1983

Laugardalsvöllur, Reykjavík, Iceland 29/05/1983

A qualifier for the European Championship.

Scenery - The national stadium of Iceland
Participants - Spanish national team, Icelandic national team, little girl, some spanish exiles, a lot of curious Icelandic's, some mad football freaks and some nationalistic Spanish freaks, spanish father.

Props - Football ball, Icelandic flags, Catalan flag, ice creams, lines men and a referee, seagull, TV.



The game started, it was an important one, giving the Icelandic team some hope for qualifying the first time for the European Championship, while Spain would have one foot in the finals taking place the next year.
The weather as expected was cold, wet and windy. It was a classic game between a small team and a bigger team, where one destroys and the other constructs. The fans were scattered throughout the stadium and ambience was high and noisy.
The little girl had a rucksack with some snacks and a Catalan flag. The flag had been given to her by her father who was hoping to see his little girl on the television far away in Catalunya. The girl was fiddling with her flag waiting for the moment to take it up and making herself known to the outside world. It stayed in the bag for the whole of the first half, with the father scanning the supporters for a sign. One has to remember that this was well before the moment of immediate technology so one had to hope on promises being kept and not having to leave the room of the television at the magical moment. Spain scored the only goal and the moment seemed to be the moment. But the girl froze, hesitated for a moment, while looking at the other fans. Suddenly she noticed some Spanish fans next to her who talked so loudly and seemed so aggressive and plainly quite dangerous. Suddenly the memory of difficult relations between Catalans and Spaniards became vivid and even the little girl got scared that these Spaniards would not appreciate such an act of nationalism on foreign ground, so the flag stayed neatly in the rucksack as did the father looking into the distant television.