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Introduction to Spanish Football by Simon

September 1, 2005

For those of you more familiar to English footie, the La Liga starts a few weeks later than EPL, and ends later, naturally. Its basically still 22 men running around on the field (plus an overweight ref), but there are some subtle differences in the spanish games. So simontalks is proud to present a guide to Spanish football.

  • Spanish football is usually played at night. They usually also play at a much slower pace than English football. Maybe it’s because the players don’t get siesta time on match days.

  • If you watch the matches on ESPN, you will notice that there is only one guy who is always commenting in English. He’s presumably Spanish, and speaks in this annoying accent, like ‘Beh-KHARM’ (Beckham) and ‘magni-fi-SAN’ (magnificent). He’s probably the only person in Spain that can speak English. (David Beh-Kharm speaks a little broken English, but he doesn’t count).

  • Just like the Brazilians, Spanish players like professional single names. Like Joaquin, Raul, Arzu, Tiko, etc. How they come up with them is a complete mystery to me…

  • The spectators are usually quite subdued and less vocal than the English fans. Except when the opposing team has a black player on the field…

  • For big clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona, if the team is doing badly or if they are unhappy with the management, at the end of the match the fans will whistle and wave white handkerchiefs as a sign of protest. Why grown men and teenagers carry white handkerchiefs to football matches is another great mystery.

  • You can only field three players of non-European Union (EU) origin (for domestic competitions). This includes South Americans, Africans, Asians and some Eastern Europe countries. This includes the subs on the bench. One way out of this is to get your South American stars to get a dual citizenship with Spain, or a Spanish passport (Like Roberto Carlos and Silvinho).

  • For league matches, you can have up to 7 substitutes sitting on the bench. EPL allows 5. Most of the time, if the team is winning, the subs will be telling jokes and pulling pranks. If the team is losing, they will sit still and watch quietly, while thinking of what to eat for dinner.

  • Instead of the FA Cup, the Primera Liga has the King’s Cup, or the Copa del Rey. No, they don’t have a League Cup or the LDV Vans Trophy.

  • For team names, the double ‘L’ is usually pronounced as ‘Y’. For example, Mallorca is pronounced “Ma-hi-yor-ka”, Sevilla is pronounced “Se-vee-yah” and Villarreal becomes ‘Vi-ya-ree-al’. Allan Tan is still pronounced ‘Allan Tan’.

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