25/04
2010

Game Sixteen: v Gimnasia y Esgrima de la Plata

Argentinos Juniors  3  Gimnasia y Esgrima de la Plata  1

My voice is a little hoarse from all the shouting at this afternoon’s game so you’ll have lean closer to the screen. The Red Bugs were back on form and, but for a nimble visiting goalkeeper, would have won this game 6-1.

Nestor Ortigoza doesn’t miss from the penalty spot and put Argentinos Juniors on their way after Ismael Sosa was brought down in the area. Gimnasia, a big club with relegation worries, equalised in the second half but the home side, with fine goals from Sosa and Santiago Raymonda, clinched it to leave us in second place, just a point behind the leaders, Estudiantes, with three games to play.

World Cup fever is beginning to bite here in Buenos Aires and the reason I can tell is that twelve-year-old boys are huddled in groups swapping their World Cup stickers.

“I’ve got three Stephane Grichtings of Switzerland – I’ll swap you one for Australia’s Luke Wilkshire.” At no other time are players so obscure held in such high esteem across the world.

At the moment, we’ve only got one Mexican but a glut of Cristiano Ronaldos. He’s worth nothing. What we need are more North Koreans. Kim Kum-Il would do or a Pak Nam-Chol. We’ll give you a Dirk Kuyt in exchange. He’s easy.

Got Beckham

Got Beckham

I’ve long wondered whether David Beckham collects stickers of himself. He must be tempted, surely? “Ooh look,” he says, opening his packets over the breakfast table. “I’ve got me – again. I’ll give Giggsy a ring and see if he wants to swap me for Diego Forlan.”

“No you don’t,” shrieks Posh. “You’re keeping it. I want to stick you on the wall above my bed.”

“No,” scream the kids. “Beckhams are easy. Everyone’s got them. We want Carlos Costly of Honduras, number 618. He’s much better. Or Slovenia’s Nejc Pecnik. He’s worth three Beckhams.”

Closer to the World Cup, when our album is a little fuller, we’ll head to the Parque Centenario where boys and girls and those with them, otherwise known as ‘grown men who collect football stickers but pretend it’s their kids that are doing it because they’re too embarrassed to admit it,’ gather to trade.

We were there in 2006 when the scene at times resembled the floor of the Buenos Aires stock market just before one of the country’s many economic crashes.

Rumours were flashing around that the lad in the blue coat had a bucketful of spare Junichi Inamotos of Japan and West Bromwich Albion but he only needed a couple of Serb defenders to complete his album. Five-year-olds know that a hard-to-come-by Jermaine Defoe will fetch five easy to obtain Paraguayans. The rules of supply and demand are practised here in their most naked form.

This being Latin America, speculators have moved in. Men in dirty raincoats who have never really learned to shave properly, lurk on the outskirts of the park. They know the cash value of an Edison Cavani of Uruguay sticker. They know who’s rare and whether there’s a glut of Yacine Bezzaz’s of Algeria.

“Psst! I’ve got Chileans,” they’ll hiss through yellow teeth. “And the New Zealand goalkeeper.”

Do these guys have relations working at the sticker distribution plant? I don’t know, but you can guarantee that whenever and wherever there’s a demand, these fellows will come crawling out of the drains. They’re probably the same people who, within minutes of the first raindrop falling, are on every street corner selling umbrellas or before every Argentina game are at the traffic lights flogging sky-blue and white hats, shirts and horns.

I might see if they can come up with the Gerd Muller I need to complete my 1974 collection. And c’mon guys! Who’s hoarding all the Mexicans?

I don't know what this means.

I don't know what this means. Pic by Lucas

We’ve already got Martin Palermo of Argentina and Boca Juniors and so, probably, has his Boca teammate, Juan Roman Riquelme – pinned to his darts board. For the two men, who form the backbone of the Boca team, hate one another with a passion. Their petty squabbling may go a large way to explaining why this usually regal beauty of Argentine football looks at the moment like an overweight tart cadging smokes at her local pub on a Saturday night.

Normally, you’d expect their great city rival, River Plate, to be gloating over this demise. But  they too are slumped near the foot of the table with their own fishnet stockings torn and lipstick smudged across their pudgy cheeks.

