I don't like Atleti
Watching them is like eating sand
My older daughter sat down next to me to watch a game a few weeks ago. I don’t remember the teams involved, but it was American football. She leaned against me and I put my arm around her; we snuggled up for a nice little watch party. It was a glorious father-daughter moment and I couldn’t wait for her to ask me to explain some parts of the game since she doesn’t know the rules.
After approximately 15 seconds, she push my arm off, stood up, announced very loudly that this was boring and also stupid, and left.
Okay, so first of all, she was probably right. American football is basically a game of watching people prepare to play a game. There’s something like 11 minutes of actual playing in a 60 minute NFL game. So in those 15 seconds, it’s likely that all she saw was a closeup of some guy talking into a microphone behind a sheet of paper and maybe some men in tights and gladiator costumes milling around.
I feel like this when I watch Atleti play, except we never even get to the part where something interesting happens. There are no touchdowns in Atleti games, just plodding, like a depressed carthorse pulling wares up and down the same street for decades. Atleti games are like sandpaper on your inner thighs: not recommended for those ages 0 and up. I turn on Atleti and my brain says “Isn’t there laundry to do?”
And actually, wait, there’s laundry to do in my house right now. Hold on, let me go do it. [hold music] You didn’t notice, but I just spent 15 minutes doing laundry things and getting water and not typing, but it was all much more interesting than an Atleti game.
One time I went to a bar in Frankfurt, Germany to watch Atleti-Barça with a friend. It was a Copa del Rey match and it was midweek and I was buzzing. What a matchup! What happened next was that I had too many drinks and then watched some guys outside shoot up cause that’s what happens in downtown Frankfurt. Oh, the match? 1-0 to Barça, but hell if I remember any of the details. The game was trash. And just to be totally clear: it was trash because Atleti was playing. I hate them.
I wrote a piece on stadiums and Atleti-Barça. Note that I didn’t talk about how fun the match will be to watch. Atleti is involved so it’s going to be like getting your hand stuck in a drain pipe and having to oil it up to get it out, but you can’t reach your phone to text anyone who can help you, so you just sit there for 6 hours. Whatever, I talk a bit about how we’re going to burn in financial hell for a while.
The club issued a statement about how we’re going to burn in financial hell for a while.
Sid Lowe wrote a piece based partly on those club financials about how we’re going to burn in financial hell for a while. I’m beginning to sense a pattern here.
Coda:
My other daughter joined me on Sunday afternoon last weekend for a bit of NFL. Rams-Bucs, I think. She too snuggled up for a little father-daughter bonding. After about 2 minutes, she looked up at me and said, “When will there be commercials? This is boring."