Argentinos Juniors 1 Banfield 1
It was the first home game of the season and I’m still finding my bearings so was not surprised to go through the turnstile and emerge in the section behind the goal where the barrabrava or hardcore fans stand. Yes, they still stand at Argentine grounds, leaning against metal posts, behind huge fences topped with razor wire. Ah! The old days.
The barrabrava in Argentina have a bit of a reputation. Not just for violence, which there is plenty of. Their influence, their poisonous stain, seeps much deeper into the Argentine game than it ever did in England. In some cases they control the terraces, dealing in tickets and selling drugs. There are reports of some controlling players’ contracts and, in a system in which club presidents are elected by the fans, having an undue and malignant influence on the running of some clubs.
So I was mightily relieved when I claimed my spot behind the goal to find I was standing near a couple of elderly ladies, grannies to be precise, although I wouldn’t say that to their faces of course. They wore their red Argentinos Juniors shirts stretched over bellies that had spent a lifetime being filled with Choripanes, the fatty sausages obligatory at football matches. They didn’t look like they were going to beat the crap out of anybody, although I wouldn’t want to risk walking muddy shoes over their living-room floor or playing football near their gardens.
There were also couples with babies, boyfriends and girlfriends holding hands and teenage boys with their dads.
Argentinos Junior’s reputation as a friendly neighbourhood club, a barrio club, was confirmed. I was safe.
There were some mean-looking heavily tatooed fellows hanging from the railings and a gentle waft of marijuana tinged the early evening air. There was a line of policemen at the back of the stand sporting an array of moustaches of the variety I’ve only ever seen displayed by Latin American policemen.
And the Banfield fans, decked in green and white, had come in numbers from their industrial suburb south of Buenos Aires.
But elsewhere, with the season still fresh out of its wrapping, the barrabrava had been doing their worst.
At the Boca Juniors training ground their goalscoring hero, a man who sweats blue and yellow blood for the team, Martin Palermo, was threatened by seven fans who called him a traitor for saying nice things, gentlemanly, sportsmanlike things, about a rival club.
“Who sent you?” asked Palermo, knowing they wouldn’t have bypassed the training ground security without some inside help. He once dedicated a goal to Rafa Di Zeo, a friend and former boss of the Boca barrabrava, now on day-release from prison where he’s serving time for beating up rival fans during a supposedly friendly match. While Di Zeo is out of action, a new man, Mauro Martin, has filled the void and there’s talk of a third faction edging into any spare gaps left on the terraces.
Boca 'fan' Rafa Di Zeo
The battle for control of the barrabrava over at city rivals River Plate has spilled out onto the streets, with organised pitched battles and one ‘lieutenant’ being shot dead in a hit worthy of a Colombian drug gang.
The so-called fans at South American champions, Estudiantes, have also been in action. Last week, they went looking for former Manchester United and Chelsea player, Juan Sebastian Veron. They wanted to discuss the weekend’s derby match between Estudiantes and their La Plata city rivals, Gimnasia. Their spokesman was a man called Omar Alonso, recently released from fifteen years in prison for killing a taxi driver and drug dealing. Not the kind of man I’m inviting to my birthday party.
At the very least the barrabrava demand that the players give them tickets and free shirts. The clubs sometimes pay their travel and accommodation costs for away matches. One particularly influential bunch had an all-expenses paid trip to Germany for the 2006 World Cup.
In return, they promise security, loud support for the team and block votes for the candidates in the always keenly fought elections for club president. Let’s face it, if you’re too old, fat or useless to play the game, wouldn’t running your own local club do instead?
And because of this support, because the barrabrava have friends in the police force and in politics, in some cases are members of the police force or work for their local council or trade union, there is little talk about bringing them into line. Whenever they get out of control and there’s a killing or a players’ bus is attacked, there’s a lot of muttering and mumbling about doing something to curtail their influence. But generally they’re left to fight amongst themselves.
I could see none of that from where I stood behind the goal at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium. Simply a lot of noise and flag-waving which is just how it should be. I also saw Santiago Silva put the visitors ahead early on after a defensive blunder by Argentinos.
Gabriel Hauche, developing into a crowd favourite, put the home side back on level terms in the second half and one-one is how it ended – although Argentinos Juniors were probably lucky to escape with a point after some goal-line scares.
So two draws from two games. And I’ve staked my place on the terrace, just to the right of the goal, about fifteen steps up, to the right of the grannies, just behind where a couple spent most of the game snogging and to the left of a gaggle of very small children who accidently hit me often with long Argentinos Juniors balloons that they were given at the start of the game.
Tags: argentina football, Argentinos Juniors, banfield, barrabrava, di zeo, hauche, palermo, veron
How is Sava getting on – Fulham’s replacement for Saha – just one letter different. Who on the few occasions when he scored – whipped a mask of Zorro out of his sock and donned it as he dived into the crowd. Like most of his fellow countrymen, he is a trained psychoanalyst.