El Castellón, in the second episode of 'Illustrated Hooligans'

The infra football It is the Castellón of Enrique Ballester, Sergio Cortina's Oviedo (another of the stories that make up the KO Books collection), your city team, your neighborhood team, your town team. Locate the infra football at a game it's as easy as smelling a fritanga sandwich, enjoying the metallic taste of a beer can, whispering cute threats, displaying tacos or sharpening elbows.

Journalist Enrique Ballester wrote in 2014 ‘Infraf Fútbol’, “a little book that tries to be honest, teaches how to assume defeat as part of life -one of the lessons of the infra football– in a society that constantly bombards us with messages of mandatory success, mandatory happiness. The infra football It teaches you that losing is common and that being sad for your team is also natural ”, he argues to AS. Now, with the adaptation to the sound format, Enrique Ballester accompanies Lucia Taboada, director and presenter of podcast Illustrated Hooligans, in the second installment, released this Monday.

Infrafootball as a concept

For Enrique, “Infra football, as a concept, it was coined by the first, if I'm not mistaken, Sergio Cortina, also a columnist in AS and author of the ‘illustrated hooligan’ from Oviedo. Infra football It is the football that is below the most media radar, in the most modest categories. Sergio met him with Oviedo in the Third Division; not as many years as I was with Castellón, but he was there. On the one hand, it is that lower division football, and on the other, what is around or below what is purely the game: the conversations with your friends, the trips away from home. The infra football teaches us to laugh at our miseries, not to lose hope despite this, that there is always a flame of illusion in football”.

During the Eurocup, the columnist from Castellón transmitted –together with Javier Aznar, columnist in AS- this illusion for football in the podcast of AS Audio and Podium Podcast ‘The last of the list’. On this occasion, Lucía Taboada goes to Castellón to discover with Ballester “What does a fan feel like injecting‘ Infra-football ’into the blood every weekend, why does a fan pay like this to suffering and to screw up life a bit”, two questions that appear at the beginning of the second episode of this documentary serial co-produced by KO Productions, Podium podcast and AS Audio.

Juan Bautista Planelles, absolute myth

There is no romanticism without legends that transcend reality, and in Castellón one name stands out: Juan Bautista Planelles, the absolute myth for Enrique Ballester and another of the voices that can be heard in this episode of Illustrated Hooligans. The reasons to be an idol in the city are not crumbs: to go up twice to the First Division with Castellón, to lead the team to the Final (only one) of the Copa del Rey, to be international with the National Team.

The above is inside the field, but outside “He is someone who always faced what he considered injustices or hierarchies that he did not assume as fair, and he did not care about mortgaging part of his career., especially outside Castellón. He was at Real Madrid, at Valencia, at Zaragoza. Apart from serious injuries that slowed his projection a bit, he had a very special character; He was talented, rebellious, but well liked by the people. He was always more loved by the public than by the boxes, I have the impression. Having been able to meet him as a soccer columnist, he was very particular, very intelligent. And something that speaks a lot about his character is that, after football, he studied law and is an expert in the field. He is a person with many edges and very interesting ”, says Enrique.

Spending your life in Castalia

Defending the love of football is as complex as it is absurd. Just because is enough. However, in conversation for AS, Enrique Ballester prefers to give compelling reasons to defend his affection for the Castalia Stadium: “You go from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to youth, to adulthood; you stop going with your parents to go with your friends, then you go with your girlfriend, then you go with everyone; then it becomes your profession and you go to the press desks, and then you go back to the stands and go back to your children. It's like a witness to your whole life, in which sometimes you come and go and there is a certain chaos, but there is always Castalia's cosmos in its own way, it is always there ”.

A real field, with a genuine air, embedded in the neighborhood; a hot tub, authentic and pure. Castalia is the house of Castellón, the identity of a hobby (demonstrating its love for the club, beat the historical record of subscribers in Third) that -like all, although with its peculiarities- suffers, feels and laughs despite having gone through real hells (“the declines, the defaults to the players, almost the disappearance of the club, a quite toxic and cainite environment, a lot of institutional fuss that made the routine a heavy thing”).

The stamp AS Audio appears in one of the sound works in Spanish that best deals with this sport, the memories that every fan has around a ball and the number of stories that have emerged with football. For follow all the news of this serial and all the podcasts of the sound space of Diario AS, the new profiles on social networks are now available: @AsAudio on Twitter and @DiarioAsAudio on Instagram and Facebook.

Subscribe and listen to Illustrated Hooligans on the Podium Podcast and Diario AS web pages and apps, and on other audio platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts).