In an age where corporate money rules the football roost and global brand clubs are now no more representative of their local community than I am of the girl guides association, the opportunity to witness a collision between the forces of good and bad in football was simply too hard to resist. And thus it was that flights to Madrid were purchased for the Sunday morning of the matchday between Rayo Vallecano versus Real Madrid. Flights (plural) as Rayo were to be the subject of (my nephew) Nick's podcast Around The World In 90 Minutes - Searching for the Meaning of Football and every good podcast producer needs a willing bag man. It also helps when you get your dates right and, as it transpired, we were due to land in Madrid around twelve hours after the match had finished. Doh!Nick was already committed on dates but I found a work-around with a flight on the Saturday to Alicante and then a two and a half hour train journey to Atocha station, Madrid where I arrived at just before 7.00 pm, two hours before kick-off.
Rayo Vallecano is based in the Vallecas district of Madrid, a fiercely working class area to the south east of the city centre, only a handful of stops on the metro from Atocha.The area was renowned for its antipathy towards the Franco regime and the football club, through its fan base, is known for its strong left wing, anti-fascist and anti-capitalism views. This has manifested, over the years, in many examples of direct involvement in and assistance to the community by the club and its fans, and also in various protests and stunts over the years including a mock fumigation of the stadium after it was discovered that the club president had invited two leaders of the right wing VOX political party to a match. The relationship between club president Raúl Martín Presa and the club's fan base is not an easy one - more of this later.
I arrived - ticketless - at the Estadio de Vallecas an hour before kick-off. With Real Madrid in town, the match had already been declared as fully sold-out but the ramshackle, three-sided ground - capacity 14,700 - has a ticketing infra-structure to match in that tickets can only be purchased from the taquillas (ticket windows) at the ground in the days leading up to a match. The taquillas were now all boarded closed but I tried my luck in an office underneath the main stand. The four guys in front of me were turned away. My turn.
Me: Have you got any tickets left?
Her: How many do you want?
Me: One.
Her: Yes, I have one left.
Result. Mind, it wasn't cheap at €95 but it was face value and legitimate. I was in.
The match itself was a classic. Rayo tore into their posh guests and took the lead on four minutes with a looping header to the far post. And on thirty six minutes they did it again with another looping header, again to the far post. Missing the injured Mbappe and with other big names on the bench, Real still had Modric and Bellingham pulling the strings in midfield and throughout the ninety minutes, even at two-nil down, they played like a team that knew they were going to win. This mindset appeared to be vindicated when they took a 3-2 lead in the fifty sixth minute although Rayo upped their game again and equalised eight minutes later. Big names Ceballos, Camavinga and Vinicius Jr all came on for Real in the second half but the match finished 3-3 with both teams having chances late on to win it. A special mention for Vinicius Jr - what an arse he is. Such a talented footballer but he plays the pantomime villain then wonders why the crowd give him stick. The LaLiga president Javier Tebas has since criticised the chants of "Tonto" directed to the player by the Rayo crowd. Basically, this translates to "idiot" and from my seat high up in the main stand, that is exactly what he was as he stamped his feet and repeatedly held his arms out for prolonged periods of time when he didn't get a decision from the referee. I repeat, what an arse.
I guess for all his histrionics though, Vinicius Jr played his part in adding to a spectacularly atmospheric occasion. There was a fair smattering of Real fans amongst the expensive seats but despite the edge of a local derby, there was no hint of bad feeling or potential trouble. In fact, the more I experience Spanish football at LaLiga and LaLiga2 level, the more I am struck by two, what might otherwise appear to be, conflicting observations. Compared to English football, there is more passion and fanaticism on display yet it takes place within a safer feel, more family friendly environment. All three sides of the ground were giving it their all for Rayo, led by the ultras behind the goal known as Los Bukaneros ("the buccaneers" - they having previously self proclaimed Vallecas to be a port city despite it being two hundred miles from the nearest coast!). All three of Rayo's goals were celebrated to a background of The Final Countdown blasted out over the tannoy. At €95 I may have paid top dollar for my ticket but I definitely got my money's worth.
