Six rows from the front, close enough to the dug-outs to be able to see the tears welling in Pep Guardiola's eyes. Yes, Barcelona had done us proud on an emotional night in Catalonia, as the cules came to say 'gracies' and 'adeu' to Guardiola.
While we joined in with the applause enthusiastically enough, saluting Pep was not the reason we were there, and nor was it why Barcelona had so kindly invited us over from Scotland earlier this month for their last home league match of the season against Espanyol, one which doubled as the popular manager's farewell to the Nou Camp. We had secured two of the best seats in the house in order to pay tribute to another Barcelona legend.
It was a trip that had been in the planning, I suppose, since the time I was informed that, on a museum board devoted to players who had represented Barcelona since the club's formation in 1899, there was, beneath the saltire flag, a mention of someone by the name of John Patullo.
He featured just above Steve Archibald, the rather better-known Scot who had been handed the task of replacing Diego Maradona back in 1984. Archibald, it turned out, had never heard of his Scottish antecedent, and neither had I. Interest piqued by the delicious thought that I might be able to claim to be related to a bona fide Barcelona player, myself and a friend, Gavin Jamieson, began an investigation that led to many dead ends before, finally, George Simpson Dryden Pattullo emerged.
We have in time been able to put some flesh on a story that, from bare statistics alone, was fascinating enough. The Scot scored an incredible 43 goals in 23 matches between 1910 and 1912. We later learned that he was a hero to Paulino Alcantara, one of Barca's greatest players, and then also became a hero in the trenches, earning a Military Cross for his bravery in the First World War while serving with the Tyneside Scottish battalion.
An initial article for The Scotsman, published before we discovered the true identity of 'John Patullo', provoked some interest, but it was only when Spanish newspapers from the early 1900s began to appear online that we were able to find reference to a 'Jorge Patullo'. Putting two and two together, we realised that John had in fact been George; the discrepancy in the spelling of Pattullo was explained by the fact a double t is extremely rare in Spanish.
Back to the census records we went, and we had our man. George S D Pattullo, born in November 1888 in the shadow of Hampden Park, fitted in with the dates. A Eureka moment came when we unearthed his wedding certificate, confirming a ceremony in Palma in 1935, the same time as the Spanish papers had reported that "Patullo" had returned to Spain as a trainer with Club Baleares in Majorca.
It was the final proof we needed. Finally we could definitely place him in a location he was reported to have been in. RIP John Patullo. Long live Jorge.
It's been fun putting the pieces of the jigsaw together, although it was saddening to learn that the marriage between George and Margrethe produced no children and was dissolved just a few years later. The footballer - who I also discovered had been a cousin of my great grandfather - died a lonely death in Putney, in 1953, at the age of 64.
Each new strand to the story was relayed to Barcelona. While always polite, it was possible to detect some indifference, perhaps understandably. After all, why linger over the past, and over a mistake about the identity of an old footballer from a long time ago, when the present is proving so damn thrilling? But the more we discovered, the more enthusiastic became the responses to our emails, culminating in an article written by Manel Tomas, the current head archivist at Barcelona, in the club's magazine, which goes out to their 180,000 members, and where the legend was re-awakened. Pattullo, Tomas contended, was the finest British player to have played for Barcelona. Sorry Stevie, sorry Gary.
And so, while everyone else was going crazy for Pep, Gavin and I - guests of the club for the game against Espanyol 100 years after Jorge had scored a double against Barca's city rivals in a thrilling Pyrenees Cup victory - clinked our glasses of complementary Cava together, and toasted a Scottish hero of old.
Alan Pattullo is a sportswriter at The Scotsman newspaper. You can follow him on twitter @alan_pattullo
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