They won’t fit tens of thousands of people in the stadium, but you can see the sweat on the foreheads of the players. Their strikers are not million-dollar stars, but they are ordinary people who you can meet having a coffee in your neighborhood. They will not have the garlands of first-class soccer, but they will have the same passion, the same feeling and a thousand times more closeness.
This weekend was played the real soccer derby of Barcelona, the derby of derbies. This weekend the Europa-Sant Andreu derby was played.
Surely you have heard of them because the match ended up suspended. In a real great game that was going 2-5 in favor of Sant Andreu when it was suspended, the stand of the Sant Andreu fans (the Desperdicis) gave way and fell, fortunately, without having to lament serious injuries.
Shortly afterwards, some episodes of police charges against the respective supporters closed a bittersweet afternoon due to the suspension of the match, but which confirmed that the match between Unió Esportiva Sant Andreu and Club Esportiu Europa has become a classic of popular soccer, a sort of definitive duel between two historic Barcelona teams that have been forging a sort of neighborhood rivalry that has been boosted by their rise through the ranks of the Spanish leagues.
A short history of popular soccer
Although until recently the Barcelona derbies were relatively unknown, we are talking about two teams with more than a hundred years of history.
Unió Esportiva Sant Andreu, born in 1909, and Club Esportiu Europa (1907), are two historic clubs in their respective neighborhoods, with recognizable colors (red and yellow for Sant Andreu, blue and white for Europa), nicknames (quadribarrats and escapulats, respectively). The two teams have their own loyal hooligans (Desperdicis and Eskapulats) and even their own ideology (both supporters define themselves as leftists), a set of features that make both teams just another entity in their respective neighborhoods.
And although the rivalry has always been latent, the two teams have faced each other more assiduously in recent years. The most important duel, and the one that probably triggered the expectation that this derby now generates, was the one played last year, in which both teams were playing for promotion to 2nd RFEF, the equivalent of the Spanish fourth division. Finally both were promoted, so now they meet again.
Currently, both teams are comfortably installed in Group 3 of the 2nd RFEF, and the derby came at a time when both have a lot at stake. UE Sant Andreu is 4th with 58 points while Europa is second with 63.