The gargantuan Camp Nou is part of what makes Barcelona FC more than a football club, according to the team's fans. Brian Boydvisits the stadium, billed as Europe's biggest
A WOMAN RUNS on to the pitch at Camp Nou and grabs a life-size cardboard cut-out of Thierry Henry, the Barcelona striker, to have her photograph taken.
She is on a tour of the Spanish football club's mightily impressive stadium, the largest in Europe.
Around her, on Camp Nou's seats, is the slogan Més Que un Club. Catalan for More Than a Club, it reflects Barcelona FC's unique position as not just a football team but a repository for all that goes into making up the fiercely proud Catalan identity.
Camp Nou - New Field, in Catalan - is a beast of a building. With 98,772 seats in its three-tier, 48m-high stands, plus 400 exits - the stadium can be evacuated in less than five minutes, apparently - it is a sporting colossus.
The tours, which run throughout the day, begin deep in the bowels, with a walk around the press-conference rooms and the "mixed zone", where journalists try to interact with players after each match.
The first big surprise is the dressing rooms. They're surprisingly sparse: just a few benches, some lockers, functional showers and some treatment tables. Think the toilets at your local pub and you're not far off the ambience.
In the tunnel to the pitch you can pause at a beautiful chapel that is dominated by a statue of the Virgin of Montserrat, one of the black Madonnas of Europe. This is where Ronaldinho prays before matches.
The walk out on to the pitch is an exhilarating experience, whether or not you're a football fan and even when the stadium is empty. You think of the drama that has been played out on this grass as you gape up at the huge stands.
I spotted the seat I had sat in the previous night, watching Barcelona play FC Schalke 04 in the Champions League quarter-final, and got a different take on the vertiginous experience of watching a match from way up in the Camp Nou bleachers.
You can sit for a while in the uncomfortable blue-leatherette touchline seats occupied by the outgoing manger, Frank Rijkaard, and his array of expensive substitutes, and take in the pitchside view.
If you're the naff type you can, like the woman I saw, pay extra to stand on the touchline and have your photograph taken with cardboard cut-outs of Barcelona players. But don't try to grab some turf. It annoys the groundsmen no end.
A quick walk up some stairs gives you the chance to sit in the directors' box, but you'll need to take the lift to the top of the stadium, where the press boxes are.
From here it's a quick trot down to the "VIP" area - nothing special here - and on into the main part of the tour: the club museum. A trilingual exhibition, in Catalan, Spanish and English, guides you through the early days of the club and looks in detail at famous past players such as Ladislao Kubala, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradona and Josep Guardiola.
There's fascinating archive footage on the video screens as well as loads of minutiae for the dedicated supporter. In one corner there's a look at how the architect Norman Foster will transform the stadium over the next few years. He is hugely ambitious, with plans to cover Camp Nou with a "second skin" in the team's colours of blue and scarlet.
The museum makes great play of how, in this age of billionaires buying up football clubs as business portfolios, Barcelona is owned by its fans - the socios - all 150,000 of them. This club is not up for sale, and no single person, however rich or Russian, can take it over.
The tour leaves you in no doubt that the team is indistinguishable from the city and the Catalan identity. As a plaque on the wall on the way out says, Camp Nou "is everybody's work . . . and everybody's faith".
How to see a match, and what to remember if you visit the stadium
How to see a match
Television contracts mean that Barcelona confirm
whether their next home game is on a Saturday or Sunday night only
10 days before the match, so many operators offer three-night
packages, leaving on a Friday, to cover both days.
Sportstours (01-4572311, www.sportstours.ie), Dawson Travel (021-4274397, www.dawson-travel.com), Abbey Travel (01-8047100, www.abbeytravel.ie) and Foreign Afares (021-4278999, www.foreignafares.ie) are among the agents offering deals. The new season kicks off on the last weekend of August. With fixtures yet to be announced, keep an eye out for packages from next month.
If you are travelling independently, tickets generally go on sale through the internet a month before a home game. You can sometimes buy one on the day of a game, although not for bigger ties, such as the derbies against Real Madrid and RCD Espanyol. Tickets this season cost anywhere between €18 and €170. See www.fcbarcelona.com.
Camp Nou, in the Collblanc area of northwest Barcelona, is on
Avinguda Aristides Maillol (nearest metro Collblanc). A taxi from
the city centre should cost no more than €10. Stadium tours
run daily from 10am to 8pm. Final entry is an hour before closing.
An adult ticket costs €13.
Mark Rodden
Club history
In his book Offside, Manuel Vazquez Montalban writes that when Franco's troops entered Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War "first they went after the communists, then the anarchists, then the separatists and then Barcelona FC".
You can't understand the passion on the terraces of Camp Nou without knowing of the club's troubled relationship with what Catalans refer to, sniffily, as the Spanish state.
Barcelona FC was set up in 1899 by a Swiss businessman, Hans Kamper, who converted swiftly to the cause and took a Catalan version of his name, Joan Gamper. The club was despised by the government in Madrid, which saw it as the embodiment of a Catalan identity it was intent on suppressing. When Gen Primo de Rivera assumed power in Madrid, in 1923, he banned the Catalan flag and language and, as punishment for fans in the stadium booing the Spanish anthem, closed down Barcelona FC for six months.
Franco took an even more aggressive approach. During the civil war Barcelona FC's president, Josep Sunyol, was shot by Franco's troops. Franco tried to change the club's name and remove the Catalan flag from its crest. He also gave huge financial support to their main rivals, Real Madrid.
All forms of rebellion against his regime were expressed by a defiant support of Barcelona.
Dutch master
None of Barcelona's foreign players has been so
adored by the Camp Nou faithful as Johann Cruyff. In 1972 he was
targeted by both Real Madrid and Barcelona. He endeared himself
instantly at his first press conference as a Barcelona player by
announcing he would never have signed for Real, as he didn't want
to play for a team so associated with Franco.
In his first season he helped Barcelona win La Liga for the first time since 1960, including a famous 5-0 away victory against Madrid. When he returned to the club as manager, in the 1990s, he helped it win the European Cup, and he remains its most successful manager. At Camp Nou he is still known as el Salvador, or the Saviour.
Go there
Aer Lingus (
www.aerlingus.com) flies to
Barcelona from Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Ryanair (
www.ryanair.com) flies from
Dublin to Girona and Reus (both over an hour from the city) and
from Shannon to Girona. Iberia (
www.iberia.com) flies from
Dublin to Barcelona.