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Argentinos Juniors 1 Velez Sarsfield 0
This was a tense game, a very tense game against tough opposition. The winning goal came six minutes from the end, a scrambled, confusing own goal by Velez defender, Marco Torsiglieri. Despite the home side’s dominance, their inability to tuck away their chances meant that it could have gone either way. The tension showed on the faces of the crowd and in the ear-splitting noise at the end as the relief at a much-needed win was expressed in exuberant rejoicing.
 Sunday night therapy But is all this tension good for us? Is it necessary? I don’t know about the history of the Velez number 5, whether he was an ex-Argentinos player who somehow betrayed his former club or carried out a particularly nasty tackle in a game in 2005. Memories are long and grudges are rarely forgotten. But he took a tremendous amount of abuse every time he had the ball and whenever he came close to the touchline, some fans would hurl themselves at the fence that keeps us caged in and expertly lob balls of phlegm in his direction.
Referees everywhere take constant abuse, it’s in the job description. I thought Saul Laverni had a good match, authoritative without getting in the way of a game that always threatened to boil over. Yet he must have been aware of the constant, none-too-kind references to his mother’s, his sister’s and, rather unnecessarily I thought, his grandmother’s private parts.
However well he performs, he’s going to go home thinking: “No-one loves me.” It must get to you, eventually. There’s no doubt in my mind that a Sunday night game, and especially a Sunday night victory, is hugely therapeutic. If you’ve spent all week driving through Buenos Aires traffic or selling kitchen worktops or dealing with complaints from cable television customers then you probably save all that pent up fury for Sunday night to spew in the direction of the referee or that opposing number 5.
 Laverni - leave his grandmother alone. No city in the world is better prepared than Buenos Aires to deal with its psychological problems. It’s got more therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and other assorted brain specialists per head of population than any other city in the world, including New York.
There’s a neighbourhood that’s unofficially been dubbed Villa Freud since so many of the above mentioned specialists work there. It’s got bookshops that deal in the art, newspaper kiosks display magazines on the subject and there are ample coffee shops with sumptuous couches where customers can continue, after their session with their shrink, to analyse over a latte.
I’m from a land where the generally held view is that only ‘nutters’ need therapy and a good cup of tea will solve most problems. “Just pull your socks up and stop feeling sorry for yourself,” is considered sound advice if you’ve just discovered in the space of a day that your girlfriend’s left you for a female work colleague and your team has put your favourite striker up for sale.
In Buenos Aires, there is no stigma attached to regular visits to a therapist. “Sorry, can’t join you for coffee since I’ve got an appointment with my therapist,” is no more embarrassing than saying: “I’m afraid I’ve got the dentist at four o’clock.” My initial reaction was: “But there’s nothing wrong with you. You seem perfectly sane to me.”
And the response was: “That’s because I see a therapist.” It starts from an early age. Trouble at school is not met with 100 lines, detention or a smack over the knuckles with a ruler. Oh no! There are therapists who talk to parents about parenting and therapists who talk to children about who knows what since the sessions are confidential.
 Freud or football? There are even therapists who deal with people who are addicted to therapy. I understand the attraction. For a mere 150pesos you can ramble incoherently, divulge your intricate theories on the subject that fascinates us all more than any other – ourselves.
“Everybody hates me.”
“I’m sure that’s not true. Why do you say that?”
“Well, just yesterday I had twenty thousand people spitting at me and saying horribly unpleasant things about my mother’s and my sister’s private parts. Someone was even rude about my grandmother.”
“I’m sure you’re imagining things. Now let’s talk about your childhood. What were your ambitions? Football referee? Hold on a minute. It was you, wasn’t it? Last night at the Velez game? That was never a free-kick! What are you, blind as well as stupid?! Your grandmother’s a whore and … get out of here, and pay my receptionist on your way out.”
One of the most pleasant afternoons I ever spent in Buenos Aires was at the Jose T Borda psychiatric hospital. The patients run their own radio station, Radio Colifata, broadcast to the neighbourhood and beyond. Colifata is the local slang, or lunfardo, for ‘loveable fool.’
They sing and recite poetry, talk politics and discuss their condition. The show attracts an audience of family and friends of the patients as well as medical experts from around the world interested in this voice which is available to people who are so often pushed out of sight and not listened to.
The French singer, Manu Chao, has recorded at the hospital, incorporating the musings and music of some of the patients into an album full of wit and intelligence.
It’s not all easy listening. While I was there, one patient told me repeatedly that he was going on a trip to Uruguay. The nurses gently removed him. Then the show was interrupted when a man in pyjamas lay down in the middle of the patio where the makeshift studio had been set up and ate a banana.
Argentines, with their recent history of military terror and economic madness, have plenty to be disturbed about – as well as the routine problems that the rest of the world also endures, like getting to work, wayward children, obnoxious bosses and centre-forwards that can’t seem to put the ball in the net.
The Argentine mental health system is private and not cheap so is pretty much only available to the affluent middle classes. But thanks to referees who can take a bit of abuse, everyone else has got football.
Estudiantes 0 Argentinos Juniors 1
There’s been a full programme of mid-week games which have produced bundles of goals, including the 4-4 draw between Velez Sarsfield and Boca Juniors. And this as the national team finally played the way they should be playing and outclassed Germany on their own soil in an impressive pre-World Cup friendly.
