28/06
2010

Argentina v Mexico: Last 16

Argentina  3  Mexico  1

It’s now just one step away from official – almost nothing else in Argentina matters now apart from the World Cup quarter-final game against Germany on Saturday July 3rd at 11am Buenos Aires time.

The front-pages of even the serious newspapers are now dedicated to the football, people talk about little else and no plans for the weekend or the days beyond are made without a quick glance at the fixture list that we all carry in our wallets.

The one good thing to come out of England’s dismal defeat to Germany is that I can now put my support firmly behind Argentina. I would of course have been 100% behind John Terry and the boys in the always unlikely event of a quarter-final clash against Argentina. But in the meantime, my loyalties and my frayed emotions were split two ways which made Sunday a very difficult day indeed.

Hung out to dry!

Hung out to dry!

We left  early for Matt’s place in Palermo to watch both games and it meant packing England and Argentina shirts for myself, my wife and the kids. We had to find both the England and Argentina cardboard cutouts from the Tiki Tiki football magazine, read team reports from both camps and prepare ourselves emotionally for possible convincing victories, crushing defeats or mind-numbingly dull draws followed by extra-time and excrutiatingly painful penalties for two games fuelled only by as much beer, cake and hamburger as we could shove down our throats in the short break between matches. I’d also risen early to prepare a German potato salad to show there were no hard feelings for 1914, 1939, 1970, 1996 etc. There’s still plenty left and we’re feeding it to the cat. Or I might wrap it up and send it to the Uruguayan referee’s association.

It ain’t always easy being a football-loving expat in a football-mad country like Argentina. Especially if your first-choice team would have had trouble matching Accrington Stanley in the first round of the FA Cup, never mind a German counter-attack that moved more swiftly and decisively than Ashley Cole’s agent on speed.

The hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans, the tens of thousands of Chileans, the many Uruguayans and the smattering of Brazilians who live in Argentina still have much the same problem that I, thanks to woeful England defending, am now free of.

The weather is pretty nippy so it’s not a bad idea to wear two football shirts here at the moment. But we’re not doing that any more. The England shirts are in the wash then they’ll be placed carefully in the cupboard where they’ll stay until 2014.

Belief is growing in Argentina that they can win this cup. But alongside that belief there is also growing pressure on the team and the danger of complacency setting in.

No other news.

No other news.

Commentators in Buenos Aires and South Africa are saying how relaxed and happy Diego Maradona is these days. Perhaps even normal? But his team is winning. It’s easy to be relaxed when you’re winning. We’re all waiting to see how he performs under pressure and we’re still living with the promise, or was it a threat, that Diego made at the start of the tournament to run naked around the obelisk in the centre of Buenos Aires should Argentina bring the cup home.

I think that’s just something we’re going to have to live with since I’ve not seen a team that seriously looks like challenging Argentina – and the albicelestes haven’t even started playing their best yet! Messi is taking his time getting warmed up but when he does, with those around him already in their stride, I think we’re going to see something special.

The trouble with being surrounded by so much football waffle and gobbledegook is that it’s easy to lose sight of the ball. Someone once said, while the balance of their mind was disturbed, that ‘it’s only a game.’

Not here it’s not, amigo! Not here!

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23/06
2010

Argentina v Greece: Group B

Argentina  2  Greece  0

I called the repair company three weeks ago, as the Argentine winter chill was beginning to bite and well before the World Cup kicked off, to ask them to fix the gas heater in the living room.

Juan Carlos rolled up on his motorbike and spent five hours grunting and swearing before he managed to produce a flame, then he sped off into the night, 300 pesos richer.

I inspected his work and found the control dial in the wrong place and when I tried to relight the heater there was no spark. So the next day I called the office. And the next and the next and the day after that. Every day a polite elderly lady either told me that Juan Carlos was on his way or would call later. He never did.

Everything Must Go.

Everything Must Go.

I kept my cool since it doesn’t pay to lose your temper in these kinds of situations in Argentina. Three weeks later, at ten o’clock on the morning of the Argentina v Greece match, I called again. “He’s on his way,” I was assured. But of course he never showed. When I phoned later that evening I was told that he’d gone home early because of the match.

“But you told me at ten this morning that he was on his way,” I bleated. “The game didn’t kickoff until three-thirty.”

“You’re a foreigner,” she told me, sounding very haughty. “You simply wouldn’t understand.”

