DIARY: Back from Spain

I wanted to provide you all with a lengthy review of my trip to Madrid, but truth is I'm simply too knackered today, so I'll give you the condensed version! (praise God, I hear you say!)

See all the pictures here.

I'll start by apologising for the poor picture quality, but my ordinary camera is broken, so have to use my camera phone!
Why Madrid?
Well I just love beautiful metropolises. Seriously, though, these were my (alterior as always) motives:

• Visit my old dorm mate Brian!
  
• Cross another country off my "seen" list!

• And most importantly: Watch the Euro qualifier between Spain (booo!) and Denmark (hooray!)

The Trip

Overall, it was a successful trip. Madrid is a beautiful city, the weather was perfect, and the food very very affordable!

On Saturday we spent a great deal of time on Plaza Mayor swarmed by Danish roligans and a few cows (look at the pics for an explanation!). There was football and canned beer everywhere, and thus much rejoicing...

In the late afternoon we ran into "the lads": Jacob, Thomas, and Kristian from work, and our regular football buddies Bisgaard and Kaiser. Let's just say they all looked like they had taken a swim in the nearest Jameson distillary tank before taking off for Madrid!

The Match

Stadium great. Atmosphere, generally good, apart from some animosity from angry young fans a the end. The Spanish were good craic before and after the game, and I didn't get lynched even though I stood up with only Brian at my side and sang the Danish National Anthem amidst some 75.000 Spanish supporters...

End result was a very undeserved 2-1, with both Spanish goals scored when we had three men in defense due to a terrible sending off of Niclas Jensen by the overwhelmed (or bought) Swiss referee (if he's representative of Swiss football, then God help them at the Euro 08).

The players showed fantastic attitude, though, dominated completely until the sending off and managed to press Spain back for most of the second half with just ten men. It was a gutless performance by a lot of the Spanish players, and as much as I like the team, and the technical gifts they possess, they'll crumble at the first hurdle, if they don't improve...

As for our status. Toughest game over, and still one point ahead of Spain. Northern Ireland will drop too many points against the other teams to be a serious challenger for top 2, while Sweden seem likely to run away with one of those spots, having racked up 4 wins without ever lifting their game beyond mediocrity (as usual, but in football, winning badly is a gift that generally means qualification).

If we can take 6 points of the Swedes, and in the belief that the Spanish will get no more than 1 point in Copenhagen, then 1st spot is still a possibility. Realistically, though, we are only slightly better than Sweden, man for man, and 4 points looks like the very maximum we can get out of the next two back-to-back games against our old rivals.

On the other hand, two defeats at the hand of us, and a loss in Spain, could condemn the Swedes to 3rd, still, so a very open group, and the promise of an exciting run-in...

The low....
Well, my wallet got stolen! (lifted!) In a quiet cafe while sitting there with my back against the jacket holding it. A shame we didn't catch the guy in the act, as my friend Brian would surely have relished the opportunity to deal out some vigilante justice and renew his martial arts training.

I lost only a 100 quid, though, and all my cards, but the damage was contained in the end. Anyway, here's hoping the culprit has a nasty run-in with the police very soon....