 Veron - his eye on the ball. The Estudiantes playmaker, Juan Sebastian Veron, was on duty for Argentina while the man that ticks at the heart of Argentinos Juniors, Nestor Ortigoza, was with the Paraguay squad. Yet the two teams still produced a throbbing thriller of a game, Jose Luis Calderon netting the much needed winner for the visitors. And this against the South American champions, no less.
So how do they do it? Quality football, both home and away, simultaneously, at the same time? Well, strength in depth is one reason. The other is that they’re not shagging one another’s wives and girlfriends. And even if they were, it wouldn’t be plastered all over the local media. Sex in Argentina is simply not news and coverage of the John Terry-Wayne Bridge affair has been light since they don’t really get what all the fuss is about.
Sex happens in Argentina and it happens in Argentine football. We know that since Carlos and Mrs Tevez have just had a baby.
In this macho society, it’s still a sign of prowess to sleep with many women, even if you are married. It was long a tradition, for those who could afford it, to keep a second and even a third family. There was the official family then the mistress, with the offspring of that relationship kept in a discreet apartment a respectable distance away. Sometimes the wife knew, sometimes she only found out when the mistress turned up at the husband’s funeral, demanding her share of the spoils.
The other reason I know that sex happens in Argentina is because of the vast number of lingerie shops – probably more per head of population than Viagra bottles in —— —-’s bathroom cabinet. (Insert name of least favourite England footballer here)
But the most appropriate symbol of Argentina’s attitude to sex is the Telo. Unless you’re a beady-eyed journalist like myself, trained in the art of observance, you might not notice the Telos. But they’re there, in every neighbourhood, so discreet, so quiet, so unassuming, that you could walk past one twenty times and not notice it.
If you need sex and you need it now, at any time of the day or night, the Telo is there for you – at the standard, the luxury or the deluxe rate. There is no English translation. Some might call it a Knocking Shop but that would be demeaning. The Telo is not a hotel, despite the sign outside reading Albergue Transitorio or Transitory Accommodation. And it’s certainly not a brothel. They simply provide clean rooms that you rent by the hour to take your lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband or wife for uninterrupted, noisy sex. (British readers may pause here to titter as if the condoms were being passed around the sex education class)
Most Argentines will have their first sexual experience, not in the back of a car or at their parents’ house while their mum’s nipped out to buy washing powder, but in a Telo. Probably a cheap one in a neighbourhood some distance away to avoid anyone they knew spotting them going in or coming out. The standard of Telo will rise along with your earnings.
 Better than the back seat of a car - surely! Discretion is everything. The car-park is underground and each parking bay is covered by a curtain. It simply wouldn’t do for your wife to drive in with your next-door neighbour to spot your car and realise that you weren’t really going over the January sales figures with Miss Suarez, your secretary. The receptionist sits behind a smoky one-way glass. Drinks are ordered by telephone and then brought to your room and placed in a double-doored hole in the wall. The rooms, according to how much you want to pay, can be equipped with Jacuzzi, huge bed, mirrored ceilings and more. Use your imagination.
Then there are the themed Telos, on the outskirts of the major cities. The Centurion which is all togas and grapes. The Pharaoh if you walk like an Egyptian. Or The Cave for those into wooden clubs and animal furs. A quick internet check reveals one Telo with rooms for ‘two, three or four people.’ Another offers hydro-massage, gym, sauna and mini-swimming pool. Quite how you’re supposed to find the time and the energy for sex, I’m not sure.
There are condoms on the bedside tables, next to the customer survey forms. And cable television showing all the adult channels. They’ve got all the major sports channels too which is useful if you’ve forgotten the Viagra and find the fun is over earlier than anticipated. But I warn you, Bolton Wanderers versus Hull City as a starter does nothing to set the scene for a session of passionate sex.
Not that I’d know, of course. No-one ever openly admits to using a Telo. Say it’s your birthday and the in-laws are round looking after the kids. “Oh dear! We’re out of cat food,” you tell the mother-in-law. “And there’s a sale of bumper bags but only at the pet shop in Belgrano so we’ll need to take a bus and we’d both better go since it’ll be heavy and it’s quite dangerous there at this time of the day and er…”
You and your wife/girlfriend rush out, deliberately forgetting your mobile phones. No matter how good an actor you are, you’ll return an hour or two later feeling guilty and without the cat food. “Sold out,” you say. “And we’re flushed because there were no buses and we walked back, quickly.”
She knows. And she knows that you know that she knows. But that’s fine. That’s the story I read, anyway, in a Sunday magazine – by an anonymous writer.
The point being that sex happens in Argentina and it’s no-one’s business but the man and woman, the man and man or the woman and woman or the man, woman and man for that matter, who are involved.
I really don’t care who John Terry has sex with. But if his off-field activities undermine morale in the England camp which in turn affect performances in South Africa, then I think some kind of chemical castration should be considered. Only temporary, you understand. We are the fans, for Christ’s sake, surely we have some rights!
Argentinos Juniors 1 Godoy Cruz 2
I’m going to ramble only semi-coherently in relation to this game since it pains me to be direct. The Argentinos Juniors’ front man, Nicolas Pavlovich is nicknamed El Buitre or the vulture because he’s a ruthless predator who devours any loose ball and callously slots it into the net. But after this game he should perhaps be renamed ‘The Pampered Budgie’ or ‘Mimi the Poodle.’
 Hungry for goal A wounded herd of antelope lay invitingly in the Godoy Cruz penalty area, with assorted vegetables available, but instead of sinking their talons into the tender flesh, ‘The Vulture’ and his teammates pondered the menu, inquiring over the vegetarian option. As the home side nibbled on crudities, Godoy Cruz stole into their nests, ate their children and stole their electrical appliances.
