A baking hot afternoon in the Spanish capital, and the Plaza Mayor is a rhapsody in blue: the royal blue of Leicester City's travelling support, and the dull dark blue of the Spanish police.
Somebody smashes a bottle, and everybody cheers. A chant of Ten German Bombers goes up. A black street seller appears and is serenaded with "Ahmed Musa".
A few hours later, with Leicester 1-0 down against Atletico Madrid, Jamie Vardy is chasing the
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Vardy is convinced it was a corner. He runs towards the Swedish assistant referee, screaming in outrage, arms thrashing and flailing as if trying to fend off a swarm of bees. Luis simply jogs away with the imperturbable placidity of a man who knows he got the last touch.
Two snapshots of Leicester's adventure in Madrid: both, in their own way, telling. Of course, they obscure as much as they reveal. The Leicester fans singing "Spanish, Gibraltar is ours", or robbing a train bar, were but a tiny fraction of the peaceful thousands who came to watch a football game and maybe sample a little tapas.
It is tempting, then, to see all this something of a sideshow, part of the
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As we saw during Euro 2016 in France, and at numerous international tournaments previously, there is a certain strand of English football tourist that sees these trips as a sort of grotesque rite of passage, a gap year for morons.
But in a sense, the comparison is not as trite as it seems. Just as the blue-clad hordes descending on Madrid see themselves as somehow England's representatives abroad, some corner of a foreign square that will be forever England, Leicester have somehow taken on the mantle of England's club: the last Premier League team standing in the Champions League, and even after the pummelling they took here, still standing, still proud.
Leicester are perhaps the Premier League's most English club. Even their Danish goalkeeper has a Manc accent. They may have a Japanese striker, an Algerian winger and a Thai owner, but this is a team that in its culture and footballing principles crystallises
Carlos Boozer Womens Jersey the way England likes to imagine itself: loud and passionate, confrontational and concussive, fast and furious and four-four-f***ing-two.
This is a club whose leading striker's tonic of choice is Skittles and vodka, and where a title-winning manager was essentially deposed for taking away the players' chicken burgers and potato wedges, as revealed by a still-traumatised Danny Simpson in a newspaper interview at the weekend.
All this feeds into the Leicester legend: the cheeky underdogs. This season, the show has gone on the road. If they were a fan, they would be a guy standing shirtless in a continental square singing about how Gibraltar is ours.
And yet, the blue wall did not fall. In the face of Atletico's repeated baton charges, Leicester stood firm. So while continental brain trumped English brawn on the night, it is easy to see how Leicester might have been weirdly
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They endured. They withstood. And they have come too far to let a single goal and a dodgy foreign referee kill their buzz.
Uncomplicated, uncompromising and unashamedly English, this is a team who are still just about capable of leaving a trail of destruction in their wake.
