So, this is what winning is like...

the setup
It has been an exciting couple of weeks. The Eurocup has been in full swing once again. For my foreign readers who live under rocks and have no concept of european sports, the Eurocup is essentially the same thing as the World Cup except that, well, you got it, it is only among European nations. Recently, some mexicans friends of the family were here, and they said that they actually favored the Eurocup more than the World Cup and certainly more than the American Cup because they said that the overall quality of the teams was better. It makes sense, in the Eurocup you don't have to limit the number of European teams to make room for crappy teams like Saudi Arabia or Trinidad and Tobago.

Now, in these kinds of competitions, Spain is always one of the favorites numerically, but not in reality. Spain always ranks among FIFA's top 5 teams in the world. And yet, it is notorious for getting booted out of any competition at the quarter finals stage (if that!). Despite being home to some of the world's best football clubs and having some of the best players, Spain has never won a World Cup. In fact, the Eurocup that it won in 1964 was the one and only international competition it has ever won. Spain, to put it in American terms, has always been the Red Socks of international football.

the outcome
So imagine our surprise as Spain won every game in its group... then passed the quarter finals... then passed the semi finals... and raised the Cup over their heads after the final game. We kept not trying to get our hopes up as we progressed through the different stages. I mean, we were playing difficult teams: Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the Russian team that crushed Holland's beautiful game. And somehow, we outplayed them all. Spain won the cup, it scored the most goals in the tournament, it had the top goal scorer and made one of the 5 hat tricks in Eurocup history.

the celebration
When Spain won the final, fireworks exploded outside our apartment window. The whole city roared out in triumph. Literally. People stormed the streets with flags and horns. Cars drove by waving the national colors. And for some reason, everyone went to their nearest fountain. I still don't know why spaniards do that, but they do.

Now, we watched the game at my house, with 17 people crammed into my living room. Madness ensued when we won and everyone scrambled for a red shirt or flag and we ran down to the nearest plaza/roundabout/fountain to join in the revelry. I took my trumpet with me. I walked down the street blasting out the national anthem or any other football related tune I could think of as my friends sang along with me. When we got to the fountain, half of the water was already gone, splashed out by the hundreds of fans that were jumping in it and splashing it all over each other in glee. Firecrackers were tossed. Buses were stopped and pounded on as they tried to get by. Cars were rocked back and forth and nearly tipped over. Motorcycles were "toreados" by people with Spanish flags.

The trumpet was definitely a good idea. You automatically become "el más grande" (as some random guy called me) when you show up playing the national anthem. And that is what I did. In fact, at one point my friends and I started a conga line around the fountain with me at the front playing the anthem. The line ended up folding back on itself as too many people joined on, singing the traditional lyrics, "lo lo lo lo," to a song that doesn't have any. Check out the video below for proof of the madness. As you can tell, I had a hard time keeping from laughing.






SIDE NOTES:
-why in the world do people have giant cups as trophies? Wikipedia doesn't say.
-Isn't it odd that people say "we won" "we outplayed the other team" "they beat us" ... as if sitting at home or in a bar munching on potato chips and sipping beer had anything to do with the actual outcome or progress of the game.