Fine examples of the quality of haircuts on display at a Rayo game
El Estadio Teresa Rivero - missing a stand
During my year in Spain I escaped Pamplona for a long weekend and went to visit Madrid. As soon as I got off the coach and experienced the hustle and bustle and excitement of a city that breathes life (in contrast to Pamplona which exorcises it) I realised I wanted to live here. So at the end of June I secured a teaching job in Madrid and began looking forward to living in one of the most exciting cities in Europe.
And what of the football in Madrid? Who would I follow in a city which boasts three teams in La Liga? Well, it was never going to be Real Madrid, the biggest team in Europe, with their impatient and ever demanding fans, their fascist ultras and their belief that they have a divine right to the best players in the world and to win every trophy.
Atletico? Well, I’d have them over Madrid any day of the week but at the same time they’re a huge club and also have fascist ultras whose vile behaviour I witnessed with my own eyes at Athletic Bilbao last season.
Getafe? The team from the suburbs of Southern Madrid have only existed since the 70s on the back of recent large investment and although made headlines by getting to the semi finals of the UEFA cup and the final of the Copa Del Rey recently, they still don’t really have that much of a soul.
No, the team for me in Madrid would be the least obvious choice: Rayo Vallecano, The club hail from the ultra proud working class borough of Vallecas, only a few metro stops south of the city centre. Last season they courted controversy with the arrest of right back Carlos de la Vega in connection with a truck stopped by police containing 600kg of cocaine. While Mr de la Vaga was in custody Rayo brought in Jorge Andújar Moreno to fill in for the disgraced Spaniard. All of which would not be worth mentioning did his replacement not have his nickname – ‘Coke’ – on the back of his shirt.
Rayo might not play in La Liga or have a bulging trophy cabinet, but what they may lack in success they compensate for in soul and the dedication of their loyal fan base, which is the main thing that attracted them to me. And I’m not going to lie, their prices didn’t hurt either. A season ticket behind the goal was €90, and individual tickets in that section €15, so I worked out that if I went to more than six games it’d be worth my while buying a season ticket, so I did, and began a fortnightly tradition of getting the metro to Portazgo station, only a handful of stops from the city centre. As you walk out of the station you are literally next to the stadium. For a second I hilariously thought I was next to a Dia supermarket due to the Red and White diagnol stripe painted onto a wall, and then I looked up, saw the roof of the ground and realised I wouldn’t have to ask any locals for directions. My decision has provoked great surprise at every Spaniard I meet. ‘Oh my God’ was one student’s reply when I proudly showed him my season ticket, ‘Rayo Vallecano are like a school team’ was another response I heard, but I took inspiration from Millwall’s ‘no-one likes us, we don’t care’ attitude and looked forward to my first outing watching this unique team.
The first game of my season with Rayo is against Real Union, a club from the Basque/French border town of Irun, who made headlines last year after knocking Real Madrid out of the Copa Del Rey. Me and three fellow guiri (Spanish word for foreign tourists) Rayistas survey the local clientele in a typically narrow Spanish bar (about three feet wide) which just wasn’t designed to cope with the demand that boozy football fans bring, and marvel at the fact that we get tapas with our tiny beers, an idea not yet filtered through to the pubs surrounding English grounds.
Once our shots of beer are consumed we spend an age scrummaging through the only entrance to our seats (although I still don’t know where my seat is, as the seats in the stand behind the goal don’t even have numbers – everyone stands wherever they want) and get to observe from the inside the stadium in all its glory. El Stadio Teresa Rivero, named after the club’s batty President, the first female president of an elite Spanish club is rather unique. It consists of two decent sized, two tiered stands on either side of the pitch, a roofless, smallish single tiered stand behind one of the goals – where the Ultras, nicknamed The Bucaneers gather, and a massive wall behind the other, advertising mattresses.
So the game kicks off, our new favourite team wearing white shirts with a red diagnol stripe across the middle – earning them the nickname ‘The Red Stripes’.
Three players grab our attention – Ruben Castro, the striker on loan from Deportivo who gets the first goal of the game; Movilla, the slaphead midfield anchorman who pulls all the strings, and winger Quero, although the latter doesn’t stand out for his talents, but more for the way he looks: he’s absolutely tiny, measuring up at just 5ft 3in. The pint sized winger shows potential due to his pace but every time he seems to beat a man for pace he is shoved off the ball moments later and appears to be just too lightweight, as his sporadic appearance in the team as the season goes on will prove.
After ten or so minutes of one of the dullest halves I’ve witnessed in a while, our attention soon turns to our new fellow supporters, and what a weird and interesting bunch they are. On looking at the average Rayo Vallecano supporter you’d be forgiven for thinking you were actually at a heavy metal concert, such is the array of mullets, perms, leather jackets and Metallica t shirts on display. n fourteen years of going to football in England I can count the number of punks and metalheads I’ve seen on one hand, but in my first Rayo game I need a calculator to take stock of all the alternative looking people around me. Whoever said mullets are a thing of the past forgot to tell Rayo’s fans, as almost one in three men has a ‘business at the front, party at the back’ approach to their hairdo, and the crimes against fashion don’t stop there, with bum bags and double denim being sported by more than a few supporters. All this proves a bit too much for my English companions, who presume that no-one in the ground understands their language, and are loudly discussing and laughing at a mulletted man in front of them during half time. ‘Stop taking the piss out of my mate’, shouts his permed companion. ‘No, we’re not laughing at him, we’re laughing at the substitutes, I swear’ is my friend’s quick and admirable response but it fails to convince two rather pissed off men who look like members of Iron Maiden rather than stereotypical football fans. 45 minutes into the season, and we’ve already made enemies.
Like FC St Pauli in Hamburg, following Rayo for many people is more than just watching a team kick a ball around, it’s a political statement. A giant Che Guevara flag is waved at every game and the ultras have strong ties to the anti-fascist movement.
And it’s not just that Rayo’s fans are punks, but that punks are also Rayo fans,: Vallecas ska punk band Ska – P have written two songs about their local team, one of which is sung at most games, with the defiant words:
“We are anarchists, drunks, antifascists and revolutionaries. Fascists, get the fuck out of town’.
And this isn’t even telling half the story of how great Rayo’s fans are. The Ultras behind the goal have two men with microphones who barely watch the game and spend the whole time directing the crowd to sing, sometimes forcing everyone to get down on their hands and knees and then jump up and pogo on the count of three, shouting ‘all the stadium has to go crazy’ and singling out those who do not sing. And let’s not forget flagman, who spends the whole game waving a giant red and white flag, often smoking a joint, and always topless, come rain or shine. Nor the moment when one eager fan, intent on not paying to watch the game, ascends the wall behind the goal opposite us and climbs into the West stand. The stewards must have seen him but rather than apprehend him, they turn a blind eye to it, clearly impressed by his guile.
With all this excitement of the terraces, it’s easy to forget that there’s a match of football going on today, such is the poor quality of the game. Eventually Rayo comfortably win 2-0, with each goal greeted by Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’. The victory sees Rayo continue their promising start to the season in which they will be aiming for promotion to the Primera Liga for the first time since 2003, which if it occurs, would inject a lot of character into Spain’s top division.