By the time Santiago Gentiletti grabbed one back for Argentinos Juniors it was too late. Godoy Cruz had already scored two and were ready to saunter back to the western city of Mendoza, licking the blood off their lips and chuckling heartily to themselves. This modest little team, which Argentinos Juniors thrashed at their own stadium last season, are unbeaten this year and sit proudly as joint leaders with Colon at the top of the Argentine first division.
This was the first time my kids had seen Argentinos Juniors beaten at home and I could see them losing faith. “Be strong,” I said wisely. “Strength in defeat will make you more of an Argentinos Juniors fan and victory, whenever it comes, will taste even sweeter.”
They looked at me admiringly and replied: “Can we have another Coke and a hotdog.” As a West Ham fan I’ve learnt to deal with defeat. I prepare myself for disappointment and am well aware that football, like life, can turn from being 2-0 up with twenty minutes to go into a 3-2 home defeat in the time it takes to drink half a cup of Bovril.
I have an ill-thought out theory that bears no scientific scrutiny whatsoever that the team you support says something about the kind of person you are. We could, but we don’t, all support Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid and River Plate. Who are those fans who turn out every week to cheer on Rochdale, Stenhousemuir and Platense? What kind of grit do you have in your souls? And is there a Swiss Army knife blade designed to remove it?
I’m fairly likely to forget your name, will certainly not remember your children’s but I will never forget what football team you support. You might be John the chartered accountant but to me, fundamentally, you’ll always be ‘that bloke with a season ticket at QPR who was at the 1967 League Cup final.”
 Why oh why oh why!!!?? Half time misery. The team you support and what it says about you is vital in Argentina where football seeps, sometimes unexpectedly, into everyday life. And real life very rarely seeps into the football stadium, which is probably one of the main reasons why the game is so popular here.
Argentina is a wonderful country but it should be so much better. They’re celebrating their bicentenary this year. When they marked the first hundred years in 1910, the future looked so bright. Immigrants were pouring in at a steady rate, attracted by the promise of a brave new world. The recently tamed pampas stretched the length of ten-thousand football pitches. There was land and jobs for all. Their railway network was one of the finest in the world. Grand, new European-style buildings lined the boulevards of Buenos Aires.
But a hundred years and several military coups later, spiced up by countless corrupt governments and millions of squandered pesos, the bicentenary is a little less sparkly.
A taxi ride rarely goes by without the driver bemoaning the state of the country, pining nostalgically for the good old days and grumbling about rising crime, the government, the economy and the schools. Since none of them were around in 1910 I’m not sure what golden age they’re referring to. But they’re not happy and football provides some much needed escapism.
There’re a lot of teams to choose from in Buenos Aires so just pick the one that best suits your personality. Boca Juniors if you’re a working class lad made good or with aspirations to make good or with the desire to flaunt real or imagined working class roots. It’s River Plate, the Millionaires, if you were born affluent, or would like to have been, and want the world to know. Racing Club will do for those who really revel in a good whinge since they constantly disappoint and it has to be your local neighbourhood side if you’re a local neighbourhood sort of person.
No-one is quite so calculated about which club they are seen to support as Argentine politicians. The former president and wannabe racing car driver, Carlos Menem, was an avid River Plate fan. Nestor Kirchner, the last president, husband of the current president and widely thought to be the man behind the throne, is a Racing Club man. Much was made of the fact that as he went under the knife for a recent operation he asked how his team was doing. His wife and the doctors lied since, as usual, Racing had thrown away a lead and they didn’t want to upset Mr Kirchner in his delicate state.
 Racing Club fan The mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, is stinking rich and would look much better in the red and white of River Plate than the blue and gold of Boca Juniors. But it was as president of Boca that he gained national recognition. While he was at the helm, Boca won trophies and balanced their books. Many of the large working population of Buenos Aires thought: “Maybe he’ll run the city as well as he runs the club.” They voted for the kind of man who they’d normally dismiss as just another cocktail sipping, rich man’s son.
As you can probably tell from the tone of this ramble, I’m a little disillusioned with the Red Bugs after two defeats on the trot. It’s Estudiantes away next then Velez at home, two tough games and the team isn’t gelling.
Before all the games this weekend, there was a minute’s silence for the victims of the Chilean earthquake. Two Argentinos players, the goalkeeper Nicolas Peric and Emilio Hernandez, are Chilean and perhaps, with the uncertainty back home to worry about, they were not fully concentrated on their game. Real life can sometimes, even in Argentina, seep into the football stadium.
Banfield 3 Argentinos Juniors 0
This was the resumption of the second game of the season, called off after eight minutes because of torrential rain. And it looked to me like the Argentinos Juniors players never really dried out. Banfield are the current champions and it showed. They were snappy, they were hungry and they enjoyed their football. They never allowed the visitors time on the ball and when they won it they always had options, always had players running into space.
I must confess that I didn’t go to this game – a 9.30pm kickoff in one of Buenos Aires’s nether regions and the prospect of a late night trip home on public transport didn’t exactly set my red and white blood racing. And the game was live on state-run television. All the first division games are live on TV under a government-financed scheme introduced last year to bring football back to the masses and win tens of thousands of votes into the bargain. They’d have mine, I thought as I settled down with a cold beer and a bowl of crisps, if I had one.
 Falklands - Malvinas? There are two things and two things only that guarantee almost total agreement in Argentina – support for the national football team and the knowledge that the Falkland Islands, Las Islas Malvinas, are rightfully theirs and should be returned forthwith.
