23/11
2009

Game Fifteen v Arsenal

Argentinos Juniors  1 Arsenal  1

No, obviously not THAT Arsenal. This is the Argentine Arsenal from the Buenos Aires suburb of Sarandi. They play in blue and red, are not managed by a Frenchman, have passionate support and have achieved very little since their foundation in 1957. There’s not even any evidence that their foundation was inspired by the London Arsenal.

But for the purposes of this article, I like to think that it was. And even if it wasn’t, there’s plenty of evidence of the British influence on the foundation and establishment of football in Argentina. So, how do they thank us for it? With the Hand of God! That’s how!

That evidence is first of all in the English words in the club names – Boca Juniors, River Plate, Newell’s Old Boys and my own personal favourite, Chaco For Ever, from the northern city of Resistencia and currently top of the regional third division.

Then across the river in Uruguay you’ve got Liverpool and in Bolivia another corker, The Strongest. Bolivia also boasts Blooming but I’m not sure whether that derives from ‘Blooming Marvellous’ or ‘Blooming Crap.’

The man credited with introducing the Argentines to football was a Glasgow-born schoolteacher, Alexander Watson Hutton, who arrived in 1882 and set up the Buenos Aires English High School. It was and still is part of a network of schools modelled on the British public school system with all the elitism, snobbery and croquet and cucumber sandwiches on the lawn that comes with it.

The school was represented by the Alumni Football Team and would play the likes of  Rosario Cricket Club and the Buenos Aires Football Club, founded by Yorkshireman, Don Thomas Hogg in 1867.

Other clubs sprouted up like a rash of handballs in the French team, but it was still very much a ‘gentleman’s’ sport and awfully British.

Many years ago I worked on the English-language newspaper, The Buenos Aires Herald. Asked to call the estate of an Anglo-Argentine family to get the bridge results, or something, a woman answered the phone in the kind of posh English accent that only the Queen uses these days. She was probably one of the last members of a remote corner of the British Empire.

There is a British cemetery in Buenos Aires, tea-houses with frightfully English sounding names and a now semi-derelict department store downtown called Harrods, which bears no relation to the Knightsbridge original.

Southampton - taught us everything we know.

Southampton - taught us everything we know.

The other great thing the British brought the Argentines was the railways. A stroll around the Retiro station in Buenos Aires reveals buffers cast in Ipswich, steel girders produced in Liverpool and clocks made in London, which stopped about the time Argentinos Juniors last won a trophy.

There are still quaint railway stations in the Buenos Aires suburbs which look like they’ve been plucked straight out of the Suffolk countryside. And place names such as Coghlan, Hurlingham, City Bell and Open Door, which are pronounced in strong Spanish accents, making them unintelligible to English speakers.

There is still a strong British influence in agriculture here but what caused and still causes the most discomfort for what’s left of the Anglo-Argentine community was the 1982 invasion of the Falkland or Malvinas Islands. In the aftermath of Argentina’s eventual defeat some of the Johns and Georges started calling themselves Juan and Jorge. The English tower, a major Buenos Aires landmark donated by the British government, was renamed.

But the British influence on the foundation of football in Argentina remains. Its initial introduction by the toffs was consolidated by the British railway workers who played during their breaks in front of their bemused Argentine colleagues. The first reported game of football in Argentina was between two teams of railway workers, the White Caps and the Red Caps. I don’t know the result. I imagine the local workers, many of them Spanish and Italian immigrants, then realised: “Hey, we can do that! And probably better than this bunch of muppets.”

The truth is it took the Argentines a while to get the hang of football. With their own clubs now up and running, they invited some of England’s finest over to demonstrate how the game should be played. First off the steamboat in 1904 was Southampton who played five games in Argentina and one in Uruguay, winning them all by the kind of scores the club could only dream about now. And most were in front of crowds of more than 10,000. They beat Combinados de Argentinos 8-0 and Belgrano Athletic 6-1.

A year later Nottingham Forest came with their baggy shorts and slicked-back hair to again give the local chaps a footballing lesson. They beat Belgrano 7-0 and la Liga Argentina 9-1. It’s remarkable, with hindsight, that the Argentines didn’t ditch football at that point in favour of something like water-polo or badminton.

From the days before lung cancer...

From the days before lung cancer...

