¡Vamos, Vamos Nacional!

Let me start with, we are sorry that we haven't posted anything in awhile. We joined a gym down the street and have been sore, whiny babies for a few days. Who knew that a class called "Model Silhouette" would kick our butts? Anyhow, we went to our first Futball match last week. A small bit of history on soccer here in Uruguay. First, Uruguay has won the world cup twice. The first was the very first world cup that was held here in Uruguay in 1930. The second was in 1950 when Uruguay beat Brazil at Rio's brand new Maracaná stadium. In the Uruguayan league there are about 10 or so club teams but if you ask any one there are really only two, Nacional and Peñarol. These are the two main rivals in Uruguayan soccer. I've seen people with tattoos of their team logos on their bodies. Think River/Boca, or for those of you that don't follow soccer, think Yankees/Red Sox. The graffitti follows the same course of dinner table discussion down here, politics and futball. All over town you see "¡C. N. de F.!" (Club Nacional de Futball) and "¡Viva Peñarol!" right along side who that particular artist is rooting for president. So back to my story. We went to a game. Not just any game, mind you, but a Nacional game. And not just any Nacional game, but the 2008 championship. (the 2008 game was supposed to be played in May of last year, but they postponed it 9 months because of a riot) It was nuts. I felt sorry for the fans of the other team, Danubio, because they just didn't have the shear numbers that we had. I say "we" because Dani and I are Nacional fans, as Dani states...they tended to have more teeth than Peñarol fans, so we're in. We went with Daniela's cousin, Fiorella and her boyfriend who took us to the craziest area right behind the goal. When we finally found a place, we sat to enjoy the show. There were flags and homemade banners flying eveywhere, people chanting Nacional songs, throwing confetti, rolling joints from said confetti, singing about how lame Peñarol was (it didn't matter they weren't playing Peñarol) and generally causing a ruckus. And we still had 20 minutes to go until the game started. I was in heaven, until some kid smashed my toes with his knock-off Nikes when he was chanting a song. But it's ok. I learned a lesson, don't wear sandals to a futball match. Easy enough. I think Dani's favorite part of the game was when she was passing the bottle of water back to Fiorella and it was intercepted by some guy who took a swig and handed it back saying, "It's ok. I have all my teeth still!" She just stood there for a few minutes looking at him while rolled a joint from confetti on the ground before she looked up and said, "That's disgusting" and whirled around in search of another water. And that was the first half, Nacional was down 1-0. The second half was actually much calmer for us. The hardcore fans have banners that unfurl from the scoreboard to the field level. We were in between two of them during the first half but the decided to unleash a third that pretty much blocked our view so we headed out in search of better seats. We watched Nacional come up and win 2-1!!! I lost my voice. It was pretty spectacular. Fiorella asked me if we had anything like this in the States and it was a hard question to answer. We have fans. Anyone who knows a Raiders fan knows that we have intense, hardcore fans. What we don't have is the presence at the stadium that includes flares, fireworks, trip-hazard banners and police in full riot gear by a field that is surrounded by a 10 foot fence and a moat, seriously. Now the season starts again, Copa Libertadores is going on right now and hopefully we'll be able to make it to another game, this time Nacional vs. Peñarol!