Needless to say that in the past 15 months it has been tough to find live Football games to attend, enjoy and subsequently write about. Travel has been limited, entry requirements into stadia have been very strict and – let’s be honest – in the grander scheme of things writing about Football fan culture has not been a high priority in the world recently. Since early March we have been to just one live Football match; a heavily regulated Tercera Group X league fixture between Xerez Deportivo and Rota. This weekend however that changes.

Spain’s handling of the pandemic has been far from excellent, but several semi-autonomous comunidades of the countries are now seeing progress both in the lower number of confirmed positive cases per day as well as the growing liberties extended to their populations. Evening curfews and safety precautions remain in Andalusia and Catalonia, but in the eastern inland comunidad Aragon, fans are being let back into stadia ahead of the new season.

Take a wild guess where we are right now.

After a long and patient wait, FBTG is once again on the road to learn more about the world through the medium of Football culture. We have lined up 3 professional matches in 3 consecutive days we will be attending while following all requirements and obeying all necessary protocols in the process. All 3 will be “pre-season friendlies”, meaning that the sporting quality will be less serious, but the compromise often comes in the form of cheaper entry prices. Our first match takes place this Friday in the Roman city of Zaragoza where second club of the city CD Ebro play host to CD Robres a short drive up the road in neighbouring Huesca province. Both sides will compete in the Spanish Tercera this season.

The following day on the 31st of July, we will venture further south in Aragon to the medieval mile-high city Teruel to watch home-town side CD Teruel take on Atlético Levante UD – the feeder club to Primera club Levante UD located on the coast in Valencia. Teruel’s Estadio Pinilla will continue to host Football the following day as SD Huesca from the north of Aragon (recently relegated from La Liga) come up against fellow La Segunda outfit from the north of Valencia CD Castellón.

The map above shows the distribution of the clubs we will spectate in the coming days. Interestingly all come from Spain’s east, from 2 separate states (Aragon and Valencia) and from 5 different provinces (Huesca, Zaragoza, Teruel, Valencia and Castellón). More writing to follow. We’ve been looking forward to this.

fbtg