The football fan’s relationship with his team develops over time. The person who starts a relationship with a sign will never be the same ten, thirty, or fifty years later. It will certainly arise through family inheritance or by chance – the paths of love for a team are unfathomable. Over time, you create your own story with the jersey, with the stadium and with the other people who share your passion. It is imbued with the soul of the being it supports. There will come a point when you know everything down to the last detail. And just like when you try to explain the offside rule to someone new to football, you’ll be hard-pressed to express your love for your team and your level of knowledge in words that are clear to a conversationalist who is completely unrelated to everyone sounds of this. It is a relationship so deep and unconscious that it is difficult to explain. Joining a team is usually not a rational decision – it is usually made in childhood. Although sometimes a rational decision made in our fifties can result in a club being declared.
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This was the path taken by the writer and screenwriter Nicolás Casariego. In the hot summer of 2022, while drinking a summer tinto and smoking on the terrace of a bar, he decided to become a member of Rayo Vallecano. Experience a full season with the Red Stripe team. He has been a Real Madrid fan since childhood. Regular player at the Santiago Bernabéu – albeit increasingly rare. He got on the subway and got off at Portazgo station. 32 hours later he was member 15,885 of the Vallecas team. I was just about to start a story that goes far beyond football and that will be collected in Rayografía (Debate). In addition to football, Casariego talks about many other things. About identity, passions, society or the urban planning that explains a city. Told in the first person, the author senses more and more things as the story progresses; Who couldn’t do that after eating a daily menu with the club’s veterans in a meeting that ends with a Fe-Mus game? With a subtle touch of humor, the book offers the opportunity to enter the bars around the stadium, the buses where people ride to follow the team, or the stands of the stadiums, that space where so many things happen happen in so many places. Some time. It is also a strange essay about emotions. Especially what surrounds the moment when your team scores the winning goal in the last minute and you hug people you didn’t know, you scream, you jump and you realize that you don’t understand anything and that at the same time you understand everything.
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