Martin Palermo is all blood, guts and passion. He puts his life on the line in every game and even when he’s not wearing a head bandage seeping blood, you feel as though he should be.

Riquelme is a tortured soul, intelligent, independent and some say, just plain weird. The Boca fans are split on whether he’s good for the team. There are those who say he’s one of the best playmakers the club has ever had. Others complain he doesn’t run enough and sows discontent in the dressing room.

He supplied the pass in a recent match that enabled Martin Palermo to score his 219th Boca Juniors goal – a club record. But rather than join in the back-slapping and buttock groping, or whatever it is they get up to in those celebratory rucks, Juan Roman sauntered off in the other direction to file his nails, his nose stuck snootily in the air.

Claudio Borghi

Claudio 'Bichi' Borghi

Palermo accused Riquelme of a whole host of things from not passing the ball to him enough to saying nasty things about him behind his back to borrowing his soap without asking. Riquelme responded and the club authorities had to ask them to tone it down. It seems to have worked since Riquelme supplied the pass that enabled Palermo to score in today’s 2-0 victory over San Lorenzo and the two men then hugged, kissed and danced the tango together.

What concerns me most about all this turmoil at Boca is that rumours have begun circulating that they’re keen to poach the Argentinos Juniors manager, Claudio ‘Bichi’ Borghi. He’s done fine things in a very short with limited resources at this modest little club. What might he do, so the thinking goes, to revitalise a slumbering giant like Boca Juniors?

Don’t go Borghi! We wouldn’t swap you for a whole team of Mexican stickers, even with a Carlos Costly and the North Korean badge thrown in for good measure.

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20/04
2010

Game Fifteen: v Arsenal

Arsenal  2  Argentinos Juniors  2

This was one of those trips across town to a nether region of Greater Buenos Aires, Sarandi, requiring a convoluted combination of bus, train and underground travel. And for that, you need loose change which is often as sparse as decent options in a West Ham attack.

Like Gold

Like Gold

The banks will, reluctantly, change ten pesos worth. I, however, choose to queue outside a hole in the wall at the main Retiro train terminal for twenty pesos of clinky, shiny coins. Then, if I’ve got the time and no-one’s spotted me, I’ll queue again and head home with pockets bulging like the cheeks of a hamster that’s just emerged from an ‘All You Can Eat’ granary and jangling like the Tin Man on speed.

This is the only country I know where one peso can be worth more than two pesos. That’s because if it’s pissing with rain and I’m far from home, then I’d gladly exchange my crisp, new but easily obtainable two peso note, which the buses won’t accept, for a grubby, sweaty one peso coin, which they do. And I’d dance a tango and perform a little juggling trick as the tip.

This shortage of change is an inconvenience to public transport users like myself. But it’s also turning me into a liar. “No,” I’ll mumble and fumble when the shopkeeper asks if I’ve got any change. “I haven’t got any, none whatsoever, not a thing.” He knows I’m lying and I know that he knows that I’m lying, but what can I do?

I have to consider the welfare of that huge army of one-legged Peruvian guitar players, blind Bolivian jugglers and banjo-playing waifs and strays that strolls the aisles of the buses and trains to earn a few pennies to feed their hungry families. And of course, I need my own bus fare home.

This shortage of change has never been adequately explained which gives rise to a wide array of conspiracy theories. One is that the bus drivers sell 90 pesos worth of coins for 100 pesos on the black market.

Travelling Bichos

Travelling Bichos

The man behind me in the queue had the idea that the Argentine Central Bank bought their coins for US dollars but were short of readies because President Cristina Kirchner hoarded the greenbacks to finance her shopping trips to New York. There was something in there about Paraguayan gun runners and a large shipment of marmalade from Tanzania but it was my turn to be served and I couldn’t stay to join up the dots.

Conspiracy theories abound, partly because of the manipulation and often downright dearth of official information.

The official government statistics office, the INDEC, quite blatantly misquotes the inflation figures. President Kirchner never gives interviews and rarely attends news conferences and her ministers follow her lead.

