After the play-off game in Tarragona it was back to Tortosa with the opportunity to see a further match that afternoon. One game a day is generally sufficient for Jen and so I went to this one by myself.
We were staying at the Parador that overlooks the town and it took less than half an hour to wander down the hill and over the river to the Estadi Municipal Josep Otero.
It’s not often we stay in a castle.
There wasn’t much going on in Tortosa on a Sunday teatime. I doubt there’s much goes on anywhere in Spain on a Sunday teatime and so it makes perfect sense to fill the void with a game of football.
The crowds gather.
The previous day’s fifth tier game at Lleida had been free admission so I was a little surprised that for a game in the sixth tier Catalana Segonda I was directed to the hole in the wall that served as a ticket office. I was further surprised to be charged ten euros, the same price as at the third tier play-off game at Tarragona earlier that day. I suppose they know fine well that there isn’t much else for people to do once they’ve finished their lunch.
And a discount on my tea.
I’ve no idea who Josep Otero was (or is) but the stadium named after him had a seven row covered stand along one side and open terracing along the other. There were offices behind one goal and five a side pitches behind the other.
The view from (and along) the main stand.
Most people sat in the main stand and as tends to be the way in Spain almost all of them knew everyone else and spent the first few minutes after their arrival greeting each other. I wondered how many games I’d have to go to before I’d get kissed on both cheeks by half the crowd. Not many I suspect.
The fans on the opposite side of the pitch appeared to be Camarles fans. You don’t have to travel very far in the Catalana Segonda league and assuming that they were actually from Camarles then they will have had a twenty minute drive along the C-42.
Camarles fans.
Tortosa were dressed up as Stoke whilst the visitors were sporting something similar to a Barcelona kit. The standard was pretty good when you consider that there are over a thousand clubs playing at a higher level in the Spanish pyramid system. Both sides managed to keep the ball well on the artificial pitch.
Stoke v Barca.
One thing that could have been improved upon was the number of goals. Not the number of goals scored, but the amount of goalposts situated around the pitch. We had a pair intended for smaller cross-field games that weren’t too bad but the additional set behind each goal made it look like some sort of experimental trial into whether the excitement level could be raised by allowing teams to score into more than one goal.
Part of what could have been described as a six goal thriller.
As far as the action went, there weren’t many chances. The visitors broke the deadlock early on when one of their strikers spun his defender, picked the correct set of posts and fired Camarles into the lead.
View from behind a goal.
That one strike was sufficient to clinch the win in a meaningless end of season fixture. The celebrations at the end suggested that victory meant far more to the visiting fans than I’d have expected in the circumstances. There’s probably a bit of rivalry going on that I’m not aware of.
With the game over I retraced my steps back through the town and up the hill to the Parador.
Trail of the Lion King 