Alejandro Campano: wants to meet Jean Claude Van Damme
Of all the people in all the world, who would you most like to meet? Nelson Mandela perhaps, or Diego Maradona? Or maybe, like Real Mallorca midfielder Alejandro Campano, you'd opt for a tête-à-tête with The Muscles From Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme - star of such cinematic masterpieces as Twin Towers and Timecop. Tragic but true: a questionnaire in Spain's leading football magazine, Don Balón, revealed that Van Damme is Campano's favourite man.
Not a lot has been seen of Jean-Claude or Campano lately, but on Saturday night he was back on Telemadrid's screens. Campano, that is, not Van Damme (the post-football "Megahit" was, alas, Kickboxer III).
Relegation-threatened Mallorca were taking on top-of-the-table Valencia in the Son Moix and Campano it was who, ahem, struck the first blow with a superb cross for Albert Luque to head the home side into the lead just before half time.
For the Wham Bam Van Damme fan joy was short-lived, however - not only did Ruben Baraja head an equaliser fifteen minutes into the second half, but to add insult to injury Cameroonian team-mate Samuel Eto'o stole the Jean-Claude Award from right under his nose with a stirring display of camera-captured, mindless violence on the final whistle.
First Eto'o got into a "discussion" with Valencia full-back Curro Torres, then he abused Valencia full-back Curro Torres, then he punched Valencia full-back Curro Torres. Still not content, Eto'o then got himself involved with Miguel Ángulo, who had come to "keep the peace" - though one of those "keep the peaces", it has to be said, seemed to involve a sneaky dig in the ribs.
"Ángulo punched me in the back", Eto'o claimed afterwards. "If he had any ********, he'd come and have a go to my face". Just like Samuel himself would have done, as he demonstrated with his next piece of blockbuster action. While Eto'o was being held back in true Scrappy Doo fashion - "lemmeadim, lemmeadim" - Angulo calmly walked away to give a radio interview, clearly believing that the fighting was all over. It wasn't. Eto'o broke free thanks to that classic schoolboy trick - the one that consists of going "OK, OK, I've calmed down now, it's all right" before sprinting like mad - raced over to Angulo and nutted him.
As if that wasn't bad enough, while the crowd of players and officials closed in and Eto'o was held back for a second time, he somehow succeeded in thrusting his fingers into the eyeballs of peace-making teammate, ex-Mighty Oviedo man Roberto "El Chino" Losada. Quite an achievement seeing as Losada has the kind of eyes so beloved of Prince Philip. Big targets, they are not - Jean-Claude would be proud.
Amazingly, referee Rafael Ramírez Domínguez didn't see the incident, or at least didn't include it his report. Mind you, at the time he was disappearing off the pitch along the normal referees' route - under cover of riot policemen's shields.
As Ramírez Domínguez's report says nothing about Eto'o, any suspension for the Cameroon striker now depends on Spain's infamously inconsistent "video-committee" and Mallorca will be desperately hoping that Eto'o gets away with a slap on the wrist (to which, on this form, he'd probably respond with a crunching kick in the teeth). Just one point off the relegation zone, they can ill-afford to lose their best striker.
Things tighten at the top and bottom
But while the fighting stole the headlines, Mallorca and Valencia's draw also had vital consequences of a purely footballing nature, having helped tighten things up at both the top and the bottom.
Valencia's draw, coupled with a 3-1 victory for Deportivo against Espanyol and Real Madrid's timid 3-1 defeat against a battling Osasuna - a defeat which prompted Marca columnist Julián Ruiz to claim "it was like a new film: '****ting Yourself With Wolves' " - means that just two points now separate the three clubs, with four games to go. And those four games include Depor's visit to Valencia next week and Madrid's trip to the Riazor on the final day of the season.
Things are just as tense at the other end, where six points separate the bottom nine, all of whom picked up at least a point this weekend. There were vital 2-1 victories for Real Sociedad against Málaga, Tenerife against Betis, and Villarreal against Celta, while Rayo Vallecano also won - 1-0 against Valladolid - despite keeper Imanol Etxeberria, who performed with all the composure of a teenager in an off-licence.
As usual, though, the football was only half the story down in Vallecas. Sick of the "persecution that Rayo suffer at the hands of referees", president Toothy Teresa Rivero threatened to leave the club if they went down, while fans prepared a weekend protest which included banners, chants, and new road signs welcoming people to "Vallecas: The home of refereeing abuses".
Oh, and then there was the black socks: instead of the typical Spanish pañolada protest, where fans wave white hankies, Rayo's supporters decided that socks were more appropriate. The reason? Because "something smells in Vallecas". And to think that this column thought the nasty niff was coming from Toothy Teresa's stable.
