Reserved the admission right

Reserving the right of admission is a practice as old as it is recommended, ask any acquaintance who runs a bar or a nightclub.

The fear that one or more unscrupulous people will ruin your holiday is something so legitimate that any precaution is understandable, including the one so commented on in my town for years, that of a young couple who, in their wedding invitations, warned about this to their guests: "the right of admission is reserved, also for acquaintances and relatives".

Even today, many of those present still find it a miracle that they refrained from using it.

The latest artificial controversy in Spanish football has to do with the supposed ban on going to the rival stadium dressed in the colors of your team, a trompe l'oeil that has little to do with reality and that reached a certain height after that Europa League match where the Eintracht Frankfurt fans took the Camp Nou with their wallets in front.

Barça then announced that measures would be taken to avoid incidents such as those recorded that afternoon and the matter did not escalate until, this season, the Espanyol board of directors took advantage of the Camp Nou derby to cry out to heaven for what considered an insult to parakeet fans: those who had bought tickets for free —that is,

outside the area assigned to visiting supporters - would not be able to enter the stadium wearing representative clothing for their team.

Needless to say, the meeting had been declared high risk.

The latter is an important nuance.

In an idyllic society, where football represents the quintessence of coexistence between different people, such precautions would have no reason to exist.

But reality is stubborn, as well as gross and unpleasant.

Whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, sporting events are still a spectacle frequented by a large number of undesirables who take advantage of any loophole to remind us that we are not alone in the universe and that Kubrick was right: imagine the primates of 2001, an odyssey in space clad in t-shirts and dare to deny that such a masterpiece of cinema is also, in addition to everything said since its release, a great football film.

The main defendants in this case, paradoxically, are two of the Spanish clubs that have been most concerned with eradicating any violent behavior from their stadiums, including the prohibition of entry to two ultra groups that, historically, roamed freely in the stands,

It goes without saying, by the way, that many of these characters move freely through other fields in Spain and the rest of Europe, hence certain measures are not only recommended, but fully justified: since they are guarantors of the rights of the amateur, it is better to start with those of those who show a highly accredited degree of civility and occupy their location every Sunday without knowing who can sit next to them.

"Silence, we are savoring the triumphs of Barça", read a sign in my grandfather's old bar, who was from Madrid and was mad about the worst Barça years.

Normal that some time later, when his children inherited the business and transformed it into a small culé temple, that warning was replaced by the typical and always recommendable Right of admission reserved: it was not anti-Madridism, but rather the first great advance of civilization .

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber