FC Barcelona vs. Real Socieatat -- December 9, 2006

So here's the thing -- Barcelona happens to be home to one of the world's best football/ soccer teams, FC Barcelona. And on that team is the best player in the world, Brazilian striker Ronaldhino. So we couldn't go to Barcelona on a weekend when the team had a home game and not check it out.

They were playing Real Societat, or as we came to find out later, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of the Spanish League -- they're gonna give you a game, but you're never really in danger of losing.

Funny thing happened too -- the crap tickets I bought in the third level online somehow ended up putting us 5 rows behind the goal at the north end. Someone in the ticket office handed us the wrong envelope (I'm assuming), and we got to sit 10 feet from the field. Granted, to fully appreciate the game, we would have been better off further away and closer to mid field but hey, we were in it for the spectacle and a spectacle we got.

Here's the 360 degree view:


We were so close, the guys behind us yelled something (nice, I assume) and the home goalie and he turned around to wave. That's him below.

The lone goal was scored at our end by Ronaldhino himself (who, as an aside, looks like a long haired version of Willie McGee, and that's not a compliment - check out the above picture on the left).

Topping things off, we had to get Jaren a jersey for the home side considering this year, in lieu of a corporate sponsor, FC Barca has donated the space to UNICEF and a portion of all jersey sales to the cause. Like Jaren wasn't going to be up for that?

The experience was great, we got to sing a bunch of probably offensive songs in Spanish (although to be fair, we really could only do the "lo lo lo lo lo" parts).

Yeah, so now were hooked. Mas que un club indeed.