Hala Madrid!

Spanish Inquisition: The Curse Of The Bernabeu - How Fans Make Real Madrid's Bad Situation Worse
Goal.com's Sulmaan Ahmad takes a look at why Los Blancos rarely feel at home in their super stadium and why their own fans make their lives more difficult.

There is a perfectly good explanation why a large percentage of the football community enjoy referring goal.com as LOL.com. Personally I cannot decide what's worse - the third class journalism that includes made up news, glaring grammatical errors, bad syntax and above all, erroneous spelling, or their attempted analysis of football related events beyond their capacity or scope.

It should go without saying that Real Madrid and greatness go hand in hand, like the long list of synonyms your middle school grammar teacher forces you to learn. With its history spanning over a century, 31 League titles, 9 Champions league, a host of other trophies, legends, Alfredo di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás, Emilio Butragueño, Hugo Sanchez, Raúl González et al, a person can be forgiven for feeling slightly overwhelmed.

At the turn of the century, after that majestic night in Glasgow (2000), everything went downhill. The club, sitting atop the football hierarchy, came down crashing, and were made to bite the dust in what is touted as the worst defeat in Real Madrid's 107 years of history. The first leg game against third division club Alcorcón was embarrassing, to be brutally honest.

The club did not even have the excuse of fielding a poor side.

You can make excuses for your club's lacklustre performance as long as you don't cross over the line between reasonable and ridiculous. Watching your club lose to the weakest Milan team fielded in the last few years already had a lot of people questioning about the future of Galacticos 2.0. When you splurge 200 million euros on players whose salaries can equal or surpass the entire club budget of the lower division clubs, yes you are expected to deliver. Yes you are expected to deliver in every game, because 1) You will always have to justify your moeny's worth and 2) You play for Real Madrid.

To expound on 1), consider your workplace. You do not have the luxury of meeting your work performance targets one year and then not falling short the next. Chances are two quarters of inadequate performance, you are going to be put on probation and then subsequently fired. Footballers earn 10X the amount you do - I'm assuming you hail from an upper middle class background. If you are made to prove your money's worth, why is it criminal to expect the same from our overpaid, underperforming Galacticos?

As with playing for Real Madrid, dude this is Real Madrid. We used to be the Roman Empire of the ancient world; then we brought in Perez, who did assuage club debts after taking over as president but guided the club into an era of humiliation that includes a 3-0 loss to Real Union, a 4-0 loss to Alcorcón (both third division clubs, both in Copa del Rey ties) and the hardest defeat to swallow for anyone who puts up with Madrid's ridiculousness - a 6-2 defeat in El Clasico. In the Benrbaéu. High scorelines aren't new. Madrid have lost to Barcelona 5-0 before, then in the following year beaten them 5-0 thanks to a certain "traitorous" Danish blond (Michael Laudrup I am looking at you). That goal different wasn't hard to swallow. The tough part was that it played out like a perfect Shakespearean tragedy (think Battle of Actium-like from Antony and Cleopatra) in front of 76,000 Madrid faithfuls. At the Bernabéu.

A lot of people like to call the Bernabéu a fortress; it is. In some aspect. But it is a fortress that contains 76,000 raging, passionate Madridistas, who expect nothing more than for their team to play. To play with the same passion, same enthusiasm as them; when they line up outside to enter the stadium, when they part with a portion of their income on club merchandize, match tickets, away game trips - watching the team you love and support lose so pathetically against Alcorcón (I've said it before, I'll say it again: They were fantastic. They did everything right and the standing ovation they got from the Bernabéu was thoroughly deserved) felt like a sharp stab in the guts. It felt like a mockery of the faith people have put in this team; this laughable team critics call "FIFA 2010" (in reference to the PSP game).

Everyone has a tipping point. Football clubs and football fans aren't excluded from its scope. By nature Spanish football is more highly charged, full of raging testosterone for 90 minutes, then elation or bone crushing sense of desolation afterwards. Spanish football is, for the lack of a better phrase, more aggressive than British football - on and off the pitch. Drawing comparison is silly, which, leads me back to my first disclaimer about Goal.com being constantly referred to as LOL.com.

The issue about Madridistas abandoning their club during games, or booing them unreasonably and blah blah blah has been tried and tested. Look back into the 2006/2007. The Bernabéu was behind the team during every home game; they cheered, they screamed words of encouragement until their throats ran out of steam and lungs collapsed in exhaustion. The Bernabéu used to be packed every time Madrid took to the fields. We won some games. We lost others. But we won the war. Team and fans together - as a club. I don't want to go into fanwars. I don't care how loudly your club supporters cheer/shout/encourage your team during a game. I believe Real Madrid fans are unique. It is perfectly understandable that they want to see good football, mesmerizing passes, brilliant one touch goals (read: Goal number 2, Serbia Montenegro vs. Argentina FIFA World Cup 2006). At the same time, they are not barbaric. They do not boo the players every time the opposition scores against the club.

But like I said before: There is always a tipping point.

When you cross it, and yes the club has moved well past it, they snap. So don't be a "conformist dumbass" (read the comments in the link, someone mentions it before and I think it sums up perfectly) and goes around pretending football's all about the happy stuff - like goals, cheers, chants etc. No. There is an ugly side to football, an uglier side to fan behaviour and when the club disrespects their fans like Real did against Alcorcón, booing is not a taboo.

This. This is why I love Real Madrid.

Why I support them.
Why I defend them.
Why I will never stop believing in them; yes even when they lose pathetically to third division sides.

Because they are Real Madrid. They are more than a club (maybe Real should change the club motto; but I expect that'd result in a huge lawsuit from some club in the northeast of Spain); they are an identity. And the next dumbass who tells me Pellegrini should be fired, is going to be either A) physically assaulted or B) verbally abused, depending on the proximity between us.