A British company, Desire Petroleum, has just moved its drilling platform, the Ocean Guardian, into place about one hundred kilometres off the islands in the search for oil. Lovely, slushy crude oil. Some say there may be as many as 60 billion barrels in them there treacherous waters. But I suspect that’s a crude, slushy estimate. Ask yourself, how can anyone with any certainty know how much of anything lies under the sea bed beneath several hundred metres of some of the wildest waters on the planet? And it won’t be down there in 60 billion neatly-packed barrels either. Sixty-billion barrels of wishful thinking on the part of some oil executive with a model rig on his desk and a dream of owning a much bigger car.
The Ocean Guardian is putting down its roots as the Argentine government flounders in turbulent waters of its own. Inflation is rampant, although official figures say it’s not, the government is losing control to the opposition in the two houses of parliament and President Cristina Kirchner and her husband, Néstor, the previous president, are being accused of dodgy dealings. And there are elections next year.
The national football team, with Maradona at the helm, looks increasingly like a colony of penguins which can’t find its fish. They’re unlikely to bring Argentina together in wild rejoicing in July. So the Falklands will have to do. It’s a sure-fire winner, just as long as they don’t go overboard and send in the troops like they did in 1982. That just upsets people.
The Malvinas is an issue here. School text books show them as Argentine property. As you leave airports and cross borders, the first thing to welcome you into the country are signs reading: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas.” The bus that takes me to the Argentinos Juniors ground goes down a street called The Malvinas Combatants and there’s a particularly good ice-cream parlour around the corner from my house called: Las Malvinas, which does a very tasty sheep and penguin flavour cone. To tell the truth, it doesn’t, but it should do.
There are active Falkland war veterans groups across the country. They differ over whether the 1982 invasion by the then military government was a good idea or not. They criticise subsequent governments for the treatment they’ve received. Hundreds of veterans have committed suicide, unable to fit back into a society that labelled them as losers or as unwitting tools of a repressive regime. Some former soldiers are suing their officers for human rights abuses, saying as well as being under-trained and poorly equipped for battle, they were abused and sometimes tortured. But, like 99.9 percent of all Argentines, they all agree that Las Malvinas son Argentinas.
 Closer to tango than bagpipes The British established their presence there in 1833 in the days when the fellow with the biggest ship and the most cannons could thrust his country’s flag into the ground and claim pretty much anywhere outside of Europe for king and country, while just a few stray penguins looked on. The Spanish wanted them, the French wanted them and, when the Spanish left, the fledgling Argentina said they wanted them. They are, after all, the closest – by several thousand kilometres.
The sticking point has always been the residents, the kelpers as the Argentines call them, none too kindly. They want to stay British in a very steak and kidney pie, Enid Blyton, tea and cricket on a Sunday afternoon sort of way.
They use Argentina’s long history of economic chaos and military repression as a reason for not swapping Queen and country for tango and big, juicy steaks. If the Falklands did became Las Malvinas then within weeks the driving would get much worse, inexplicable queues would form at the post office and government buildings would become swamped in bureaucracy. There would also be more beauty parlours and hairdressers, pubs would also be open longer and children would be allowed in.
But if you take a look at Argentine demographics you’ll see that the majority of the forty-million population lives in and around Buenos Aires. Vast expanses of Patagonia in the south and the hot, northern provinces are almost bereft of human habitation. So how many Argentines would actually go and live in the Falklands?
 OK, who's got the fish? It used to be about how much of the world map you could claim as your own. Now it’s all about oil. If the United States and Britain invaded Iraq under the false justification of weapons of mass destruction, they’re not going to let a few whingeing Argies stop them from extracting a possible 60 billion barrels from the South Atlantic.
Argentina has the support of the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, appealed directly to Queen Elizabeth to give the islands back. Argentina has gone to the United Nations. Tension is high. But Argentina won’t be invading this time.
The government, with its many faults and problems, is a democratic one and proud of it. The military, defeated and disgraced in the 1980s, is not the force it was and doesn’t have the stomach or the hardware for a fight.
There’ll be plenty of shouting and some frenzied flag waving. But if it’s a result Argentines are looking for, then it looks like the pressure is back on Diego, Leo, Carlitos and Javier to deliver the goods in South Africa later this year.
Atletico Tucuman 1 Argentinos Juniors 1
At least Argentinos Juniors managed to dodge the rain and play the full ninety minutes. Two of their five matches played so far this season were abandoned after the skies opened and the teams were not equipped with the flippers and snorkels needed to finish the game.
This was one the boys from Buenos Aires really should have won against a poor Tucuman side. Sloppy defending allowed Claudio Sarrio to put the home side in front in the third minute. But from then on it was all one-way traffic. Javier Paez equalised with an impressive own-goal in the 28th minute. Argentinos hit the woodwork twice, had the Tucuman keeper contorting himself into positions he didn´t know were possible and saw countless sophisticated moves break down on the edge of the penalty area.
It wasn´t going to be. But if Argentinos Juniors keep playing this way they will reap the benefits, eventually, with the results they deserve. Theirs is a history of remaining true to their footballing ideals, for which they´re rewarded every one-hundred years or so. Given that they last paid a visit to the trophy engravers in the mid-eighties, glory is due some time in the middle of the twenty-first century. That was the message I came away with after a visit to Argentinos Juniors´ newly opened museum.
