Barcelona vs. Gijón

When we went to the old men's bar on the corner to watch the soccer game I hadn't been expecting to come out with a newfound appreciation of the positive aspects of the sport.

My roommate wanted to watch the game and the bar around the corner was showing it on the big screen. Simple. Beers were ordered, seats facing the screen were found.

It was Barcelona versus Gijon; one team from near-ish here, one from the other side of the country. When Barcelona scored their first goal, cheers went up from our table, while the rest of the bar stayed silent. And that's how it started.

First the bartender, this young guy with a faux-hawk that was practically bouncing off the walls, yells over a comment with a friendly smile. At each goal, it was the same - another comment followed by some impassionned discussion with my roommate about the greatness of some player, or how bad some team were doing this year. Then this couple sits down between out table and bar, and then the discussion turns into a roundtable debate. I sat, ears wide open, absorbing as much information as I could about Spanish soccer. The Spanish and English soccer leagues are the best in the world! The sports press in Spain is too Madrid-centred! You don't know how hard it was for me to come out to my friends as a supporter of San Sebastian when all of them are fans of Bilbao!

Outside of North America, the passions that soccer arouses in people anywhere are unbelievable. any Joe ( or Jane) Blow on the street, should you stop them at random, has THEIR team, and the common knowledge of the teams and players is quite encyclopedic. And when you put people that don't know each other together, soccer gives them something to talk about, something to connect them together.