When the Champions League draw came out and it was announced that Atlético de Madrid would play against Borussia Dortmund in the quarterfinals, we, as the Peña Atlética de Alemania, jumped for joy. Finally, Atleti was coming to Germany Since we became an official peña, we hadn’t had the luck of hosting our team here, and we took it as a gift and an unparalleled opportunity to show how great our peña is.
Today, March 8th, International Women’s Day, we celebrate, among other things, that women can enjoy football with total normality. Not many years ago this was considered odd, that a woman liked football was something “unfeminine”, for “machos”.
We have come a long way, and there is still a long way to go. We as fans notice it in many aspects, for example when we go to a stadium and among the security guards at the entrance controls, eight are men and only three are women. And this is just one example.
For many fans, watching a match in Italy is a dream. For those of us who have been more than once, it remains a game of chance: Italians are unpredictable in their game and in their organization. Fourteen members of the Atlético de Madrid Fan Club from Germany decided to tempt fate and continue to make our fan club the most dynamic in this country, so we requested the tickets with the assurance that they would be granted to us, and we all marked February 20th on our calendars as “destination Milan.”
Football has those things: one falls in love with a team without even having visited the city of its origin. This happens to some members of our Peña. They are members of Atlético de Madrid without having visited their stadium, distant fans, at heart, who would like to see more live matches but cannot for various reasons.
When, on the occasion of the First Meeting of European Atlético Peñas, a delegation from Atleti visited us in Cologne, this situation became evident during the talk with the peñas, and the Club’s representative showed great generosity by inviting all members of our Peña who had not yet visited our stadium to the match against Lazio.
Second-to-last match of the Champions League group stage, and it was Feyenoord from Rotterdam’s turn. Back in August, when the draw was made and Feyenoord came up, I thought this would be a good trip. I had been to the Netherlands before, sure, but never to Rotterdam.
Said and done. The three of us, Javi, Edu, and me, were on our way, and as always, I had the longest journey. It’s the drawback of living in Paradise. The journey started on Friday after work, with a stop in Madrid to catch my Atleti in the league against Mallorca. Javi, who lives in Germany near the Dutch border, was driving, and Edu was flying from Barcelona to Amsterdam. I decided to fly to Germany and go by car with Javi.
