Meet the most irritating man in Spanish football
Thursday 03 April 2008 12:19
Real Madrid president Ramón Calderón has done some bloody stupid things and wasted a bloody lot of money on a bloody lot of rubbish.
Let's not produce a list because we could be here all day what with rickety old planes, dreadful signings, broken promises and ridiculous remarks, not to mention some pretty serious allegations of dodginess.
But the stupidest bloody thing he has done all year was sign Arturo bloody Sisó.
Arturo Sisó is a man with glasses and a simpleton's grin so simple you expect to see him in dungarees, a checked shirt and a straw hat, with a great long piece of grass hanging from his gob. And he gets paid €50,000 a year -- plus a handsome match fee -- to read out a few names. Badly.
You see, Calderón decided that he was bored with the bloke who was stadium announcer at the Santiago Bernabéu because all he did was, well, read the teams out (and possibly because he was someone else's mate). It was time, he decided, to jazz it all up a bit. So he signed Sisó. To colossal, exaggerated fanfare.
Sisó was on the telly, Sisó was on the radio and Sisó was in the papers. Sisó was, as the Spanish phrase goes, even in your soup. The new PA announcer was treated like the latest galáctico, the star turn, the Bernabéu ringleader.
Bernabéu ring-piece, more like.
Now, Sisó is no radio broadcaster, he has no cinema trailer voice. Oh no. Instead he has the kind of irritating voice that cuts through you and frays at your nerves like a million scraggy fingernails down a Bernabeu-sized blackboard.
But that's not the problem. The problem is the sheer bloody inanity of what he says, the gut-wrenching awfulness of the way he does his job.
The way he shouts "No. 1, Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiker......" and waits for the crowd to shout "Casillas" only to hear 80,000 people mutter, "Yeah, mate, whatever... Tit."
The way he thrashes out rubbish ’80s Euro Pop before, after and -- La Liga Loca kids you not, although it wishes it did -- during the games, with a collection that seems to be made up entirely of Eye of The Tiger and The Final sodding Countdown.
The way he harangues the crowd, acting like Madrid is some sort of Master Race.
The way he doesn't just announce the goalscorers but tries to tell you about the goal: "The Beast made it and Raúuuuuul finished it!" Thanks. For. That.
He's like freaky frickin hybrid of Smashy and Nicey, a spotty holiday camp leader, a nuclear-tanned sweat-pouring, bile-spitting TV evangelist and Adolf Hitler – yet without the charisma of any of them and armed with a colossal wooden spoon and enough amps to completely drown out an entire stadium.
In case you haven't noticed, he drives La Liga Loca bloody mad. La Liga Loca and all the Madrid players, who have already complained about him. La Liga Loca and anyone with an ounce of decency or decorum, anyone with a brain in their skull and a pair of ears on the side of their head. Which is everyone in the stadium. Except Calderón, it seems.
It's the way he roars through the Madrid line-up and then lists the other team like an afterthought, reading their names as if he's more preoccupied with studying the bogey he's just clawed out of his nose.
Of course they are an afterthought, but Madrid have always banged on about being a gentleman of a club (as opposed to a gentleman's club which is something quite different, but probably closer to the truth), showing elegance and class, respect for opponents. With Sisó at the mic, that's even more of a whopping big fat porky than ever before.
He announces Raúl as "El Gran Capitán, el siete de España" (The Great Captain, Spain’s No.7). Er, Arturo, Raúl is not Spain's No.7, David Villa is. Raúl hasn't played for Spain since the World Cup and isn't going to either. Sisó knows that of course. But he's clever, see. He’s fuelling the crusade against national team boss Luis Aragonés, trying to force him to pick Raúl. Brilliant.
Whenever he steps into his booth, Sisó provokes violence. Not because of the Raúl thing -- although God knows it's become an emotive enough issue that it wouldn’t surprise anyone if there was some sort of mass Raul-inspired punch-up at some stage with Luis Aragonés scratching himself and muttering incoherently at the centre of it -- but because every single time Sisó opens his mouth, flicks a switch, or takes a breath, you want to grab a huge frying pan and clobber him repeatedly round the face, screaming: "Will you bloody well shut up, for Christ's sake, you absolute tosspot?!" You want to get that mic and ram it up his nostrils, then start whacking at the end with a cricket bat.
Gonzalo Higuaín certainly does. Last weekend, poor Higuaín, the Real Madrid striker -- that's the Real Madrid striker -- was having a terrible game, missing chances left, right and centre. The fans were getting on his back. They started to whistle him and boo him. They were shouting things at him. Things like "You’re rubbish, you are". Then he scored. A vital goal. A good goal.
So how did Sisó react? Did he remind the crowd that Higuaín had scored a great goal? Did he point out that it was his fourth of the season (more than those other strikers Saviola, Soldado or Baptista)? Did he wax lyrical about the way he dashed in and dived to make connection? Did he just name the scorer and maybe the minute like any stadium announcer would do?
Of course not – and the final option was never an option. He screamed at the top of his voice, over some God-awful track or other: "Higuaín scores... at long last!"
At long last? After you with the cricket bat, Gonzalo.
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About Tim Stannard and Simon Talbot
When he isn't fighting the evil forces of flamenco or attracting libel actions for La Liga Loca,
Tim Stannard is building his media empire in Madrid. As well as contributing to Football365 and doing odd jobs elsewhere, Tim also works in the glamorous world of television as a producer, script writer, news editor, coffee boy and stand-in fluffer.
Simon Talbot? Well, he's a man of mystery.