Gooooooooooooooooool!

Last weekend a friend from England came to visit me in Barcelona, where I am currently doing a work experience placement. This proved the perfect excuse to visit the Camp Nou, where I had been meaning to watch a game ever since arriving in the Ciudad Condal in August. Although our limited funds only allowed us to view the action from the cheap seats, which meant we were probably closer to passing aircraft than to the pitch, it was a very enjoyable experience. The small bunch of die-hard Almería fans, who had made the long trip up from Andalucía only to see their team lose 5-0, might not have had a great time, but for the rest of the crowd it was a good evening’s entertainment. And this being Spain, we still had plenty of time for a proper night out afterwards, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight by the time we’d left the stadium.

 

However, I couldn’t help thinking that, by watching the match live rather than on TV, we were missing out on one of the most entertaining aspects of watching football in Spain – the commentary. Not even the most excitable of English commentators can compete with the pure enthusiasm and lung capacity of any one of his Spanish counterparts. A goal of any kind, even when it is fairly unimpressive or unlikely to affect the result of the match, is greeted with an unbelievably long shout of “Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool” that always leaves me unsure whether to laugh at its ridiculousness or marvel at the commentator’s ability to keep it going so long. Even more impressively, said commentator then proceeds, with some mysterious secret reserve of breath, to give a fast-paced and highly enthusiastic description of the goal. I’m quite intrigued to know how the comenteristas got on with this particular match, which saw 5 goals in 21 minutes. I suspect they’d barely finished announcing one goal when the next was scored.

 

Still, despite the overly-long amount of time devoted to one three-letter word, football commentators have probably taught me more Spanish vocabulary than most other programmes on TV, some of which are so bad they verge on the unwatchable. Unfortunately much of this vocab is pretty useless in other areas of life but, considering the importance of the beautiful game in Spanish culture (the country’s most-read newspaper is devoted entirely to sport, mainly football) it can come up in conversation quite often. So, in true In the Garlic style, here’s a quick rundown of the Spanish words you really need to know.

 

Gol is pretty easy to remember, even if, written down, it appears to be missing a letter. From this you get other terms such as the augmentative golazo (a really great goal), goleador (goalscorer) and the verb golear (to thrash, i.e. score a lot of goals against). In a similar way, it’s not difficult to work out the meaning of fútbol, though this odd-looking attempt to apply Spanish orthographic rules to an English borrowing is only used to describe the game and not the ball itself, which is a balón. Other self-explanatory terms include penalti and córner (though the latter is also known as a saca de esquina) while less obvious but still important are equipo (team) falta (foul), portero (goalie) and árbitro (referee). Best of all though, in my opinion, is el crack. Though this might sound like a Class A drug (and does in fact also have this meaning) it is used in football terms to describe a team’s star player. So, for example, Messi might be described as el crack del Barça.

 

These terms, along with a good mixture of your favourite Spanish swearwords and a large dose of vociferous enthusiasm are just about all you need to get fully involved in watching a match at a local bar. The only thing left to do is order yourself a beer, and if you’re struggling with that then see the next post.