The British expats who bleed blue and white for Malaga CF

The season has started, and with it, the usual flood of blue and white through the streets of Malaga.

Woven through the thousands of malagueños is a sea of English expats. They come from all over Britain, but over the years they've made the Costa del Sol, and this football club, their own.

That was never more true than for Malaga's recent first game back in La Liga, against Deportivo A Coruña - a fixture eight years in the making and watched by 29,014 malaguistas. Tucked into the same spot they've occupied for years is the smaller, louder group: the Guiri Army.

While the whole stadium jumps and chants, in the top right corner, where the Guiri Army always sit, a giant St George's flag flies with the England shield stitched on one side and Malaga's crest on the other, their name spelt out across it in block letters. Nearby hangs a banner that reads "football unites us". Watching this group stand shoulder to shoulder with the Spaniards around them, singing the same songs, it's hard to argue otherwise.

The man they call their chairman is Dave Redshaw from Manchester, though most of them know him as Reggie. Retired and living in Benalmádena, he's also the only person to have ever written a book on Malaga CF in English.

Speaking to SUR in English at Bar Bodega Hermanos Madrid, a stone's throw from La Rosaleda stadium and unofficial club house of the Guiri Army, he said: "I first came to Spain in 1986 with a group of friends and saw my first game at La Rosaleda three years later,” he says. “I am a Manchester City fan and missed going to see live football. Before I arrived, I didn’t even realise Malaga had a team, as there was no internet then. After that I became hooked and an affinity grew with the team and the city", he explains.

Over time, as more expats along the coast wanted to come to games, he started organising transport. "More people wanted to come, so I thought, 'right, we'll get a bus.' So we got a bus, and then a bus every game."

What began as logistics needed an identity, and the idea was borrowed from cricket's most famous travelling support, 'The Barmy Army'. Nobody in the group was native to Malaga or Spain - they were all foreigners, or ‘guiris’ - so the name wrote itself. "I said let's call ourselves the Guiri Army, to poke fun at ourselves," he says.

Robin Howe, a plastering specialist living in Benalmádena and originally from Derby, is well known among Malaga fans: he went viral after being filmed alone in the stands, singing and dancing his way through an entire promotional video for the club. "I was in the stadium all on me own. Nobody else was there. And I had to sing all the songs on my own," he says while laughing.

He explains he was picked for the video because of the Malaga tattoo on his arm - one that is accompanied by the name ‘Guiri Army’ in huge block letters below it.

A Derby County supporter, Robin puts the group's youthful energy down to the climate. "We're all young out here because we've got the sunshine," he says, and he's stuck with the club through every twist. "We've been down, we've been up, we've been everywhere."

He describes the atmosphere inside La Rosaleda as "electric" and insists nothing back home compares. "Even if we're getting beat 5-0, we're still singing. In the UK, you're getting beat 5-0, everybody walks out. Here, we stay till the end”.

Reggie shares this sentiment, saying one of the main reasons he feels so committed to Malaga CF is the atmosphere during the games. “The atmosphere in the stadium is incredible. I was at a game in England recently and was wishing I was in La Rosaleda, as it did not compare”.

Robin goes even further. He says he was there the night Malaga secured promotion back to La Liga, the result that made this very fixture against Deportivo possible. "Oh my God, it was unbelievable. It was just, people were crying. It was probably like England winning the World Cup," he says.

David Hemmings left Stoke-on-Trent for Spain in 1985, aged 18. Now, weeks from turning 60, he lives in Torremolinos, works in real estate in Mijas Costa, and is married to a Spanish woman, María del Mar, from the El Palo neighbourhood in Malaga. Ask him if he'd ever move back to England, and the answer comes without hesitation: "Never."

David reckons around 50 guiris turn up to matches regularly, with hundreds more still based in the UK who fly out for a handful of games each season. Some arrive almost by accident - a group of young Englishmen from Stoke-on-Trent and Sheffield who have come on holiday arrive at the bar wearing Malaga shirts, having got swept up in the occasion.

Asked why they have come to see the game, one gives a simple answer: "Why not? Why not get involved?" Another differentiates the football culture in Spain from that of back home. "I think it's quite a big thing in Spain, isn't it, really, where you've got to wear your shirt. In England you don't really wear your shirts, to be fair. Not as much."

For David, what keeps the group coming back - win, lose or draw - is a welcome he thinks Malaga's own supporters genuinely value. "We love Malaga CF because we have always been welcomed and accepted by the locals," he says, "and lots of them tell me they are proud that a bunch of foreigners passionately follow their team."

He says he was there, too, for the promotion sealed away at Almeria. "I didn't think we would do it, because we drew zero-zero here, so I thought in Almeria, impossible. It was incredible."

The city turned into one long party that night. And when the outcome goes the other way, he says it makes no difference. "It don't matter, we come every time. We were there in the third division. So it doesn't matter. We come, good or bad, we're always there."

Visiting friends from the UK, he adds, are always stunned by what they find compared with what they see back home: "A lot more passion and non-stop singing". He says that more than a few come out on holiday, catch a match, and get hooked on the football culture for good.

Back home, the group supports a scattered map of English clubs - Manchester City, Derby County, Stoke City - and none of it matters once they're inside La Rosaleda. But ask them who they'd support if Malaga ever met their home team, and the answers don't come easily. Reggie, pressed on Manchester City, doesn't hesitate: "I'd have to sit on the halfway line." Robin, weighing up Derby against Malaga, lands somewhere similarly diplomatic: "I hope it would be a draw." David, asked the same of Stoke, gives an identical verdict: "That's hard. A draw."

But their loyalty to Malaga goes even further than that. “To be honest, I feel more strongly for Malaga than the English national team, and there are more like me”, says Reggie.

Different clubs, different cities, the same answer - proof, if any were needed, of where their commitment now sits.

The Guiri Army isn't only English, and it doesn’t solely consist of guiris. Dani Alcover, born locally and now living in Benalmádena like most of the group, has grown close to members over the years and speaks of them with real warmth. "They're great," he says. "They're people who give, give, give. They don't ask, they give."

Lupi, a DJ who performs at an Irish bar in Benalmádena and who grew up partly in London's Battersea before moving to Malaga at 13, moves easily between English and Spanish with the group. "I've always hung around the guiris," he says. "I've known them for many years because I've been a Malaga member forever".

And it isn't only men who make up the Guiri Army. Kay Maiden, originally from Wolverhampton, comes in a white bucket hat stitched with the Guiri Army flag; she's lived on the coast for 31 years and supported Malaga for 12 of them.

Nearby, Aston Abbot, a Scottish hairdresser who runs a salon in Arroyo de la Miel, in Benalmádena, wears a season-ticket shirt engraved with the names of fellow members. She's still loyal to her home team, St Johnstone, but has followed Malaga faithfully for three years now.

And then there's the story that gives the group its emotional anchor. Just outside the bar stand the remains of a tree around which the group always gathers before matches for drinks. More importantly for them, it is the site where they scattered the ashes of Stuart, a friend and fellow Guiri Army member who passed away.

"We used to tie our flag around that tree - it's where we have always stood pre-match," David says. "That meant Stuart, who passed away, would still be with us at our usual spot." They still gather there before every game. "Every now and then we pour a beer over him and say 'cheers, Stuart'."

It's a small gesture, but it says everything about what this group has become over the years. "We have used that bar for over 20 years," David says. "We became like family with the owners and all the locals that go there."