The Inner Frenzy of the Colombian spectator…

On Wednesday Colombia played World Champions Spain in Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. Colombia played an intense game, a noble game that for years Colombian spectators had longed for. It may sound exaggerated, it is, but such is opinion in the tropics: hard-lined. Did we win? Of course we did not. This is Colombian football; our nature forces us into separating playing well from winning. We are that desperate to salvage something.

As a Colombian spectator you want to witness something to admire, you want to cheer your team and sometimes you do: it fills you with hope but making sure, and this is key, making sure it lets you down hard… We sure celebrated that tie against Germany in Italia 90’, then we got our hearts crushed by René and Cameroun… and that was in our finest hour!

Of course, you could argue Colombia’s finest hour came after beating Argentina 5-0 in Buenos Aires to qualify to USA 94’, but we know what that World Cup brought to the country, which just illustrates the point better: “Take what you can when you can, but know it surely is not enough to celebrate FOR REAL”.

And we come back to Colombia vs. Spain. In the back of your head, as a Colombian spectator, even when you were praising the team’s play in a part of the game you were bracing yourself for the major blow. The players reminded you of it, especially when they needed to score goals. The shots just did (DO, this is not a new issue) not go in. Goalkeepers seldom have to do with that fact; the truth is Colombian players are bad finishers and there is nothing we can do about it… that ice-cold bloody instinct say, the Uruguayans show in grand stages escapes us.

Hugo Rogallega, our goal scorer in the Premiership, missed a couple of clear chances in a game in which missing the chances is plain suicide. For Spain surely it was just a friendly game, one they HAD to win. They entered play against Colombia after rotund defeats against Argentina and Portugal plus the scrutiny of their home crowd… and around fifteen thousand loud Colombian fans.

They got challenged by a team that didn’t back down, but sadly can’t buy a goal.

We, Colombian spectators, cheered that after many matches Colombian players performed like football mattered to them, like they felt it underneath their skin (to include a Shakira-Piqué undertone), like they actually enjoyed the sweat and adrenaline to flow without anybody yelling them to push harder.

The Colombian spectator in the stadium -and behind the TV set- cheered the cohesion and disciplined tactical scheme that worked for most of the game to stop Spain. He hailed the electricity with which the game was played, but I can tell you, he hated to be reminded of how useless his strikers are at scoring goals. Spain won the match in the 86th minute: Silva, now he is not going to miss many is he? However, it made no difference, after his strikers had failed often the Colombian spectator knew that was coming.

Curiously enough, if Villa scores in that early “I hit the post and then I miss an empty goal” chance he had, Colombia may have crumbled and we would not be salvaging any of its virtues, but that did not occur. One out of a hundred times he will miss that couple of goals, one was yesterday when our hope grew just to once more be let down hard.

My take on Villa is he probably caught the Colombian goal flu. He will recuperate, Colombian spectators on the other hand...