Everton and Tottenham both arrived in 1909 and played each other in a couple of exhibition matches, before clocking up some more rugby scores against the best that Argentina and Uruguay had to offer.

But the real turning point came with the visit in 1912 of Swindon Town. A local journalist wrote: “Argentine fans will be able to applaud undoubtedly one of the best teams in the world.” Another said: “The arrival of the famous Swindon Town marks another era in the history of Association Football in the Argentine.”

The Robins won six and drew two in front of crowds of up to 20,000. But the local teams were no longer being embarrassed against “undoubtedly one of the best teams in the world” The stabilizers were off. Argentine football was flying.

English words and phrases such as ‘referee’, ‘corner’, ‘manager’,‘offside’ and ‘that was quite clearly handball you stupid bastard’ are still used in Argentine football. I made that last one up but you get the drift.

The ball was kicked back in the opposite direction after Argentina won the 1978 World Cup with the arrival at Tottenham of Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa — pioneers of a trail followed by Alberto Tarantini, Julio Arca, Fabricio Coloccini, Javier Mascherano, Carlos Tevez and even Nestor Lorenzo, repaying Swindon Town for their early guidance.

Argentinos Juniors appear to have lost the art of winning, having drawn four and lost two of the last six. They took an early lead in this one when Gabriel Hauche was gifted the ball in the visitor’s penalty area. Arsenal then bungled a sackful of chances and the home side were lucky to go in at half-time with the lead. It was reversed in the second half with Argentinos playing the better football but fluffing one opportunity after another and then giving away a late goal.

It’s a case of Argentinos Juniors playing out the last four games of the season from a comfortable but none too inspiring spot in the middle of the table.  The race for the title is now between unfashionable but unbeaten Banfield, who are two points clear of Newell’s Old Boys. Neither of the big boys, Boca or River, are in the running.

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15/11
2009

Game Fourteen v Colon

Colon 2  Argentinos Juniors 0

With this defeat, Argentinos Juniors can say goodbye to any lingering hopes they had of challenging for the title. But it was a sad way to go. A dodgy penalty in the second minute put the visitors on the back foot. An even dodgier one in the second half punched the final nail in the coffin. To rub salt into gangrenous wounds, Argentinos also had two goals disallowed. Then a long journey back to Buenos Aires during which to mull over their poor
fortune.

Colon is a town way up in the north-east of Argentina…a nondescript sort of place which you´d probably never visit unless you had family or friends there — and then, not often.

Four Legs Good

Four Legs Good

That´s why I found myself in another of Argentina´s nondescript towns, visiting family, which I don´t do often. In this case the in-laws in Chacabuco, deep in that huge, flat, fertile plain in the middle of the country known as the Pampas. The in-laws live on the edge of this nondescript town in the middle of a huge, flat, featureless, fertile plain which lends itself to ample alliteration and many cows. The alliteration is infinite but there are not as many cows as there used to be, the reasons for which I shall explain later.

I´m not sure if you´ve ever attempted to describe a nondescript town but I shall dig deep and give it a try.  Chacabuco lies about four hours west of Buenos Aires, as the bus drives. When I say the Pampas are flat, I mean really flat. In the words of that old Who song, you can see for miles and miles and miles. You might see a water tank in the distance and think you´re nearly there. But you´re not. And when you do finally reach your destination, you wonder why you bothered.

We passed through several other towns which looked pretty much the same — Chivilcoy, San Andres, Lujan. I imagine that you could easily get off the bus in the wrong town and not realise your mistake for several hours — or years!! Residents pass their days scratching their bellies and drinking mate, a bitter tea imbibed through a metal straw.

Chacabuco, like all the other towns in the region, has a main plaza that you won´t be surprised to learn is in the middle of the town. In the middle of that, you can bet the price of a Chelsea season ticket, that you´ll find a statue of San Martin, Argentina´s liberator from Spanish colonial rule. Sometimes he´ll be on a horse, sometimes not. So I´m exagerating a little here, there is some variety. Then you´ll find a plaza in each corner of the town. So that´s five plazas in all. If you run out of things to do, you can walk from one to another — and then back again!

There are people who enjoy and thrive in flat places, like Kansas or Saskatchewan or Cambridgeshire but I´m not one of them. I need a hill or two, or a coastline. Does living in a place like Chacabuco make you flat and dull, or do towns like this attract flat and dull people? This is small town with a capital S and a capital T. The residents are often suspicious of all outsiders – whether they´re from Buenos Aires or Basingstoke, so they treat me with no more or less disdain than any other visitor.

