4 years is a LONG time.

In a football game of 120 minutes, 116 minutes is a long time to wait for a goal.

So were we happy!

I had never sat with an open-air public, in front of a giant screen, to watch a Fifa World Cup Final before yesterday, and although I had tried to get as close to a Spanish bar as the Mediterranean Sea and the surrounding salt flats would allow – without actually wading across the border – this former Roman port would have to do.

I was happily surprised that the local officials had laid on the screen so that my friends and I could buy a couple of bottles of local wine, chill it in the campsite fridge, send the kids off on their bikes to get the pizzas and boil up a ton of rice for a rice salad.

About three hundred people had the same idea and wandered down with us to the square in the old town.

Back home folk were wandering up to the old goat shed where the plan for the evening was to turn off the match commentary and allow Brenlo, Fred and Flo to provide a live and improvised musical accompaniment, much in the style of the old silent movies.

I wonder how it went?

In front of the giant screen there was a summer’s eve, holiday atmosphere – most of us had been on the beach all afternoon – and consequently there were a few Dutch holiday makers among us; impeccably attired in orange and face paint (some subtle, some not).

However, the crowd was solidly pro Spanish – many were blood related to those on the other side of the border and either way we were closer to Barcelona than Paris. You could here it in the voices; see it in the eyes and the red and yellow flags waving in the sea breeze gave it away a little.

There was only one Vuvuzela in evidence – a young boy had found one somewhere and was busting his lungs.

He was sitting behind me.

At half time we all stood up to stretch legs and backs, Krissie went to the shop to buy chocolate and two musicians took to the small stage that no one had really noticed before now.

An unenviable gig if you ask me – “ok boys, you have to start playing as soon as the adverts start and you have to finish exactly 15 minutes later, it’s got to be lively enough to keep everyone in the square interested, remember that’s grandmas, grandkids AND Chris, but not lively enough to stop Krissie going off to buy chocolate. Oh and there will be a small child blowing a Vuvuzella throughout your set.”

They did a brilliant, albeit partisan, job – kicking in with an up-tempo Viva Espana that had everyone, even the Dutch, joining in the chorus.

I got hoarse, but I drowned the Vuvuzela!

The singer and guitar player of the duo then did a passionate, spine tingling flamenco wail thing – again brilliant – and then they finished with that one, you know the one that goes Maria, Maria, Maria.

We just had time to get a cold can of beer and peep peep, second half!

We were a great crowd, we Oled, we cheered in anticipation, we gasped when the Dutch almost scored and we even applauded Iniesta’s nutmeg (we were aficionados you see) but then as the night settled around us our faces held the same tension as those watching in Soccer City Johannesburg.

We were ready to party; would we get the chance?

Someone joined the crowd and sat next to me, a young lad – 15 years old, a stranger.

He looked at the screen and then asked me “What did the Octopus say?”

I looked at him.

“Spain”, I replied.

Aficionados.

In a football game of 120 minutes, 116 minutes is a long time to wait for a goal.

But who cares!