Jul 8, 2008

hold the intolerance, please

it’s only been two weeks, but spain’s crowning as european football champions has been nearly forgotten amidst news of the rescue of the 15 hostages held by farc terrorists in the jungles of colombia (new post in the works), the ongoing controversy over the beijing olympics, and rafael nadal’s astonishing wimbledon victory—another spaniard, coincidentally. even though it is “old news”, i still feel the need to blog about it, primarily because of an incident that happened the day of the final that put a minor damper in the celebrations.

my husband and i got a group of friends together to watch the euro cup final at a bar. this game was so important that we wanted to ensure that the game would be shown wherever we decided to watch it, so we called a couple of places ahead of time, and settled on this one bar located in midtown houston, where we'd watched important soccer matches before, such as the 2006 fifa world cup final and others. we could not have expected what would happen next. juan and i arrived first to save a large table for our 10 or so friends. we ordered food and drinks and settled comfortably into our seats. we noted that most tv’s were set to either baseball or random programming, and only one flat screen was on the channel that was to show the euro final. we asked our waitress, who was very friendly, and she said that they would tune into the euro final about 30 min before kick off. we waited a while longer, but 30 min before kick off still only one tv was showing the euro pre-game and the speakers were tuned to the houston astros baseball game. at this point, we became a bit concerned and approached the bartender, who appeared to be the person in charge, to ask him if he was planning on swiching some of the tv's to the soccer game and put on the volume, as had previously been confirmed, to which he replied “this is america; we watch baseball here” and then walked off. i waited for the punchline, which never came, and a few seconds later, the magnitude of the comment sank in. did he really say what i think he said, i asked juan?!?! what does he mean by “we watch baseball here”?!? what does that say about the millions of tennis, american football, basketball, hockey, racing, and of course soccer, fans in america?? do they not count?? and why does he think he has the right to speak for a whole nation??

we were so taken aback that the only option we saw feasible at that moment was to close our tab and leave stat. we scrambled to look for another place to watch the match while trying to get in touch with our friends, who were already on their way. fortunately, and thanks in part to juan’s skillful maneuvering, we were able to find another bar and most of our friends made it there—except the two that did not have mobile phones :( we ended up having a great time at this other place, and were delighted when spain’s single goal, orchestrated by fernando “el niño” torres, gave spain the victory over germany. later we found out through our two friends that the other bar eventually showed the game, as a rowdy pack of about 30 spanish fans showed up and insisted the game be put on.

in hindsight, i guess we could’ve stayed and waited for our friends to show up and then, using the strength in our numbers, we could’ve demanded that the tv’s be switched to the match, but why fight ignorance with brute force? we were so irritated that the mere act of thinking about patronizing this establishment made our skin crawl.

the next day, while all over the world jubilant throngs of spaniards and sympathizers celebrated the victory of their national team, juan was emailing the owner of the bar to tell him our story. in all fairness, we should mention that we did receive a prompt reply from the bar owner, and he followed up with a phone call, where he was extremely apologetic about the incident and even offered to give us some “freebies”. at the end of his conversation with juan, he stated that the bartender who’d made the comment would no longer be employed by his bar. we weren’t necessarily happy to hear about this, but were relieved that he cared to listen to our story and showed concern for the reputation of his business.

ironically, the motto of this euro cup was "respect", referring to the fifa-wide campaign against racism and intolerance in sports, which has been at the center of fifa’s philosophy for the last few years. obviously the sport highest authority’s message was lost somewhere in this man who chose to speak for a nation while the only voice that was heard was that of his own narrow-mindedness.


(photo caption: spain’s national team holding the henri delaunay trophy. fernando “the kid” torres, front and center, was the author of the single goal that gave spain the victory of the xii european football cup on 29th june, 2008. courtesy of getty images)

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