The Matador
Spain has many attractive features. The weather, the wine, tapas bars and beaches all spring readily to mind. They also do a great line in attacking midfielders who ensure the ball is just over the line in European Cup semi-finals.
It also has fiestas. Many and varied. Every town and village hosts a week of joyous abandon where they celebrate just for the sake of celebrating. Enjoying life as, for them, it’s the only logical thing to do. It’s something we don’t do enough of in this country.
A few years back a friend and former work colleague from Valencia invited me and two other friends over for a week. On arriving in the city we immediately headed up the coast to Benicassim which was hosting its annual festival (not to be confused with the famous international music festival held there). His family owned a villa right on the beach which was more than handy!
It was a week of mad parties till 8 in the morning as the town and all the surrounding local villages came out to play. A showground hosted live music in large marquees, a host of temporary bars served chilled beer, and stalls sold every part of a pig you could possibly eat. Among the various fairground rides it was traditional to take your life in your hands as everyone competed in pissed-up dodgems at 4 in the morning. Churros y chocolat was the breakfast of choice on the way home.
They also had a bullring. Or more accurately a rickety metal construction with a bit of a grandstand above a circular cage below. The young, the not-so-young and the foolish would congregate behind the bars of the cage, with the idea being to show their bravery by dashing from the bars, skipping past the bull and getting to the safety of the bars on the other 
side of the arena. The foolish would stand in the sawdust ring and goad the bull, before plunging headfirst for safety into a “protected area” in the centre of the ring, which was nothing more than a rudimentary wooden box.
So one night we were happily drinking the cruzcampo, chomping on sticks of chorizo, watching this mad spectacle go on below. Larger and larger bulls appeared as correspondingly more foolhardy (experienced?) locals took their turn, after the young braves had earnt their spurs earlier in the evening with the smaller bulls. Occasionally the metal structure shook violently as a bull just failed to make mincemeat of a festival reveller.
Suddenly this scrawny Spanish kid appeared from our left. He was way above his station against a bull who’d obviously been on the patented Rooney Sayer’s diet. I immediately noticed he was wearing an old bobbled Red shirt - bloody hell it was a Liverpool shirt!
He headed straight for the steroid-pumped bull, performed a pirouette worthy of John Barnes, and just escaped with his life, disappearing to the right and through the caged bars with a horn just failing to pierce his arse.
As he disappeared into the cage I spotted the name and number on the back.
Phil Babb 6.
How, for the love of god, did he have a battered Babb shirt? And more importantly why? This was back in 2000 and he can’t have been much older than 15 or 16, so the lad must have been around 10 when Babb bestrode the Anfield turf like a latter day Brian Boru.
What possessed a young Spanish fan to request a Phil Babb shirt from his parents? And does our former defender have legions of admirers dotted all round the globe? Are there Phil Babb fan clubs in the villas of Buenos Aires and the back streets of Calcutta? Is there an international fan club we can all join? Does the goalpost at the Anny Road End have VIP membership?
I left Spain at the end of the week bewildered and confused. I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered from the incident of Babb and the Bull.