If you read reviews of Albacete, it’s not uncommon for people to highlight that it’s a handy place to break your journey if you are heading from, say, Alicante to Madrid. That’s hardly inspiring and, sad to say, seems fairly accurate as the best thing about the place.
Albacete’s other claim to fame is as the knife capital of Spain. That’s probably more impressive, given that Spain is full of knife shops. Spainers love their knives. Albacete even has a knife museum, although as we had turned up on a public holiday, it was shut.
Jen and I were staying slightly out of town as all the hotels in the centre were either full or closed. I suspect the latter. As that meant I had to drive in and park up I got to the Estadio Carlos Belmonte with around an hour to spare. It was already busy with home fans eating and drinking in bars and tents alongside the ground.
I’d bought my ticket in advance online, thirty euros for a second-tier clash with Villarreal’s B team. At sixteen and eighteenth respectively in the table, both sides needed the points if they aspired to mid-table mediocrity.
My seat was pretty decent. Fairly central in the main stand and seven rows from the pitch. The stand opposite had a sort of curvy metallic roof. My initial thought was space-age, although on reflection my idea of space-age is probably rooted in the sixties when space exploration peaked, rather than something futuristic. Whatever. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that it had that old-fashioned space age look that’s now half a century out of date. I liked it though.
Right from the start Villarreal looked as if they would be happy with a point. They went down very easily, and the ref was happy to accommodate their time-wasting by stopping play every time to check on their welfare. I’m fine if it’s a head injury, in which case I’d make them undertake a concussion protocol off the pitch, but otherwise I’d let them writhe around until they got bored with it.
It took an Albacete goal a few minutes into the second half to spark some urgency from Villarreal. Unsurprisingly they no longer seemed to be seriously injured whenever an opposition player came within a yard of them. They started pushing forward and managed to hit the post from a counterattack soon afterwards.
It was the home team’s night though and a break down the left was finished with the ball tucked in low, across the keeper and into the far corner. That second goal was enough to take the points and put a little distance between the teams in the table.
Trail of the Lion King 