“We’ll always have Paris.”

But will we always have Arrecife?

If you’ve seen the movie “Casablanca,” you know that haunting phrase about Paris.

Aficionados of that film also can tell you that Humphrey Bogart never said, “Play it again, Sam.”

What Bogart’s character, Rick Blaine, actually said to Sam the piano player was this: “You played it for her, you can play it for me.”

Slipping now from movies to sports, we’ll certainly always have Paris. We might even have Casablanca.

But you need to be something of a soccer nut to know that a bit of Spanish football history occurred just a little more than a hundred miles from Morocco — site of that fictional but famous Rick’s Café.

And that’s how we might always have Arrecife.

See, you can’t drive to our island destination — it’s mostly all ocean – but it seemed to be worth the trip.

So for the sake of a magazine story, I went looking for some witnesses to some heady days from the 1990s – in a place called Santa Cruz.

I MEAN, what’s not to like about searching for a few English-speaking fans at a soccer match in the Canary Islands?

No, not the Brits and Germans who crowd into bars down by the beach to watch their favorite teams from back home.

I was hunting for locals who had been around to see Club Deportivo Tenerife enjoy some moments of glory – which in their case meant being promoted to the Spanish top division.

Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez, which is located in Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, is isolated from the rest of La Liga.

The Canary Islands are legally and culturally part of Spain — but they rest quietly in the sunshine of the north Atlantic off the coast of Morocco.

In the United States, we’d gladly and casually fly 1,400 miles (the distance from Madrid to Santa Cruz on Tenerife) to watch our favorite team play a big game — but in La Liga, it’s a considerable chore.

You’re talking about more than pocket change to fly out into the ocean, perhaps then needing a boat ride between islands and finally a taxi to the stadium.

That last part is easy, even though there is an unusual dialect in the Canaries.

The word “futbol” translates almost anywhere on the planet — except maybe but here in the States, where a driver might guess you’re hunting for the Auburn-Alabama game.

The Canary Islands, these eight dots in the ocean that are far closer to Casablanca than they are to anywhere on the Spanish mainland, rarely have any sporting significance.

BUT JUST a few seasons ago, CD Tenerife (in the midst of a 10-year run in the La Liga first division) knocked off Real Madrid on the final day of the schedule, handing the title to Barcelona.

A year later, Tenerife did it to Real again, and once more on the final day – leading to anyone from the Canaries often drinking free in Barca saloons.

Me?

I had been staying on the island of Lanzarote (I used to know a stadium chant, “We’re the best looking, but we can’t beat anybody,” in the Canary dialect), but now I wanted to interview some genuine fans — whose teams DID know how to win.

Occasionally, at least.

I wanted to find people who had slugged down cerveza at the Heliodoro on Tenerife, and then shouted curses at Cristiano Ronaldo.

The few who spoke some English explained, in a mixture of languages I could barely understand, that they never shouted insults at Messi – he’s a genius, they said – but Ronaldo was fair game because…

Well, the best translation I’ve gotten so far seems to be that Ronaldo “struts like a puta (prostitute),” and thus he needs to be insulted by these hard-working islanders.

Ironically, most La Liga fans were sad to see Ronaldo leave for Juventus in Italy, because he was such a magnificent target for their whistles, boos and wonderfully inventive insults.

EVENTUALLY, I did find some folks for my story — including some who were willing to write it themselves.

But I’m bringing up this trek today because I’m thinking about travel.

And by the way, my flight from London to Arrecife (the only major community on Lanzarote) was physically painful.

I’m just about 6 feet tall, with legs appropriate for that height. The seats on Bill and Bob’s Zoom-Zoom Airline were crammed so close together that your only two options for the five-hour flight were to stand the entire time, or learn a yoga pose that allows you to put your legs in your pockets.

Anyway…

Arrecife.

I’d been warned that rental cars in the Canaries were famously unreliable (it’s the same in Hawaii, by the way, just so you know).

The only other way to reach my rental condo was by taxi — if that’s what you call a guy named Carlos who just pulls up, jumps out and begins loading your bags in a 1955 Chevy.

I asked Carlos if he spoke English, and he said, “Si, si!”

Fine.

Good.

I TOLD him where we were going, and asked if we could stop briefly so I could buy a newspaper.

“Si, si,” Carlos said, skidding to a stop in front of a convenience store — and barely missing a lady who had to be 105.

Carlos was gone maybe one minute, and then he returned, grinning.

He handed me the largest avocado I’ve ever seen (and no newspaper), shouting, “Si, si!”

In fact, the only time Carlos spoke any English at all was when we reached the condo and he toted up the fare — and yes, he charged me for the avocado.

The next day I went back and got a rental car.

It was as bad as advertised, but I then had the risk of little old ladies and avocado supplies in my own hands.

And for the record, I don’t even like avocados — until they’ve somehow turned themselves into guacamole.

Also for the record, I am not meaning to insult taxi drivers in the Canaries, or Spain, or anywhere specific.

I once grabbed a cab in the heart of Manhattan, intending to reach LaGuardia Airport.

THERE WERE three of us riding, and after less than five minutes, this very angry cabbie pulled over, let us see the pistol sitting on the front seat and asked for “donations” for the revolution.

I think he mentioned a specific African country, but the revolution could have been in Montana, for all we cared.

We each tossed in $20 for the cause, no doubt helping some innocent farm worker get murdered as he slept, but hey…

I seriously doubted this guy was fighting for any cause. He just looked mean, it was still dark outside, and he used the optics of the situation to scam us.

But what the hell?

We had to reach Buffalo in time for kickoff.

I think the 20 bucks went on my expense account as breakfast with an extra pot of coffee.

Hell, in Manhattan it might have been just for breakfast.

Or only the coffee.

MEANWHILE, back on the Canary Islands…

One point I’m hoping to make here is that when you step into an automobile driven by a total stranger, the result is on you.

If the guy is having a psychotic break, bad news — but YOU got in the car.

I’ll tell you a few more fun taxi stories one day, but for the moment, I was rushing a bit to reach the Estadio Heliodoro Rodriguez Lopez, so I told the driver in Tenerife…

“Futbol. I came from Lanzarote to see the futbol today.”

“Ah, si,” he said, and after a 20-minute that I’m sure was in circles, we wound up at a marina.

A large cruise boat was boarding, and the sign said: “Arrecife.”

The driver was smiling.

“Futbol on Lanzarote,” he said, having obviously missed my message. “Not so good, but better than America.”

Swell.

It turned out even FC Lanzarote were out of town, and so I dropped down yet another division to watch UD Union Sur Yaiza.

And hey, the No. 60 bus takes you straight from the airport to the Yaiza football ground.

The lesson here is simple…

Eventually, you always get where you’re going.

It’s just that, sometimes, it wasn’t where you had in mind.

But hey…

You’ll always have Yaiza.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball each Tuesday.

Steve’s various tales from several decades in sports — “Moments, Memories and Madness” — run on Sundays.