I fear I´m being a little harsh. Chacabuco is peaceful, relatively prosperous and a lovely place to bring up children. I also saw a hummingbird, which left me very excited. And that  you don´t do in Basingstoke! Also, I have discovered three interesting things about Chacabuco. It´s the hometown of Argentina´s 1978 World Cup winning captain, Daniel Passarella. It produces oats, cows and soya. And it´s got five plazas. Or did I already mention that?

When I first visited Chacabuco some years ago, it had just two restaurants, both pizzerias. One was closed at lunchtime, the other in the evening. But now the town is buzzing, literally. A by-product of its recent genetically-modified soyabean prosperity is that the whole population now travels by moped — flat out on the paved roads, recklessly on the dirt tracks and often with girlfriend, two small children and pet dog riding pillion.

Soya...Mmmm!!?

Soya...Mmmm!!?

Monsanto and its GM soya have transformed the Argentine countryside. Cows are not exactly an endangered species. But more and more of them are being herded off the lush green pastures and are now reared in the months before slaughter in tight enclosures on high protein food in a system known as feedlot. It´s nutritious and tasty, at least that´s what its supporters
will tell you, but it´s not grass.

Soya is also nutritious and tasty, at least that´s what its supporters will tell you. But most Argentines would rather nibble Sir Alex´s discarded chewing gum than put soya on their plate.

Most of it goes to Europe and China to feed cattle. There´s surely some irony there but I find that after a few hours in this place – the flatness, the wind and the smell of cow excrement mixed with the chemicals – and I can´t think straight.

What is beyond question is that there´s more and more soya and less and cows, simply because GM soya is easier to grow and much, much more lucrative. You almost never have to call out the vet to deal with tricky illnesses. There are stories here that some producers will buy themselves a new house on the profits of each harvest. And some have traded their mopeds for fancy four x fours. There are more than two restaurants in town now, a wine shop and stores selling designer clothes.

But what of the gauchos, those hardy Argentine cowboys who tamed the savage pampas? With fewer cattle to herd they are becoming little more than showmen who entertain tourists. Or they sit around drinking mate, scratching their bellies and telling tales of the old days.

I also scratched my belly as I watched this game live on television, with the windows open and the crickets making a hell of a racket outside. This was a reasonable performance by Argentinos Juniors against one of the title contenders. But the result, thanks to poor refereeing, left me disappointed and disillusioned.

I think I´ll drown my sorrows with a cocktail made from fermented GM soya tipped over a glass of crushed ice with a cherry on top. It´s the future and it smells foul!

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07/11
2009

Game Thirteen v Rosario Central

Argentinos Juniors 1   Rosario Central 1

I fear the title is slipping from Argentinos Juniors’ grasp.  Too many draws in recent games have left the Red Bugs looking at the leaders through a telescope. The only good news is that they’ve recaptured their early season form and really should have won this game – only the woodwork and the Rosario goalkeeper, Jorge Braun, preventing an avalanche of Argentinos goals.

And Rosario played with ten men for much of this game, after Nahuel Valentini was sent off in the first half for a second yellow card. The visitors went ahead early on with a well-worked Emilio Zelaya goal. Nicolas Pavlovich equalised for the home side just before half-time.

Team's Best Friend

Team's Best Friend

This was two workmanlike, unglamorous sides grinding out a draw on a wet, windy Friday night. Rosario Central is another of those big Argentine clubs that has promised much and delivered very little, living like so many in the shadow of Boca Juniors and River Plate. Instead of glory on the pitch, it gleans its glamour from its well-known fans. The excellent Argentine writer and cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa was one of the most enthusiastic, incorporating tales of football and Rosario Central into his writing and drawings, before his untimely death two years ago.

Another was that well-known revolutionary but less well-known football fan, Ernesto Che Guevara. He was born in Rosario in June 1928 so it’s no surprise they should claim him as their own. The city last year erected a statue to the bearded, beret-wearing revolutionary and recently opened a Che museum. But his ties with Argentina’s second city are flimsy, to say the least. His pregnant mum was on her way from her home in the north-east of Argentina to Buenos Aires when little Ernesto decided to make an earlier than anticipated appearance.

