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the world's grumpiest fans

Do Real Madrid Have the Worst Fans in Football? | CA | Translation

They've booed Bale, they've booed Ancelotti, they've even booed Ronaldo. Will Real Madrid's fans ever be satisfied?
Image via Wikimedia Commons

As a chronic housecat who spends more time pondering the guiding principles of our universe than any psychiatrist would deem wholesome, I am obsessed by yins and yangs. If this is the reward, what's the price? If the reward is to play football in the most pristine and evocative of all kits, in a stadium whose air of grey multi-storey asbestos brutalism epitomises the difference between books and their covers, for a team featuring a few of the best players of all time – what's the flipside?

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That would be having the rattiest, most implacable and intolerant fans watch you do it. Yes, Real Madrid have the worst fans. That's just universal logic.

Consider what it might take for Man City supporters to start booing Sergio Aguero. Can't do it, can you? Being caught repeatedly putting the boot into Noel Gallagher in the street outside the Etihad while wearing a Van Persie shirt? Perhaps, though you kinda know that this would actually make them feel deeply conflicted; through anguished, gritted teeth they'd still feel obliged to chant his name. Gareth Bale, on the other hand, scorer of the goal in the Champions League final that broke Atleti's back, scorer of a sumptuous winner in the Copa del Rey final against their most bitter rivals, is booed a matter of months later. Carlo Ancelotti has been booed, Iker Casillas has been booed, even Cristiano Ronaldo has been booed. Which allows only one universal truth: they want to boo you.

There's a smokescreen that exists around Real Madrid, one of those mutual masturbation sessions where the complete opposite of the truth is jerked off enough times by enough willing participants that it becomes fact. That is, senorio, which best translates as 'gentlemanliness'. Over to Luis Gomez of El Pais: 'The main elements consisted of a sense of austerity, hard work, humility and honesty. Real Madrid transmitted these values through its players onto the field.' So next time you spot Pepe treading on the stray hand of a prone Lionel Messi while simultaneously folding under the Tyson-esque effects of a Neymar shove, remember that you are witnessing austerity, hard work, humility and honesty.

I have no idea whether these values ever did exist. Perhaps they didn't – and it wouldn't be the first time that a hegemonic power decided that they fancied a little make-believe gilding of the lily. The British sense of decency and fair play extended to castrating Kenyans with pliers; Americans with minds that could politely be described as 'business-orientated' arrived in Iraq under a noble banner of democracy. One might argue that the treatment meted out to their team by Madridistas is so vindictive precisely because they see the preening, self-regarding ethos of the Galacticos as counter to what they think the club should stand for. Perhaps they are not angry, just disappointed.

With a less charitable, and probably more accurate will, the average Madrid fan of the 21st century is more akin to a spoiled child, one who sees success as something he or she should not be made to wait for; they will give whichever superstar has been temporarily provided to secure it for them the time of day only as long as they care to.

To some degree, you can't blame them. In any other team, to have Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben and Rafael van der Vaart all playing in their prime would be a joyful thing. But under the capricious dynamics of Real's presidential system, these guys are just yesterday's news: here is Kaka, and now Ronaldo (your second Ronaldo, no less). Forget them. It's small wonder, really, that the Madridistas treat these players like you'd treat the cast members on a show like How I Met Your Mother – amusing enough, until something better appears in the scheduling. At this point you can give free rein to an attitude that divides into polite (desultory booing of their every move) and impolite (waiting outside the stadium to launch flying kicks at the windows of their cars as they speed off).

Sergio Ramos, bless his heart, often stops to reason with them. He must not know that, in the beautiful synchronicity of the universe, he's dealing with the most tortured football fans there are – those who in an ideal world would probably forego all the actual football, and have the season simply defined as a very large and lengthy presentation of every trophy that exists to the worthy winners. But the actual football keeps getting in the way, and it makes them very, very grumpy.