Fun With Flags

Taking a break from nostalgia for what I'm missing, I meandered through the city last Saturday afternoon in search of an alternative way to watch THE BIG ONE. 100 minutes before the match was due to start, I drove into the Alameda da Cidade Universitária, saw the screen and parked to check it out (too humid? bad image because of the sun high above the screen? etc). There were already a few people in position, though lord knows when the first had arrived. In fact, as I later discovered when I returned with Patti at half-time, they would have had no disadvantage if they'd got there at 3.50.
As ever, out comes the camera and I'm absorbed, detached, watching and shooting from the hip (sometimes literally!).
30 to 40 people of all ages, dotted about like goats on a hill-side, "drinking in" the atmosphere (sometimes literally!). There wasn't any, I mean not like inside a stadium.
There was one Sagres beerstand for each person who was there at 3.30.
But what intrigued me was the flag thing, everyone with nothing better to do than wave, or practise waving for the game. There had to be many more flags than fans then.
I was also struck by the fashion code, every age from youngest to oldest having obviously invested (or, in the case of the baby in mosaic 2 in the arms of the nº 10 grandad, been invested in) plenty to wear the colours - and 2006 version, if you please. No passé 2004 rubbish!). It's the colour coordination that gets me, it's fantastic how the girls will make sure that they are even wearing a bra that is visible and colour-correct - must be green , yellow or red!
And can you see who was there, self-consciously surveying it all, last mosaic, bottom left? Isn't it Pedro Santana lopes? (Well, no, I know it isn't, mas muito parecido!). The third observation was the realtionship of the punters with the screen, beaming live coverage from Gelsenkirschen via SIC. You can see how the people at the front would wave their flags incessantly at that screen. At around 3.45, The Voice started on the loudspeakers, encouraging a hysteria that only half materialised, with the Portuguese equivalent of: "Let me see you wave those flags! Let 'em know in Germany that you're all here and with our boys in spirit! Great!! Now let's sing together: Portugal Olé! Come on the Força! Hino Nacional". Now, you all repeat after me, as one: portu-GAAA-Le!!!" All punctuated with a relentless "Acredito, Acredito!!". 60 fans.
I wondered if the Universidade had ever been graced with such an event. I remembered being told how the Salarist riot police used to lay into the students right here in the 1960s & early 70s and I was thankful to look around and realise that there wasn't one single policman in sight. I knew it could not be like this in Ingerland, not in those parks and public squares reserved for thousands of overweight, shirtless, seriously drunk Ingerland fans, with faces screwed up like old paper bags, faces and hearts full of hate for the enemy, including even members of the audience on the same side as them. Like, who on earth on their right mind would go there to root for Portugal, or any other opponent?
And I went away for an hour thinking soberly and gratefully: "portu-GAAA-Le! You've come a long way!" Well, aside from Fernando Ruas, Valentim Loureiro, Fátima Felgeiras and the Divine King of Madeira. ..Or maybe apesar deles.