But this weekend, for Nick and I, was really all about Rayo Vallecano so we headed back to Vallecas where I was able to show him the scene of last night's pre-Christmas cracker and we would hopefully be able to meet with and talk to some Rayo fans for the podcast. We had also arranged to meet with Jyothis (pronounced Jotus) George, a young man who has been working as social media manager at Real Madrid over the past twelve months. Jyothis proved to be good company over the next five hours and we did indeed find and talk to some Rayo fans at a local bar before moving on to another bar to take in the late match on TV, a 9.00 pm encounter between FC Barcelona and (yet another Madrid-based LaLiga team) CD Leganés.
There is no doubt that all teams have their fanatical followers but, not unlike Manchester United at Old Trafford, Jyothis was of the opinion that the atmosphere on matchdays at Real Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu stadium now suffers from an excess of football tourism with too many "tourists" in the ground there to experience the atmosphere rather than contribute to it. Today of course, Nick and I had essentially been football tourists at Atlético although it felt like we were the only two in an otherwise genuinely fanatical sea of support. Notwithstanding the seven mile move to a shiny new spectacular stadium in 2017, Atlético are big enough in Madrid to command a spectacular level of support whilst not being so big as to warrant global brand status. Rather like second homes in Wales, global brand status drives up the prices to a point where only the wealthy can afford to buy and the locals are priced out of the market. So then, global brand status - blessing or curse? I know what I think.
Bearing in mind that this weekend was all about Rayo Vallecano, by coincidence it transpires that Atlético - first formed as Athletic Club Surcursal de Madrid in 1903 - was originally based in Vallecas although had moved elsewhere by the time Rayo was founded in 1924.
On the Monday ahead of our flight home we met with Alejandro (Alex) Castellón, journalist, author of Rayo Vallecano: Un Equipo de Barrio (a neighbourhood team) and proud Rayo supporter. The consistent message we received, from Alex and other Rayo fans we spoke to over the weekend, was how their football club is the manifestation of their pride, in their community. Compared to the giants of Real and Atlético, Rayo is a small club and yet it consistently punches above its weight. The club first achieved Tier 1, LaLiga status in 1978 and whilst it has yo-yo'd between divisions including a couple of stints back in Tier 3 since then, this current season is its fourth consecutive back in the top tier. Despite this recent relative success, the relationship between club president Raúl Martín Presa and Los Bukaneros is a strained one. The reasons behind this are numerous - too numerous to retain the reader's interest in a short-read blog - but Alex summed this up rather nicely with the following analogy. The fans and players and everyone associated with the club are all on the motorway driving in the same direction. Raúl Martín Presa is the only one driving in the opposite direction.
One suspects that Rayo, as a club, may struggle to continue punching above its weight unless some serious progress is made in updating and upgrading the stadium and its infra-structure. The club doesn't own the ground, the Madrid city council does. Both parties (the club party being Raúl Martín Presa) prefer the prospect of a stadium move but this would almost certainly mean a move away from Vallecas and this prospect is quite simply anathema to the fans. Too often in football we hear of the owner's ambition not matching that of the fans. That seems almost certainly to be the case here - but in reverse. Raúl Martín Presa sees a ground move as the road to progress. The fans see it as the death of their club.
It's a difficult circle to square. From the research I undertook ahead of this trip and from what I witnessed and heard during it, I don't think I have ever come across a football club so invested with its community and vice versa. To separate the two could be interpreted as an act of vandalism. So, what do the Rayo fans want? According to Alex, the most important thing for them is that the club continues to retain its LaLiga status, that and the opportunity for glory via the Copa del Rey. Oh, and to remain in Vallecas obviously. These aspirations didn't ought to be mutually exclusive but it does mean that someone will have to spend some money on the stadium some time soon before the current state of disrepair and dilapidation converts to safety warnings and closures.
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