A trip to the Holy Land (ESP v CHI)

So the day we got back from Natal, we had three tickets to see Spain try to save their Copa against Chile after the drubbing Holland administered a few days earlier. One had to be used by a senior (in this case, dear Tio Paulo), and this was the game we got young Master Daniel into as well, so that left a lone ticket. We tried to find at least one more ducat for the game, but since the entire nation of Chile was bound and determined to see the match, ticket or no, we were out of luck. At that point, my hosts from Colorado laid down on the grenade and insisted that I take the last ingresso. It would be my only chance to see many of the players from my favorite club (Barça, Barça, Barça!) playing for Spain (especially since, as it turns out, the defending champions will be headed home very, very soon). And did I mention that it was at Maracanã? This is a debt that I never get to repay. I got into my seat just at kickoff and had trouble paying attention to the first minutes of the game. Like my first trips to Fenway, old Yankee Stadium and Wrigley, or even non-sports sites like the Mall in DC, I had to look around and just think about the history that had taken place in Maracanã. Like the Brazilian loss to Uruguay in the final of the 1950 Copa, referred to as the Maracanazo, before an estimated crowd of 210,000, all standing. It's all seats now, but still holds just under 80,000 now, and on this day it seemed like every single one of them, less me and the guy seated to my left, were Chileños.