all the other brits are away at home for xmas so in the room it was only me and a couple of spanish guys. we exchanged a few words during the frustrating second half but when half time came we got in some serious football talk.
'what are you doing with that benitez?' they asked me. 'he's a terrible coach.
'but what about his success with valencia?'
'he was lucky and had a good team. but all he was interested in was playing really defensive and grinding out 1-0 wins'
i had to tell them that i couldn't understand this as we were starting to play some of our best attacking football for some time. we had to agree to disagree on that one.
'what do you think of your spanish players?' they asked me.
obviously i replied that alonso was just pure class and that i also rated garcia as a supporting striker. i said i thought nunez was starting to play well but josemi was a worry.
'yeah, yeah' they said 'alonso is fantastic, always has been. but garcia and nunez and josemi are all dodgy players. especially josemi - he played for malaga, a ****** player in a ****** team.'
'oh dear...' i replied.
they were barca fans - though they liked to watch liverpool too, as so many spanish do now. they were worried that chelsea were really going to do them over in the CL. i had to tell them i thought it would be the other way round!
they were really impressed with how full the hawthorns was and that the crowd were always involved.
'at the nou camp' they said 'there are always loads of empty seats and if the team aren't playing well the crowd just sit there silently. if they play well they might applaud'
when towards the end of the game all you could hear was YNWA being belted out from the travelling fans i don't care what anyone says about OOTers, non-match-goers or foreign fans. i was as happy and proud to be a liverpool supporter as anyone else alive.
and so ends my tale.
