So it’s Chelsea again. And Bayern Munich and Inter. And either Real Madrid or Barcelona and Rangers or Celtic. Most of the rest never win anything worth building a trophy cabinet for. So when, unexpectedly, that magic moment arrives you really have to milk it for all it’s worth.
That’s exactly what we’re doing as Argentinos Juniors sit on the cusp of a verge on the edge of a first championship for twenty-five years. I’ve been measured for my Red Bug t-shirt. Then there remained the no small matter of securing a ticket for that final, crucial game away to Huracan.
Worth the Wait?
The 11,500 available tickets went on sale to season ticket holders at the Argentinos Juniors ground on Thursday and Friday at 9am. I arrived at 9.30 on Thursday to find a queue stretching right around the ground. Everyone, it seemed, and their grandmother, was now an Argentinos Juniors fan.
“I’ve been supporting them since 1952,” was the gist of the conversation. Yeah! Right! That was probably the last time you went to a game too. The former cabinet minister, Anibal Fernandez was all over the newspapers talking about his love for the club in that slimy politician ‘Look at me. I’m just like you, the common people’ sort of way.
The sports pages suddenly noticed Argentinos Juniors after a season talking about how the championship was almost certainly going to end up with Estudiantes or Independiente.
The queue moved ten steps every twenty minutes or so. I counted them. Luckily I’d brought a decent book with me – Philip Kerr’s Dead Meat – a tale of Russian police battling crime in early 1990s St Petersburg. Nine chapters and four hours and ten minutes later I had my tickets in my hand. My two tickets, since that was the strict maximum per person. I had to use one of the tickets, obviously. But I have two sons and thanks to me, they’re both now Argentinos Juniors fans.
It was me that dragged them out for the 0-0 draw against Newell’s Old Boys that was abandoned twenty minutes from the end because of torrential rain. How we laughed as, soaked to the skin, we waded across flooded streets to wait for a bus that never came. Or there was that memorable evening after the 2-1 home defeat by Godoy Cruz when I didn’t have the change for the bus home and every Buenos Aires taxi driver appeared to have taken the day off and we walked half the length of the city. But then who could forget that 2-1 win away to San Lorenzo when we’d been losing 1-0. Or the 6-3 victory at Lanus after going two down in the first ten minutes. Or that game straight out of Roy of the Rovers, last week at home to Independiente when, with five minutes to go, we were 3-2 down and scrambled two goals to clinch it 4-3 and go top of the table.
How do you choose? Which child was it to be? I’m sure you can appreciate my dilemma. I was almost hoping to receive a phone call from the school on Friday telling me that one of my children had taken the head teacher hostage and was barricaded in the canteen. At least that way I’d be able, with a clear conscience, to ground him and take the well behaved son to the match. But of course they both came home boasting about top marks in that week’s tests.
Dressed for the Kill
I woke on Saturday at 5am in a sweat having dreamt that I was Meryl Streep and was stepping up to take a crucial penalty for Argentinos Juniors but couldn’t decide whether to shoot left or right. My sub-conscious, I reasoned as I lay under the warm duvet, was telling me that which son to take to a football match does not even begin to compare with the dilemma faced by the Streep character in Sophie’s Choice when she had to choose which of her children the Nazi concentration camp officer should kill. But let me tell you, that as Streep in a pair of Argentinos Juniors shorts, I didn’t look half bad!
There was really nothing else for it. Even before the newspaper had been slid under the front door, I was up and on my way to the ground to join the queue again. The remaining tickets were on sale to the general public. When I arrived at 6.34, I found a long line of foul-breathed fans, some in sleeping bags while others were slouched in camping chairs.
This was a mere two-and-a-half hour wait but my mission was successful and my dilemma evaporated in the steam from the well-earned coffee I drank afterwards in the cafe opposite the ground.
Argentinos Juniors still have to beat Huracan to lift that trophy. But they might not get this close to winning anything at all for another twenty-five years. And I’m not sure I can wait that long.
Tags: dead meat, huracan, meryl streep, philip kerr