Football, as it so often does, mirrors the rest of society. Those who run the clubs are accountable only to shady politicians and the tougher elements of the barra brava to whom they owe favours, so it’s very difficult to get a grasp of what’s going on in the corridors and dark corners of the grounds.

One of the biggest footballing mysteries of all is that surrounding Argentina’s 1978 World Cup win, with their place in the final rumoured to have been bought by the then military dictatorship.

There were two groups of four in what passed for the semi-finals, with the top team in each going through to the final. The Dutch clinched their spot but Argentina needed to beat Peru by at least four clear goals to meet them. They scored six.

Worthy Winners?

Worthy Winners?

It could simply have been that a very good home team, boasting Passarella, Ardiles, Kempes and Tarantini, did what they had to do – and more – against a tired Peru.

But the Peruvian keeper, Ramón Quiroga, was born in Argentina. There’s been talk of men in funny jackets making clandestine visits to the Peruvian players, of phone conversations between the Argentine military and their counterparts in Lima and Argentine ships laden with goodies sitting off the Peruvian coast just waiting for that fourth goal to go in before upping anchors and sailing into port while the crew danced a victory jig on the poop deck and tossed presents from the crow’s nest.

None of this has ever been convincingly proved nor satisfactorily disproved and is likely to be discussed for as long as football is played and beer is drunk – or Alex Ferguson discards that piece of gum he’s been chewing for the past forty years. Whichever is the sooner.

It’s all a bit like the debate over whether England’s third goal in the 1966 World Cup final crossed the line or not. Except without the ships and the military and the llamas. Didn’t I mention the llamas? But apart from that – almost the same.

There  were plenty of theories circulating the terraces at this game. Arsenal is where the Argentine Football Association boss, Julio Grondona, began his long career. So every dodgy refereeing decision – and there were plenty here tonight – is met with a chorus of abuse insinuating that the fellow in black had been ‘got at’  by the top man.

Argentinos were a tad unlucky but were really not good enough to grab all three points. That would have put on them on top but perhaps they were struck by stage fright. They started well with an early goal from José  Luis Calderón,, who is old enough to have been a ballboy at that ’78 final. But Arsenal pulled one back before half-time then took the lead early in the second half with a penalty which really shouldn’t have been.

The visitors were unusually disjointed and gave the ball away far too often. They were just not themselves. But Facundo Coria did equalise just before the final whistle and Argentinos Juniors now sit just one point behind the joint leaders, Estudiantes and Independiente with four games to go.

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13/04
2010

Game Fourteen: v Colon

Argentinos Juniors  3  Colon  1

Argentines will criticise their government for many things but I hope they give them a standing ovation for the latest announcement.  The education minister, Alberto Sileoni, has said that schools should show the Argentina games during the World Cup. Not only should they show them, they will be incorporated into the curriculum. Mr Sileoni called the World Cup a ‘party with a huge effect on teaching.’

So no clandestine listening to radios behind the bike sheds, no phoning in sick, no sneaky calls home during the break to check the latest score. The Argentine Football Association is even going to work with the education authorities to produce a folder on the games. Wonderful!

Past your bedtime, chicos!

Past your bedtime, chicos!

So when the World Cup is over, you’ll be able to stop any Argentine child on the street and ask him or her about recent Nigerian religious and ethnic strife, or the current state of South Korean cinema or perhaps whether they think the European Union should bail out the leaky Greek economy.  They’ll also be learning about recent South African history and whether Argentina is more suited to a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3 formation.

So Juan’s school timetable will look something like this: 0900-1000 Maths. 1015 Mid-morning break. 1015-1115 History. 1115-1315 Argentina v South Korea. (Homework: 1,000 words – Lionel Messi has never reproduced his Barcelona form for the national side because he doesn’t get the same quality of service – Discuss.)

During the 2006 World Cup, many schools did suspend classes to show the key games. Some closed altogether in the knowledge that half the class simply wouldn’t turn up – because the kids wouldn’t come if they didn’t have to, obviously, but also because the parents wouldn’t have brought them and half the teachers would have called in sick.

