Wasn’t it thrilling on Saturday at the Emirates Stadium in London as Arsenal beat Manchester United 2-1, people just couldn’t take their eyes of it, no not the game, the adverts for Canary Islands tourism. It was a corker of a game, but if you could bear to take your eyes off the action, you may have noticed the logo (below) on the pitchside hoardings. This was just part of a three pronged promotion at European football stadiums, to encourage more holiday makers to come to the 7 Canary Islands.

It’s a very innovative and, in my humble football obsessed opinion, good idea, that will also take in the Madrid derby at the Bernabeu Stadium on March 8th 2009 when Real Madrid play Athletico Madrid and will close with a game, yet to be decided, at the Allianz Stadium home of Bayern Munich, befire the end of this season.

The promotion is called “Los Tres Estadios de la Felicidad” (the 3 stadiums of happiness) and each game will be at the centre of a 14 day promotion at the ground. The total cost of the promotion is 250,000 euros, that sounds a lot but just look at the Arsenal game, the crowd was 60,000 and after the game has been relayed to 202 countries, it will reach a potential 500 million people, that’s the power of football.

There was also a full page advert for the Canaries in the Arsenal match programme and a big publicity bash after the game. There were even a few celebs on hand, Bono was there (that’s the rock star, not the multi use Canarian bus ticket) presumably he is a Man United fan, they have a big Irish following.

Back in the real world of football, where money is hard to come by and wins even harder, CD Tenerife slipped back to their usual away form with a 2-1 loss at Levante. It’s gonna be an early start for us CDT fans in 2 weeks for the derby game in Gran Canaria, Canal Plus have decided to show the Las Palmas v CD Tenerife game live on Sunday (November 23) morning at 11am. The Armada Sur will be bright tailed and bushy eyed in their blue and white jim jams, and ready to join the other 1,500 fans at the Santa Cruz ferry port for the traditional pre journey drinkies, singing practice and abuse of Pio effigies ( the victim in the photo met a gruesome end ). The form book always goes out of the window for these games and we must be owed a win after last years sickening equaliser in generous amounts of injury time. The clock is ticking, in the meantime lets hope for a home win next Sunday when Real Sociedad visit Santa Cruz.