Goooolllll!!!!

(The Basque word for gol is also gol.)

The Bilbao soccer team, Athletic Bilbao, only has Basque players. The coach can be anything (currently Italian) and the best Basque player, Xabi Alonso, plays for Real Madrid. The team is the Leones (lions), and I don't think anyone ever uses the Basque word for lion, whatever it is. (Maybe Basque doesn't even have a word for lion? That would make a certain amount of sense, since there are not and surely never have been any actual lions in the Basque country. I don't even think there are any zoos here.)

I'm not quite sure how I feel about any of those things.

I do get a kick out of the fact that the team's colors, red and white stripes, are painted everywhere on walls and garage doors and those grating things that you pull down and padlock to the sidewalk to lock up a storefront. And I also like that they call the stadium La Catedral. And I'm a little baffled by the fact that Fernando Llorente (whose full name happens to be Fernando Llorente Torres), one of the leones, is apparently considered the hottest Spanish football player. I mean, if he invited me to run away to Bilbao with him I suppose I probably would go (I bet he has a grandfather who wears a beret), but he's no Fernando Torres.