As soon as Mrs Guevara had recovered, she was on her way. But a revolutionary had been born, as well as a tenuous link with the city. But these days, anyone and anything that can is claiming a piece of Che, from revolutionary tourist sites around Argentina, Bolivia and Cuba, to vodka and t-shirt manufacturers around the world.

The man himself, your quintessential anti-capitalist, would be turning in his grave, wherever that is. There is some dispute over whether the bones unearthed in Bolivia near to where he died and now lying in the memorial in central Cuba, really were his. Whatever the case, he might be pleased to learn that he’s still a revolutionary inspiration to governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, as well as student groups around the world protesting about the price of beer in the university bar.

And of course, he’s an icon for the fans and players of Rosario Central. He never saw the team play since he lived his young life hundreds of kilometres away in the province of Cordoba where, in the absence of any decent local first division teams, most of the kids supported either Boca Juniors or River Plate – both in distant Buenos Aires. But little Ernesto, showing early signs of his tendency to go against the flow, chose the blue and yellow stripes of Rosario Central, from the city of his birth.

As an asthma sufferer, he played the sport that doctors told him he shouldn’t – rugby, constantly trying to prove to himself that he could overcome any obstacles placed in his path. ‘We Will Be Like Che’ is the motto that children at Cuban schools are taught. They don’t mean that kids should grow a wispy beard, play little heed to personal hygiene and try to overthrow African and Latin American governments. Oh no!

What Che embodied, still embodies more than forty years after his death, is an idealist who stuck to his beliefs, no matter what. And whether you agree with those ideals or not, what strikes a chord in today’s public relations dominated, idealogically-lite world is that sense of single-minded purpose, a selfless quest for something better.

This is perhaps best summed up in the famous photograph of Che taken by Alberto Korda in Havana in 1960. Guevara was attending a memorial service for the victims of an explosion on a ship in Havana harbour a short while earlier. The photo didn’t even make the next day’s papers. It was no big deal. But with a little cropping, it went on to become more than a simple news photo…it embodied the ideals of a generation fighting against the old ways.

I was in Vallegrande, Bolivia, a couple of years ago for the ceremonies to mark Che’s death in 1967 at the hands of CIA-backed Bolivian troops. He was captured near the town, exhausted, weak and defeated, not much trusted by the local peasants on whose behalf he was trying to foment a revolution.

We Will Be Like Che!

We Will Be Like Che!

But forty years on, many local people have embraced the image of Che – hanging it on their walls alongside pictures of Jesus. “I love Che,” one woman told me. “Better than the president we’ve got now. He’s far too left wing.”

When the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow pulled the financial plug on Cuba, Fidel Castro’s government turned to tourism to keep the revolution afloat. Foreigners went in their thousands attracted by the beaches, the women, the rum and the romance of the revolution – symbolised to some degree in that image of Che. They returned home with a box of cigars sold to them on the street by a man called Pedro who had ‘a cousin working in a cigar factory’ and that Che t-shirt.

But why should Cuba claim him all for themselves? He was after all an Argentine. Although for many years that was not widely recognised in his homeland. From the mid-1960s to the mid-80s Argentina was mostly run by either military or Peronist governments – none of which found it in their interests to promote the imagery of Mr Guevara.

That’s different now. A few months ago I went to the house where he lived as a boy in Alta Gracia in the province of Cordoba. You can see the chairs on which he sat, the toilet in which he peed and a motor-bike very similar to the one on which he embarked on his South American adventures.

Che sells. Che inspires. Although he didn’t do much inspiring for Rosario Central tonight, who can count themselves lucky to slink back to Rosario with an ill-deserved point in the bag.

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01/11
2009

Game Twelve v Chacarita Juniors

Chacarita Juniors 2  Argentinos Juniors 2

Argentinos Juniors have lost their way a bit lately – just two points from a possible nine in three games against opposition from the bottom of the table. Chacarita Juniors, newly promoted last season, needed to win this one and it showed, especially in the effusive way they celebrated their two goals. I just hope someone has spoken to them about the risk of unwanted pregnancies!

Argentina is a very touchy-feely society anyway, no-where more so than on the football pitch. The men kiss one another. Oh yes! Quite openly and without any shame. And not one of them is gay – that’s what they’ll tell you anyway.