It’s been said in one of those surveys commissioned to confirm what we already know, that 91% of Argentines are interested in the World Cup and will at least watch the games in which the national side is involved.

The week Argentina met Germany in the 2006 quarter finals, a national newspaper took a photograph of the busy 9 de Julio junction with Corrientes right in the centre of Buenos Aires at two on a weekday afternoon when it was chocoblock with angry, frustrated, impatient motorists all with somewhere very important to get to. The following day at the same time they took the same picture which showed just one car, a dog sniffing a dustbin and what looked like a couple of bemused-looking tourists, probably Canadians.

Every shop, restaurant, newspaper kiosk and petrol station will have their TVs on for the World Cup. I’ve even seen shoeshine men out on the street with small battery-run screens positioned next to their polish.

Football in Argentina is infused into children from birth. Boys play football at school and in the parks like they do anywhere else. It’s also a tradition here for all the kids in the class to have birthday parties to which all the others in the class are invited, even snotty-nosed Carolina who no-one ever wants to sit next to. That means you get at least 20 parties a year and a lucrative industry of fiesta salons has developed, providing entertainers and food.

A popular version among the boys is to hire an indoor pitch with trainer and play footy for an hour-and-a-half, followed by hot-dogs, fizzy drinks and birthday cake.

That’s tough for that 0000.1% of boys that don’t like football. They simply have to play with the girls and then wait until they’re older and can pursue their interest in model trains, music or clothes design.

And those same kids will continue playing football together beyond school and into adulthood. I’ve seen groups of elderly men, too frail to kick a ball, but still meeting for the post-football pizza and beer as they have every Tuesday evening for the past fifty years – just without the football.

Child Prodigy...Little Diego.

Child Prodigy...Little Diego.

Argentina boasts a well-run and well-coached network of football schools which ensure that little potential talent falls through the net. The professional clubs all have nursery teams and both the clubs and parents will invest a massive amount of time and effort in nurturing little Carlos or Javier’s footballing genius.

But if Argentina falls down in the latter stages of this World Cup, I think I know what the problem is. They never had enough sleep as children and will simply run out of steam.

Tonight’s game kicked off at 8.30 and didn’t finish until well gone 10. By the time you’ve left the stadium and arrived home you could be talking about close to midnight. The terraces were crawling with children, yet Tuesday is a school day, kicking off at 8.15am.

There’s many a time that I’ve been leaving a restaurant at elevenish at night, early by Argentine standards, to see families arriving – with their children. It’s perfectly normal for my kids’ friends to phone at gone 10, on a school night, and ask to speak to them. I’m not allowed to say that they’ve gone to bed since that would make them the subject of ridicule the following day.

I think I’ll drop a note to Diego and tell him that the squad needs to be in bed by ten and then be fed a hearty breakfast the next morning.

Argentinos Juniors have obviously been getting plenty of sleep and eating lashings of porridge for breakfast since, despite a nervy performance against Colon, they seem to be staying the course.

Argentinos Juniors goalkeeper, Nicolas Peric, gets my man of the match award. He saved a Colon penalty on twenty minutes, blocked a couple of fine shots and was hugely entertaining as he stamped the ground in rage and harangued his colleagues after Colon scored a last minute consolation goal. First half goals from Oritigoza and Calderon and a second half strike from Ismael Sosa also helped, as did the fact that the match officials don’t seem to grasp the offside rule.

This win plants Argentinos Juniors in second place behind Godoy Cruz on goal difference. Earlier in the day, they put six past Tigre. Independiente and Estudiantes are sniffing our backsides, just two points behind with five nerve-tingling games to go.

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08/04
2010

Game Thirteen: v Rosario Central

Rosario Central  0  Argentinos Juniors  1

I couldn’t tell you exactly how many beauty parlours, hairdressing salons, tanning shops, gyms and plastic surgeries I pass on the journey from my house to the ground but it’s a lot. They’re all over Buenos Aires, a city where many claim that they’re the most beautiful people in South America, perhaps the world.

And there are days, when strolling along the sun-baked streets downtown, I have to admit that, although I’m a happily married man getting on in years, my head is turned more often than a tennis spectator on speed.

