Kylian Mbappé had just come off, Real Madrid were 4-1 up on Sevilla, and the Santiago Bernabéu was singing. “¡Es polaco el que no bote!” rolled around the stands. On the bench, veteran club delegate Chendo leaned across to the France captain and asked, in Spanish, whether he knew what polaco meant.
Mbappé looked blank for a beat, then nodded towards the crowd. “The songs?” he answered. Chendo covered his mouth to the cameras, said something more, and the two of them burst out laughing.
The exchange was aired on Monday night by Movistar+’s weekly review show El Día Después. Within hours it was the most-shared football clip in Spain, five days before Barcelona host Real Madrid at Spotify Camp Nou on Sunday.
A chant with a dictatorship behind it
The joke is only half of what the clip carries. The word Mbappé had never heard is a long-standing anti-Catalan slur.
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In Spanish football circles, “polaco” is used by rival supporters as an insult aimed at Catalans and, by extension, at Barcelona fans. According to the Catalan daily El Nacional, the term was “a common resource for Falangist, military and Spanish nationalist sectors” during the Franco dictatorship, when the Catalan language and identity were suppressed by the regime.
“Es polaco el que no bote” roughly translates as “whoever isn’t bouncing is a Pole.” It is one of several Franco-era chants that have carried over into the modern game. On Sunday, it rang around the Bernabéu again as Real Madrid closed out their win.
Chendo’s long run at the Bernabéu
The man who put the question to Mbappé is a club institution. Miguel Porlán, universally known as Chendo, played his entire career at right-back for Real Madrid across the 1980s and 1990s, winning seven league titles and a European Cup. He stepped straight into the first-team delegate role on retirement in 1998 and has sat on the bench alongside every Madrid head coach since.
Mbappé himself scored twice as Madrid beat Sevilla 4-1, with Arda Güler opening the scoring on 30 minutes before Mbappé struck in the 37th and chipped home a Panenka penalty on 63. Manu Bueno pulled one back for Sevilla in the 80th minute, and Yan Diomande restored the three-goal cushion two minutes later. The France captain was withdrawn in the closing stages, which is when the bench conversation was filmed.
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Barcelona and Real Madrid meet at Spotify Camp Nou on Sunday, 25 October. Kick-off is at 9pm local time, with the game confirmed as the matchday-10 headline fixture and the first Clasico of the 2026-27 La Liga season.