 Old Shirts On the bus to the ground I warned my kids not to expect too much from the museum. It wouldn’t be like the Boca Juniors or the Real Madrid museums that we’d visited previously. We’ve got photographs of us pretending to pee in all the urinals in the Bernabeu changing room since we know that at some stage, before some particularly nerve-wracking match, David Beckham would have used at least one of them. So would Alfredo di Stefano, Cristiano Ronaldo, Steve McManaman and Luis Figo for that matter. We’ve pissed where the greats have pissed.
At Boca’s Bombonera stadium, we sat where Diego Maradona sat before each game, beneath a small shrine and statue of the Virgin Saint of plump little arrogant but amazingly talented footballers. The dazzle created by the collection of silverware in both museums is so great that the use of sunglasses is recommended.
That’s not the case at Argentinos Juniors. They did in the mid-eighties, remarkably, unbelievably, win two Argentine national championships and the South American club title, the Copa Libertadores. But it has to be said that the Argentinos Juniors museum is a modest one telling the tale of a modest club. They do, however, do it very well.
The ticket man was unsure about the prices and called upstairs. I got the impression that any reasonable contribution would have been welcome. This is one of only three football club museums in Argentina – the other two being the aforementioned Boca Juniors and the not-to-be-outdone- by-their-rivals River Plate, who have just opened theirs. There are no open-topped tourist buses parked outside.
 El Diez The museum is only open for three hours on a Saturday morning. We wandered aimlessly into the ground, not sure where we going, until we came across the word ‘museo’ stencilled on the concrete pillars. We were welcomed by our guides, Alberto, Eduardo and Dario. The first thing we were told, as a point of pride and not an apology, was that the museum had been financed and stocked by the fans. And they keep donating dog-earred programmes and newspaper cuttings, pre-sponsorship shirts and a ticket from that 1954 match against San Lorenzo which they’ve found stuffed into the pocket of some baggy shorts.
Our guides were first and foremost fans. The club, with various changes of neighbourhood, stadium, name and footballers’ hairstyles has been in existence since 1904. And in place of pride in the entrance was an original piece of wooden terracing.
There is silverware on display on the shelves but the gaps between the cups have to be filled with old programmes, newspaper articles and other bits and pieces of footballing paraphernalia representing past decades. There’s a wooden corner flag pole, bits of goal net and a knife once thrown on the pitch in a particularly tense game.
Alberto, our well-informed guide, was constantly interrupted by his colleagues, keen to impart their own memories and opinions. A video was shown detailing the club’s history and as I watched, I could hear the guides, who must have seen the goals from those key games a million times, unable to contain muffled cheers since that 1977 goal against Independiente still meant something to them.
Argentinos Juniors prides itself on being the seedbed of Argentine footballing talent – the Temple of Football, they call it. Among those over the years to pull on the red shirt with a sometimes diagonal, sometimes horizontal white stripe are Juan Román Riquelme, Juan Pablo Sorín, Esteban Cambiasso, Fabricio Coloccini, Fernando Redondo, Julio Arca, Claudio Borghi and 1986 World Cup winner, Sergio Batista.
 The Libertadores Cup - Really! One name, of course, stands out above all others. The stadium, for Christ’s sake, is called the Diego Armando Maradona and his family claims the only executive box at the club. His picture is everywhere – a fresh-faced, cocaine-free, innocent look about him. Many of our guides had seen him take the pitch as a precocious sixteen-year-old and still talked with unbridled enthusiasm about his raw talent. Diego was at the inauguration of the museum in December, still harbouring a soft-spot for the club which gave him his start in the kids’ team, the Cebollitas or Little Onions.
He went on to the much bigger and more prestigious Boca Juniors but with the money received from that sale the club could put together a team that a few years later conquered first Argentina then South America.
When I tried to explain my affinity for West Ham, as a club that put more store by playing well than winning at all costs, our guides nodded enthusiastically and with understanding. “Yes, that’s us too,” they said. We all know deep down that that’s simply a euphemism to justify our loyalty to a team that is simply not very good. But without that kind of self-delusion we’d all be Chelsea, Barcelona and Boca Juniors fans. And where’s the fun in that?!
What I’ve known since I’ve been watching Argentinos Juniors and was emphasised at the museum is that this is a neighbourhood club. It’s riddled with nostalgia. Nearly all the fans live in, or used to live in, or their grandparents lived in La Paternal. Grandads salute grandsons on the terraces on a Sunday afternoon. Boys and girls met here, relationships were formed and babies carried on shoulders, forced to watch another 0-0 draw against Newell’s Old Boys.
This is the kind of club where you feel like tossing your hat into the air when they score. And the museum reflects all of that. The guides were flattered, possibly flabbergasted, that a foreigner should support and become a season-ticket holder of their modest club. Alberto kept calling his mates over and saying: “He’s English, his oldest son was born in London, the youngest one in Spain…..AND THEY SUPPORT ARGENTINOS JUNIORS!!!”
If I was just an enthusiastic observer when I went to the museum, I was a fan by the time I came out. My nine-year-old son, Lucas, who had until then called himself a Boca supporter like his mum, confided that he was switching his allegiance. He’d found his team, the club that fitted his character and personality, where he felt he belonged. His mother is in shock but Boca, surely, have got enough fans already?
Photos by Benja and Lucas
Argentinos Juniors 0 Newell’s Old Boys 0
Of course we took neither rain jackets nor umbrellas. Why would we? It was a little overcast when we left home and the first half was clear and bright. It was only as the referee blew his whistle for the start of the second half that the first drops of rain fell. Then they fell and fell and fell. Something like 88mm came down in the space of a couple of hours, transforming several streets in Buenos Aires into rivers. The Argentinos Juniors’ pitch soon became a swamp and 21 minutes into the second half the game was called off.
