Watching football in Colombia is incomparable

I’ve just returned from Colombia, where I’ve been visiting my daughter. She’s doing a modern languages degree and has to spend her third year in a Spanish-speaking country either working or studying. Instead of opting for a university in Barcelona or Madrid, which would be the normal thing to do, she decided to get a job in Medellín. Can’t think where she gets that rebellious streak! So that’s why I’ve spent the past week in South America.

Colombia is quite a long way to go for such a short trip. To get to Medellín, I flew via Madrid, which meant departing from Gatwick at 10 a.m. and arriving at about 8 p.m. local time, a thirteen-hour journey. If you factor in getting to and from the airport either side, as well as faffing about with security, it took the best part of twenty-four hours.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed being shown around by my daughter and her Colombian boyfriend, a twenty-six-year-old former professional football player. They took me on a whistle-stop tour of Medellin’s most famous landmarks, including Comuna 13, a neighborhood once controlled by Pablo Escobar and now a tourist attraction, complete with outdoor escalators to carry you up to the favela that used to house his private army.

It’s actually legal to possess small quantities of cocaine in Colombia and the president, Gustavo Petro, has just called for it to be legalized worldwide, claiming it’s “no worse than whisky.” But to complicate things, it’s against the law to buy it, which means the street dealers offer to sell you a can of Coca-Cola for 50,000 Colombian pesos ($12) and throw in a gram of the devil’s dandruff for free. My daughter and her boyfriend were very disapproving of this, insisting that the city has moved on since the Escobar era and has more to offer than drugs and organized crime.

After a hectic weekend in Medellin, we went by plane and then motor launch to Isla Fuerte, a tiny coral island in the Caribbean about 220 miles north of the city. The abundant wildlife was spectacular, with macaws, sloths and iguanas all making an appearance. We stayed in a charming, ramshackle resort that billed itself as an “eco-hotel” and made a big song and dance about being reliant on solar but had a diesel–fueled generator tucked away in a nearby wood. Since I’m a climate contrarian, this made the resort more appealing, not less. Falling asleep in a hammock by the ocean, listening to the waves lapping at the shore, did much to compensate for spending thirteen hours in economy on Air Europa.

The island’s ‘eco-hotel’ had a diesel-fueled generator tucked away in a nearby wood

The high point of the trip was going to see Atlético Nacional, the local football team in Medellín. It was very different from watching QPR play Preston at Loftus Road on a rainy Tuesday night, and not just because it was warm and sunny. The entire home end was taken up by tens of thousands of hardcore supporters — las ultras — who were bouncing up and down to an unseen band. As with English fans, they adapted the lyrics of well-known songs, so they became about their team, but the difference was these were traditional Colombian folk tunes rather than pop classics like “Seven Nation Army.” And the supporters were singing continuously, rather than just occasionally, which meant no perceptible change in atmosphere when their team scored — which they did three times. There was no sense of bottled-up tension followed by ecstatic release, as there is at English games. These fans were in a state of constant ecstasy.

Another difference was the crowd had many more women — who were just as enthusiastic as the men. I’d guess that roughly 15 percent of the fans at Loftus Road are female, whereas here it was more like half. Many of the young women were dressed up and seemingly present at the invitation of their male companions, as though a trip to see Nacional was part of a standard courtship ritual. By contrast, the only time I’ve seen people on a date at a football match in England was when QPR played Stoke on Valentine’s Day and the women looked like they were there on sufferance.

There were no away supporters in the stadium, which made for a much friendlier atmosphere than at Loftus Road, although that isn’t always the case. In September, a massive brawl here involved multiple stabbings and more than twenty-five injuries. Happily, such hooliganism hasn’t resulted in an alcohol ban, and salesmen in yellow vests roamed the aisles with large trays of beer perched on their heads.

My daughter loves it in Colombia and after a brief visit I can see why. I’m off to see QPR play Portsmouth at Fratton Park on Saturday and something tells me the atmosphere won’t be nearly so appealing.