Picture a similar scene in England: the pre-match niceties as Manchester United prepare to do Premiership battle against Arsenal. Sir Alex approaches Monsieur Wenger, slips his chewing gum into the side of his mouth, hugs Arsène and smacks a big kiss on his right cheek. Nothing fancy. No tongues or anything,  just a blokey hetero-sexual kiss. Implausible – certainly. Unimaginable – definitely.

But similar scenes take place during the pre-match warm-ups in Argentina every weekend.  It’s also happening on the street, in the workplace and beyond. Bloke on bloke kissing is rampant, and this in one of the most macho, meat devouring, hairy chested, some would say homophobic societies on the planet.  Of course, you kiss pretty much all women – bank managers, dentists, school teachers and your kids’ friends’ mums – definitely your kids’ friends’ mums. But not waitresses, unless you go to that café every day or she’s brought you an especially large steak and extra chips.

Goooollll!!!!

Goooollll!!!!

Don’t get me wrong. You can’t just kiss just any bloke you fancy.  You kiss your mates and your male relatives. In the pre-match handshaking ritual, those players from opposing teams who perhaps know one another from a previous club or the national team, will kiss. The referee and line officials, most definitely not and probably not the ball boys either.

It never used to be the case. About twenty years ago, male relatives kissed one another and that was it. It stopped there. I live here and have had to get used it – walking into any social setting with lips puckered. The trouble is that as a foreigner, you’re not always aware where the boundaries lie and when you’re overstepping the mark. I know that the rule is when you meet a man for the first time you proffer your hand. And when you depart, as a sign that you’re now friends, you kiss – perhaps accompanied by a matey slap on the upper arm.

Once that first kiss has broken the ice, you’ll kiss at every subsequent meeting. I’ve kissed male work colleagues, an insurance salesman, the headteacher at my sons’ school, a lawyer and assorted dads at the school. I’ve never kissed the ticket collectors on the trains, waiters or taxi drivers. If you’re meeting six mates in a bar, you’ll kiss them all on arrival and when you leave.

I’ve learnt that Sunday morning stubble and heavily food encrusted beards can be deeply unpleasant. Women and gay men – I now know your discomfort. But I know for sure that I’ve kissed men I did not know well enough and sometimes, confusing them with someone else, men I didn’t know at all. I just wasn’t sure and thought it better to lunge in rather than risk offending them.

All Alone and No-one to Kiss

All Alone and No-one to Kiss

Visits back to England have proved embarrassing. I now kiss as a matter of habit and it takes a day or two to re-accustom myself to the limp-handshake or rather weak ‘Alright,’ which pass as a greeting over there. I’ve simply been left dangling.

No-one seems to know how an act that twenty years ago would have got you a punch in the abdomen has become an intrinsic part of Argentine hetero-sexual culture.

Maybe it has helped to soften attitudes just a little – at least in Buenos Aires which nowadays has a vibrant, not quite open but certainly tolerated gay scene. Many bars and restaurants have been designated gay-friendly and every year gay cruise ships dock in Buenos Aires and the passengers paint the city pink. The Argentine government is proposing that gay marriages be legalised.

But like in Britain – Justin Fashanu apart – no professional Argentine footballer has ever come out of the changing room locker. All accept that a certain proportion of professional footballers, as in the rest of society, must be gay. It’s simply that no-one is prepared to be the first to admit it – not yet anyway.

Despite a woman president and woman defence minister, politics and big business are still dominated by men. It’s still a relatively unusual sight to see men pushing pushchairs and few will admit to having changed a nappy, although attitudes are changing. Men will generally only cook the Sunday meat barbeque.

Women are refereeing reserve team games and running the line in the top flight matches. The abuse hurled at the officials is incessant and vitriolic – to add sexism to the charge I don’t think would make a great deal of difference.

All this kissing is all very nice but it does nothing to lessen the aggression in the game. A defender will still scythe the legs from under a forward who ten minutes earlier he’d slapped his lips on.

Argentinos Junior’s Juan Mercier was sent off in the first half for violent conduct, Chacarita’s Mariano Echeverría went the same way in the second half for behaviour that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a dog fight. Another Chacarita player was stretchered off with a neck brace on. A last minute equaliser from Argentinos’s Mauro Bogado, with a blast from the edge of a crowded penalty area, meant plenty of relieved kissing all round.

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