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Bottom of La Liga

Graham Salter

Monday, February 24th, 2014

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 The finest stadium I’ve ever seen
Is the Estadio Benito Villamarín.
It belongs to Betis, in the south of Spain,
Last week I boarded an Easyjet plane
And visited the orange trees in the town of Seville
If I close my eyes I’m wandering there still
Where the doves that flutter in the clear blue sky
Alight on the heads of the passers-by
Where the languid lemon tree inclines
Its velvet branches toward the pines
And Rupert Brooke in his Moorish tower
Sees an unofficial jasmine flower.
But wait! What’s all this poetic stuff?
Football is serious. Football is tough.
Maybe Rupert Brooke would rather be
In Manchester. Well I’m glad I’m not
In Manchester, because here it’s hot
The stadium’s built at the end of a park
You can hear the nightingale (and the lark)
An ideal place to be creative and free
From those noisy neighbours Sevilla FC
There’s just one problem I must confess
This Betis club is a bit of a mess
Though their ground would inspire a Brooke or a Keats
Their La Liga record is a string of defeats
The most poetic club in the Spanish nation
Is staring at the spectre of relegation
It’s time for these losing ways to stop
It’s time to avoid that fateful drop
With your quaint old name and your quaint old stand
You can still be footballing force in the land
Now turn the corner! Save the day!
O Real Betis Balompié.

Notes

Note: The Spanish word for football is “futbol” but back in the 1920s it was “balompié”, and Betis have retained that quaint old word in the name of their club. In fact I saw a Betis home game in 1990, and was impressed by the elegant green-painted stands, surrounded by palm-trees.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/bottom-of-la-liga/