 The skies opened When you’re wet, you’re wet. There is no shelter anywhere in the very basic Diego Armando Maradona stadium. When your pants, your socks and the contents of your wallet are all sodden, then you can’t get any wetter. But the fans kept singing and dancing in the rain.
The Newell’s fans had had a four-hour or so trip from Rosario with many arriving at half-time, just in time for the downpour. It was their first visit to Buenos Aires since the death of their 14-year-old fan, Walter Caceres, on the way back from a game in the capital two weeks ago. But while football violence is a very real and unresolved problem, by far the greatest risk on the way home from any game, on the way to or from anywhere for that matter, is bad driving…especially with the roads flooded or slippery and visibility severely reduced.
Argentina ranks way up there on the league table of most dangerous drivers in the world. For every million cars on the road there are 1,066 deaths compared to 186 in the United States, 123 in Spain and 89 in Sweden. The holiday weekends are the worst when the TV screens and newspapers are full of images of pile-ups, smashed vehicles wrapped around trees and being pulled out of lakes and grieving friends and families.
The promising young River Plate attacker, Diego Buonanotte, was involved in a crash in December in which three close friends of his were killed. Buonanotte was thrown from the car and sustained serious injuries. He’ll survive but it’s not clear what the injuries will do to his footballing career. One of the first to visit him in hospital was the newly-elected River Plate president and World Cup winner, Daniel Passarella, who said all the right things. He showed genuine compassion, partly because he’d lost his own teenage son in a traffic accident.
 Buonanotte's car Many Argentine families are still living with and trying to come to terms with the thirty-thousand people thought to have been killed by the military government in power between 1976 and 1983. But far more are grieving the loss of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters lost in pointless and often avoidable traffic accidents.
Argentines will find a whole series of excuses to explain this situation, from poorly-maintained roads to bad sign-posting to sub-standard vehicles. I’ve driven throughout the Americas and beyond and the roads are far worse in Bolivia, the sign-posting almost non-existent in Cuba and the vehicles infinitely crappier in Peru. The reason for Argentina’s motoring tragedy is simply bad driving. Arrogant, aggressive, inconsiderate driving.
A fine example is that of Rodrigo ‘The Hyena’ Barrios who last month shot round the corner in the seaside resort of Mar del Plata and killed a 20-year-old pregnant woman and her baby. He sped off and only hours later handed himself in to the police. He’s the world Super-Featherweight boxing champion, a national hero, now awaiting trial and unable to walk the streets for fear of the public spitting at him in the face.
 The Hyena I don’t own a car simply because I live in the centre of Buenos Aires which has an adequate public transport system and abundant taxis. But to many Argentines, especially the men, that’s like saying: “I don’t own a penis.” But when I need one, I hire one. A car! I’m obviously talking about a car!
It’s been a long-held, off the top of my head, un-scientific theory of mine that the way people in a certain country drive reflects, to a large extent, their national characteristics and hang-ups. I’m still trying to translate Argentine driving into some kind of coherent analysis of the national psyche. This is, after all, the country with more psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and therapists per head of population than there are llamas in Bolivia. But first I need to suppress my anger, my pedestrian rage, and this rant is a cathartic exercise in releasing some of my pent-up resentment at so often being nearly killed on the roads of Argentina. Sorry if you’re one of the decent Argentine drivers – and there are many – but I need to do this.
There’s a certain self-destructive element in the way some people drive and a definite tendency to blame every other motorist and pedestrian for breaches in traffic-flow. “Not me, no! I’m a very good driver.”
I hired a car over Christmas to escape Buenos Aires and visit the in-laws. I’d gone no more than 1km when, being the kind, considerate British driver that I am, I stopped at a pedestrian crossing because my light was red and little old ladies, mothers with pushchairs and blind people were crossing. Someone smashed into my rear end. When I got out to remonstrate, he was livid, with spittle flying like bullets from his mouth and veins on his temples ready to burst.
“If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t have hit you,” he shouted. “You should have been somewhere else.” True! Very, very true!
Now the people of Buenos Aires can be some of the politest, most courteous you’ll meet anywhere in the world. Good manners still matter here, especially among the older generation. In most countries you don’t converse with strangers in lifts, most of us content to fix our eyes on that big red spot on the top of that bald fellow’s head or to see how far down that cleavage we can peak without anyone noticing. But not here.
“Good morning, how are you?”
“I’m fine. What floor are you going to? Number 9? Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“It is. Thank-you. Have a good day. No, after you.”
“No, after you. You have a good day too. Goodbye.”
And all this in the 15 seconds it takes to get from the ground floor to the ninth. But you put these very same polite, courteous people behind the wheel of a car and those good manners evaporate into the humid Buenos Aires air. No-one let’s anyone out of side-turnings, people hoot their horns at railway crossings while the barriers are still down and red traffic lights are more often seen as a hindrance rather than a life-saving device.
On the open road, it’s common to sit just 1cm behind the car in front while driving at 140kph waiting for an opportunity to overtake. And that’s regularly done on blind corners and over the brow of hills.
There’s a common tendency in Argentina to disregard the smaller, what are sometimes seen as intrusive, rules and regulations. Seat-belts are compulsory but only sometimes worn, motor-cycle crash helmets even less so. Helmets are carried but usually on the rider’s elbow which means that while Argentine bikers often split their skulls open, they suffer far less elbow trauma than anywhere else in Latin America.
