´t been such a miserable year at all.
And, funnily enough, nowadays it doesn´t feel so much a conversion as something that was in me all along, a kind of benign virus. Perhaps I´ve always been a Bético - I just had to move to Seville to find out.
***
So far, so baroque.
To cut to the chase, I´ve decided to start a blog dedicated to El Betis. As a transatlantic follower of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team – I must have a weakness for lost causes – I´ve been entertained and informed for a few years by the brilliantly written Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, and if Ooh Betis ends up being half as good as that, I´ll be more than happy. (I even thought about calling it Where Have You Gone, Rafael Gordillo? in homage.) Although the model is well established in the USA and to a slightly lesser extent in the UK, I haven´t yet found anything quite the same in Spain – and certainly not in English. UPDATE 23/7: I'm beginning to find one or two; I'll link to them when I do.
So expect more or less daily news, links, comment, match reports (if both me and Betis are still here by the end of August) and maybe even the odd insight into life in Seville (though not of the “here´s a photo of my tapa” type, which I respectfully suggest are already suffering from a touch of oversupply).
I hope all this might find a readership among, for instance, Béticos exiled in the Anglo-Saxon world, anyone who´s spent a tourist weekend in Seville and hopped on the no 1 bus to the Estadio Manuel Ruiz de Lopera and maybe the odd Spanish Bético wanting to test their English. But mostly it´s for me.
English readers will remember a spoof TV news show from few years back called The Day Today. In one episode, a hotshot reporter demanded to be let through police lines because he was, he said, “bursting with news.” Well, that´s me. Bursting with Betis.
***
A little bit of housekeeping.
1) I should admit from the start that I am to technology what David Rivas is to nippy centre forwards, so please be patient with me.
2) Some decisions. Seville the city will be spelt in the silly anglicised way, if only to distinguish it from Sevilla the successful, popular, well run and slightly boring football club. Betis (and other teams) will be plural in the UK English way rather than singular in the American English (and Spanish) style, ie Betis are rubbish.
3) My language-teacher wife estimates my level of Spanish to be officially “lower intermediate”. In practice, this means good enough to read the sports pages of Diario de Sevilla, not up to discussing Melli´s positional failings with the local butcher. Just so you know. For non-Spanish speakers I´ll try and give the gist of linked reports, but I won´t be translating whole chunks.
4) A bit controversial this, but for the time being I´ve decided not to allow comments. This is because I hate the unpleasant, badly spelled bar fights that invariably ensue when commenters get going. If you´ve anything you´d like to say – good or bad – please email me at [email protected]
¡Mucho Beti´!
¡Vámono´!
