The cancellation means the same tedious, unpleasant war: accusations, paranoia and shots fired by the usual suspects. Expect the worst, expect a mess
A storm tore through Spanish football this weekend – and for once that’s is not some mangled metaphor. Late on Thursday night it started, hitting Galicia hard. An average of 80 litres of water fell per square metre, 126 in the worst hit areas, and winds reached 120kph. The facade of a sports centre collapsed, an airport tower was damaged, rivers overflowed, dozens of trees were pulled up, two people died, and there were 640 calls to ‘999’ – which is ‘112’ here. A total of 49,378 people were left without electricity and the first division was left without two football matches. Which shouldn’t be what matters reading that list, but at times it seemed that was all that mattered. Certainly when it came to Real Madrid’s postponed visit to Celta de Vigo.
Forty-eight games were cancelled in Galicia including the match that opened the weekend on Friday night and the match that closed it 48 hours later, gone with the wind. On Friday Deportivo de La Coruña versus Real Betis was cancelled after parts of the stadium roof were torn by the wind, plastic sheeting broken and hanging open, screws and bolts coming loose, holes left in the roof, pieces falling, others at risk of following them. Down by the beach, right next to the stadium, Betis’s manager Víctor Sánchez del Amo was recording a video on his phone, waves crashing behind him. “Amazing,” he said, glancing out to sea. “Well, that’s it: there’s no game. We’re heading back to Seville.”
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