I’m a more frequent pedestrian than I am a motorist but that also has its hazards. When the crossing light is quite clearly telling me that I can proceed, vehicles turning from the left and right are also allowed to go – but should give way to pedestrians. Only they quite often don’t, especially if the vehicle is very big, like a bus or a truck. And I’ve had my ankles nipped more than once by barely attentive motorists in a hurry, babbling on their mobile phones.
But it doesn’t do to shout and swear. Oh no! You don’t see a great deal of open road rage. In fact, you’re considered to be a bit of a wimp if you complain. With one foot on the ground and another on the step, the 184 bus sped away with me grabbing onto the door frame for my life. When I complained to the driver he snorted derisively and retorted, very calmly: “You limp-wristed, nancy-boy wimp. Just grow up!” I’m not sure if that’s gained or lost something in translation but that’s the kind of abuse you leave yourself open to if you have the audacity to insist on being able to climb aboard a public bus without risking your life.
After four years here I’m now quite good at crossing the road. And when jumping on to a bus, I try to nip in front of that woman with the huge bag of shopping, so that if the driver does speed off prematurely it’s her, not me, left sprawling in the gutter. Hey! It’s a jungle out there and I’ve managed to survive this far.
That’s two Argentinos Juniors’ games out of four so far this season suspended because of heavy rain. I’m dripping rain water into the keyboard and seriously considering investing in an umbrella for the next game.
Arsenal 2 Everton 2
I’ve just been watching Arsenal v Everton on the TV in my shorts, no shirt and an ice-cold drink in my hand. There’s nothing quite like seeing those sixty-thousand or so frozen, wool-wrapped fans huddled together like penguins having a bad day while all those around me are complaining about the excessive southern hemisphere summer heat.
 Punta del Este-for those who can afford it They get so hot and bothered down here in January that all those who can head for the Atlantic beach resorts – those with a few pesos to rub together go to Punte del Este in Uruguay or to Brazil, while the rest head for resorts on the Argentine coast.
Those of us who have stayed behind in Buenos Aires can enjoy emptier streets and plazas and shorter queues at the ice-cream parlours. We’re also being treated to a spectacular political drama.
President Cristina Kirchner wanted six-and-a-half billion dollars from the national reserve to pay off a chunk of Argentina’s huge foreign debt which is due later this year. But the head of the central bank, Martin Redrado, told her to keep her hands to herself.
She stormed off in a huff and announced that Mr Redrado had resigned – only he hadn’t. “It’s my job,” he said, “and I’m keeping it.”
So the president signed a special decree to have him removed. But she needed the signatures of her cabinet to make it valid. However, they were at the beach, working on their tans, making sand-castles, sipping cocktails etc and had to be dragged back to Buenos Aires, sand between their toes, sun-cream on their noses and tans less than complete.
Then a judge nullified the decree and Mr Redrado went back to work. It’s not over yet and as we count the days until the start of the new football season, it’s keeping us amused.
 Redrado-should he stay or should he go? Those players not captured by the European club nets that trawl Argentina at this time of the year are back in training. Running through Bosque de Palermo the other day, I saw the River Plate squad going through their paces. I know it’s early, but I think I’m in better condition than most of them.
You probably think I’m making this up, but as I stood at the edge of the lake recovering from my run I saw two turtles having sex in the water. At least I think they were. How do you know they’re not fighting, one on the other’s back applying the turtle equivalent of a half-nelson? Or were they dancing a slow, slow tango? On reflection, it was definitely sex, proof that there’s still plenty of fun to be had in a half-empty, football-free, hot and humid Buenos Aires, for the turtles at least.
The extreme heat is punctuated by thunder storms which, as well as relieving the humidity, wash away the dog shit which has become one of the most irritating aspects of life in Buenos Aires.
Much of the population lives in apartment blocks, highly inappropriate for keeping dogs, often big, hairy ones totally unsuited to the heat. Crime is an issue but it’s not nearly as bad as some porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, will tell you it is. Plenty of the more paranoid residents buy their pets as guard-dogs. Others love their pooches dearly. But they’re often too lazy, busy or scared to walk them, so will hire a professional dog walker to do it for them.
It’s a common sight in Buenos Aires to see a walker with up to fifteen assorted poodles, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Great Danes and terriers straining at their leashes and dumping all over the pavements. Of course, the walkers are supposed to clean up but they rarely do.
 Dogs' Life This business has become so lucrative that many walkers now use vans to pick up their charges and drive them to the park. There, they’re tied up to trees while the walkers chat with fellow walkers, drink mate tea and perhaps kick a ball around. I know this because they gather in the park where I run. Overnight the area is used by prostitutes who discard the used condoms among the trees and by day by the dog-walkers who don’t walk. Runners are advised to tread very carefully.
The park cleaners have a tough job, but so too do the journalists who have to fill the sports pages during the summer months. There’s no cricket here, so they cover the pointless triangular pre-season tournaments being played at the beach resorts or tell tales of new shirt designs or who is joining the annual exodus to Europe.
The football may be taking a break but the battle between rival fans never rests. If you saw the World Club championship final between Barcelona and Argentina’s Estudiantes last month you may have wondered why some of the fans had banners with a simple 7-0 on them.
Estudiantes may have won the South American Libertadores cup and reached the pinnacle of world football with a final against Barcelona, but a game their fans revel in more than any other was the 7-0 victory in 2006 over their rivals in the city of La Plata, Gimnasia y Esgrima.
