Beginning of new chapter for new edition of ‘Tormenta Blanca’ (White Storm) – out in Spain late Oct/November. T & B Editores.
It’s August 14th, 2024, it’s dark, quite late, and I’m walking through the deserted main street of a tiny town called Villadepalos, in the province of León, about a hundred kilometres east of the Galician border. A dog barks in a garden nearby, and the crickets snap quiet for a moment. I’ve left my wife behind in the sanctuary of the small boutique hotel where we are staying for the night, famous for its owners’ wonderful dinners – which is the only reason we’re here. We’re driving around the region for a few days and it sounded a reasonable place to stop. The dinner was fine but since the small hotel has no television I’ve wandered out to see if I can find Kylian Mbappé. I don’t expect to greet him on this dark and silent street because he’s playing several thousand miles to the east in the National Stadium in Warsaw in the UEFA Super Cup Final against Italy’s Atalanta, but since he’s making his long-awaited debut for Real Madrid I feel as though I should watch at least some of the second half. I was in the Montjuic when Messi made his debut as a sub for Barça against Espanyol and I was in the Bernabéu for Cristiano’s first game there, so I figure I need to keep up the tradition, more or less.
After a few minutes of stumbling through the dark I spy a small round light in the distance to the right-hand side of the road, the Estrella Galicia sign indicative of a possible bar and human occupants.
As I approach the gleaming sign, a sudden roar emits from its narrow door into the silent street. I have found my Bethlehem stable and I assume that Real Madrid have just scored. I walk into the small scruffy bar and like the crickets a few moments before, the noise immediately dies down. The dozen or so people in there – locals I presume – stare at me as they might at Clint Eastwood, who has just left his horse outside and dropped in for a drink and a gunfight. The occupants are of different shapes, sizes and ages, men and women all clad in Real Madrid shirts, different colours from different years. The TV is hung slightly to the left above the entrance door, which makes it seem that they’re actually interested in me, and I feel slightly uncomfortable as their eyes take me in, a stranger with no obvious affiliation to Real Madrid. I walk over to the bar on the right where I see a vacant stool, and wait for the barman to acknowledge my presence. The TV shows the score (1-0), and it’s Federico Valverde who has just had them cheering. ‘¿Tienes un tinto?’ (Do you have a red wine?) I ask eventually, since the barman continues to ignore me. He has the weary look of a man for whom life has not quite worked out quite the way he’d wished. ‘Sí’ he replies, raising one eyebrow in classic Ancelotti style. ‘Tengo blanco también’(I also have white) he adds. A comedian, obviously.
I sit on the stool and watch the second half unfold. I hadn’t expected to walk into a bar full of Real Madrid fans but the nearest professional team is Ponferradina to the east, in the Primera RFEF, equivalent to the old Segunda B, and the greater Castilla-León region tends to lean its sympathies towards Real Madrid as opposed to the Galician teams, despite them being geographically closer. The locals continue to ignore me, their eyes fixed to the screen. Mbappé is occasionally involved, but flits around looking slightly lost, as befits a debutant who has not yet played competitively with his team-mates. Atalanta manage a couple of attacks and the locals shuffle nervously until Vinicius, straying to the right, slides a centre across the turf that nobody reaches until the Englishman Bellingham, the previous season’s new hero, picks the ball up on the left edge of the area and advances a few steps. Mbappé, instinctivelyunderstanding his intention, runs into a space behind three defenders through which Bellingham slots a deliberate pass. The ball runs slightly to the right but Mbappé, with his characteristic upright sprint, catches the ball up and cracks it first time into the roof of the Italian net, to the joy and relief of fans, sponsors and investors around the world. He’s delivered.
Here in a small obscure bar in the darkness of a Spanish provincial village, the black Frenchman, son of an Algerian mother and Cameroonian father has had an astounding effect on the locals. They leap from their chairs and fist the air, hug and dance temporarily as if some music has just begun, and shout semi-comprehensible offers to the benign gods of football, watching from the skies above. One younger man runs out into the dark street and hollers ‘¡Vamos – hostia!’, probably silencing the crickets again. The old man next to me notices my relative silence and quips ‘¿Que te pasa? ¿Eres de Barça?’. (What’s up? You a Barcelona fan?) I smile weakly. At least somebody has spoken to me.
Kylian Mbappé is almost always in shot as the cameras capture his smiles and the players embrace at the end of the game before the Supercopa is raised. As ‘El Cafe de Pablo’ gradually empties its denizens into the hot Spanish night, it’s a happy symbolic scene in Warsaw on the TV above the door, with the latest in a long line of galácticos now bedded into the Real Madrid narrative – a narrative we last left at the beginning of the Julen Lopetegui regime in the turbulent summer of 2018.
Phil Ball, September 2024