No Beauty Contest

No Beauty Contest

I think it’s fair to say that the people of Buenos Aires, both men and women, straight and gay, pride themselves on their appearance. Not surprising perhaps when you consider that they’ve got a mix of Italian and Spanish style with a touch of French panache and a lick of debonair British polo-player thrown in for good measure.

In one of those ridiculous surveys commissioned by the cosmetics industry that has no scientific basis whatsoever but which I’m going to quote anyway to prove my point, it was found that 69 percent of Argentine women thought that their boyfriends and husbands spent far too much time and money on their appearance.

They enjoy ridiculously long holidays on the beaches of Punta del Este in Uruguay or the Argentine Atlantic coast where it’s important to look your bronzed best. They’ll spend all year getting there if necessary.

The plastic surgery industry is one of the most highly developed in the world. Teenage girls are given breast implant operations for their birthdays and last year disco’s were offering boob jobs as lottery prizes. I read about one fellow who bought up all the tickets he could in the hope of passing the winning number on to his girlfriend. But he only ended up with the third prize – a bottle of non-alcoholic pineapple fizz. The first prize went to a bus driver from Mendoza who shortly after the operation left his job to pursue a new career in cabaret.

Style in Buenos Aires is important. I see them on the bus casting furtive glances at my slightly too short jeans and faded and fraying replica 1960s West Ham shirt. They can giggle all they like. I can handle it.

But the more common reaction to this intense pressure from society to conform, to look good is a growth in eating disorders and tens of thousands of young people who simply don’t go out.

In the wealthier Buenos Aires suburbs, there is a breed of middle-aged to elderly woman which is incredibly well-dressed but frighteningly over-groomed. They usually have rasping voices since they smoke incessantly, under the impression that it keeps them thin. And thin they are, with brown leathery skin and hair frizzled to straw after half a lifetime in the hairdressers. They were almost certainly beautiful in their youth and beyond but have not matured gracefully. The plastic surgery shows. They often look like they’ve been taken apart and reassembled but using the wrong instructions. Mieuow!!

It should also be taken into account that the weekend nights out in Buenos Aires don’t get going until after midnight. And if you’re not looking your best after four or five hours of preparation in front of the mirror, then forget it. Go to the football instead.

For that is where Argentina’s ugly people go. The ugly, the overweight, the underweight, the under-prepared and the couldn’t care lesses. There are fellows in their sixties sporting hairstyles that were in fashion at the same time as high-waisters, platform shoes and Showaddywaddy. And even then, they were crap.

Bellies flop freely over too-tight jeans, barely covered by nylon replica Argentinos Juniors shirts. No-one cares.

Ortalora - Ugly but Proud

Ortalora - Ugly but Proud

A couple of years ago I interviewed Gonzalo Ortalora who had written a book called Feo or Ugly. He was a pretty ordinary looking chap but said that as a teenager he’d been a real eye-sore, with greasy hair, prominent teeth and spots. He was proposing a tax on the beautiful people since he said they had all the advantages in life. They got better jobs, better girlfriends and boyfriends and were not discriminated against in public. He wanted Carlos Tevez to sponsor him but I don’t think anything ever came of that.

Pretty much every other club in the Argentine first division has got a better-looking ground than Argentinos Juniors. And a fancier team bus and swishier changing rooms. I’ve been in the Argentinos Juniors changing rooms and they’re not much better than the ones at my old school. The graffiti is in Spanish, obviously, and a little wittier.

But the football that the Red Bugs are playing at the moment is a sight to behold. It’s beautiful. A few more goals and it’ll be winning beauty contests.

This game against second-from-bottom Rosario Central was not one of the prettiest, but it was enough. Fresh from a victory over Boca Juniors at the weekend, the home side had the edge in the first half, hitting the crossbar and having a goal disallowed for offside.

But Argentinos Juniors put on their best face after the break and wrapped up the three points with a well-worked goal slotted home by Ismael Sosa.  With just six games to go, the Red Bugs are just two points behind the leaders, Independiente. River Plate lost yesterday and Boca Juniors were beaten 3-0 by Colon. Who’d have thought it?!

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