A young Gimnasia fan, Maxi Vazquez, sent a photo of himself wearing the club shirt to get his national identity card renewed. But his new card was processed by an Estudiantes fan who scrawled 7-0 on the photo before stamping and coating it with plastic. Maxi was livid. The offending official was tracked down and fired, despite a support campaign on Facebook that attracted more than eight-hundred and fifty fans.
I don’t know whether there’s a park in La Plata where turtles have sex but that former official now has plenty of time on his hands to investigate while he waits for the referee to blow that first whistle of the season.
I, meanwhile, think I’ll plop another ice-cube in my glass. Que calor!
 The Feminine Touch Reds 4 Yellows 2
In Argentina they call them Villas Miseria – Misery Towns – rambling, ramshackle communities built on somebody else’s land with stolen bricks and cement, corrugated iron roofs and poor drainage. Spider webs of electricity and telephone cables criss-cross the sky.
The oldest, biggest and most firmly established shanty-town in Buenos Aires is Villa 31, kind of squeezed behind the main long-distance bus terminal and alongside the tracks leading out of the Retiro railway station.
Me, I know no fear and with little regard for my own safety, I strode boldly into the narrow alleyways of Villa 31 to bring you a first-hand account of life where lesser men fear to tread.
A West Ham United baseball cap is usually all it takes to keep potential attackers at bay. Those crossed hammers translating in any language into ‘Don’t Mess With Me, Sucker!”
The fact that I was met on the outskirts of the shanty-town by a petite young woman called Carolina who works in the labyrinthine streets of Villa 31 armed with no more than a friendly smile and a willingness to make a difference should not detract from my undoubted bravery.
I was also accompanied by my kids, Benja, aged 12, and Lucas, 9, who has just passed his first Tae-Kwon do exam with flying colours, and Aunty Marilyn visiting from London.
Carolina works for an NGO called Goals for Girls/Metas para las Chicas that helps the girls and young women of the community to play football.
“Football,” I hear you gasp. “In Argentina! Now there’s a novelty.” But the truth is that it’s a man’s game here. Women in Argentina grow up with football, their dads and brothers play it, watch it, obsess about it, their boyfriends and husbands may even drag them to games and will still expect their dinner on the table afterwards, but women in general are not encouraged to play it. Those that defy convention and insist are given very little space in which to kick a ball.
 The Goal... Playing football in the Villa gives the girls that space. They practise regularly and play matches at the weekend. They are also given talks on the benefits of exercise and healthy eating in order to be better footballers but also to be healthier people in an environment where simply staying alive and finding the next meal is often the primary concern.
But it ain’t easy. A dusty dirt pitch has been marked out, surrounded on three sides by precarious looking houses and on the fourth by a brightly painted church. They’ve got two proper goals with nets and a bag of balls which are kept locked in a wooden cupboard.
The referee for this game between the reds and the yellows called in sick and a brief search ensued for a suitable mug, someone easy to abuse and too old and slow to keep up with the action, to fill the void. That honour fell to me. I vowed to be firm but fair but was mostly simply ignored.
The skill levels were high and the players were fierce but fair. Men pushing bikes, teenage boys smoking joints and on the prowl and women returning from shopping nonchalantly strolled across the field. Gangs of boys regularly started their own matches by the corner flags, gradually spreading out onto the pitch.
The female players are forced to look after kid brothers and sisters and kickoffs are delayed because the players have to complete household chores, ‘women’s work,’ before they’re allowed out. Football, they’re told, is for boys.
But the girls are not listening. With the help of Goals for Girls they’re expanding and developing. About thirty of them play regularly, organising games against female teams from other shanty-towns. They’ve established links with women’s football federations from other countries and there’s the constant battle to raise funds for transport, kit and footballs.
It’s impossible to say with any certainty how many people live in Villa 31 because the residents don’t take kindly to questioners with clipboards delving into their lives and it’s a community that grows pretty much daily — with migrants arriving from Argentina’s poor northern provinces, squeezed off the land by drought and the ever more voracious soya producers. They’re joined by Paraguayans, Bolivians and Peruvians attracted to one of the wealthiest cities in Latin America.
It’s not a place you’d want to find yourself wandering in after dark. Most Porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, have seen Villa 31 from the train or from one of the long-distance buses taking them on their holidays to the coast or the mountains but few have ever set foot there, or would want to.
A dark mystique has grown up about the villas of Buenos Aires, fed by tales of the criminal gangs operating there, the crack cocaine factories, the teenage pregnancies, the murders.
 The Church View Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez grew up in Fort Apache, one of the city’s most notorious villas, and has told of how he’d lie awake at night listening to gunfire. All the stories that seep out into the affluent northern neighbourhoods are no doubt true. But there is another rarely told side to life in Argentina’s shanty towns.
The vast majority of residents are honest people fighting against the odds to give their children the opportunities they never had. They put great store by personal hygiene and are generally polite and generous to visitors.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not getting all romantic about shanty-town life. I’ve visited a few and am not about to fork out the US$10,000 that houses in Villa 31 reportedly sell for. The residents are neglected, exploited and ignored. But they’re not hopeless.
I blew the final whistle and walked off the pitch for a well-earned ice-cold bottle of water. The players didn’t seem to notice my departure and, despite the intense heat and humidity, kept playing – until they were called home to prepare lunch or look after a young sibling. The last stragglers were finally forced from the pitch by a torrential downpour.
Pictures by Benja
Goals for Girls website: http://www.democraciarepresentiva.org
For More: http://www.santelmoproductions.com/en/#/portfolio/goals_for_girls
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