“That,” I replied, “is a racist comment.” I was about to go into 1966 and all that when she put the phone down on me.

While my wife and kids watched the match wrapped in blankets, I was downtown. I walked past Plaza San Martin where the big screen has been set up while Uruguay were playing Mexico. The hillside was decorated with Uruguayan flags.

But the rest of Buenos Aires was sky-blue and white. Although it hardly seemed possible, yet more sellers of sky-blue and white hats, horns, flags and shirts have sprouted on Florida, the main pedestrian shopping street. There are even shops now dedicated to the sale of similar but slightly better quality items.

I watched the game in the Richmond – all leather armchairs, oak panels and tea with milk served with proper pots and strainers. It’s more English than Stanley Matthews’ baggy shorts, John Terry’s jock-strap – you get the picture.

It had a big screen and miserable waiters – the kind who pride themselves on memorising the orders in what is a paperless restaurant. We were six and ordered a variety of beverages and cake. I was convinced that our man, with his Hitleresque moustache, would screw up. But no! Teas, coffees and cheesecake all arrived in front of the person they were meant for in time for the kick-off.

This little patch of oak-panelled England in the heart of Buenos Aires very soon became pure Argentine as the ‘albicelestes’ pushed on the Greek goal.

I think they’re getting better with each game, playing like a team and not relying overly on Messi. Two crucial goals have been scored by defenders, Heinze against Nigeria in the first game and the opener against Greece by Martin Demichelis, perhaps confusing his opponents with his Greek surname.

The Richmond - two sugars, please.

The Richmond - two sugars, please.

Of course, Argentina cheered that one but they cheered even louder for the second goal, tapped in off the rebound by Boca Juniors’ Martin Palermo. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s courageous and he plays his club football in Argentina. A goal from Messi would have been nice and it will come. But the day after the game I heard the word ‘Palermo’ everywhere – on the street, on the radio, from the bloke who delivered our soda siphons at 7.15 in the morning. The World Cup is all anyone talks about.

A fine example of how desperate the Argentine media is to fill its special World Cup TV programmes and newspaper supplements was an interview with Juan Sebastian Veron’s mum revealing that while her son was born in Argentina, he was in fact conceived in Greece. Fascinating! Did that little tidbit have a bearing on the game? Was that the reason Diego didn’t play him against Greece?

After the game, I walked back to Retiro train station, up Florida, against the tide of supporters leaving the Plaza San Martin. This was a nation content, a nation smiling. There is plenty of discussion about selection and tactics but one thing is clear. The Argentine people are fully behind their team.  And win, lose or draw, they’ll stay that way. I doubt you’ll hear booing from the terraces or see players swearing into the camera.

The next morning, as I settled down at home for the England v Slovenia game, England shirt on, England team cardboard cut-out on top of the tele, Rooney poster on the wall, blankets and hot coffee at hand, I heard the putter of a motorbike outside. It was Juan Carlos come to fix the heater, finally.

“Who you backing then?” he asked. I could have told him Burkina Faso and he’d have believed me. “African teams not doing too well,” he’d have said. He fixed the heater and rode off before Jermain Defoe had put the ball in the net.  I dare not touch it. I want to stay warm at least until Germany have knocked England out on penalties.

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17/06
2010

Argentina v South Korea: Group B

Argentina  4  South Korea  1

Eight o’clock on a crisp, cold Thursday morning and the kids are all wrapped in their sky blue and white uniforms enthusiastically skipping to school. Why the rush? Why the excitement? Is it double maths with Señor Rodriguez or is Señorita Lopez taking them on a voyage of discovery through twentieth century Argentine literature?

Bollocks is it! At 8.30 sharp in the school hall it’s Argentina versus South Korea in their second Group B game. The education authorities have ruled that any child who does not attend school while Argentina are playing will not be penalised. Dripping with face paint, draped under the Argentine flag and wearing the latest overpriced national team shirts, Argentina’s school children were lined up in front of their big screens for a lesson in footballing magic that they’ll never forget.

The Big Screen

The Big Screen

And all arranged by the schools – the big screen, the supervision, the permission to stay at home – the lot.

With the young ones packed off for a day of learning, I headed downtown to the Plaza San Martin where the Buenos Aires city authorities have erected a huge screen. It was initially to show Argentina’s games but since it’s up anyway they’re showing all the games. So the plaza has become a magnet for stray Americans, Australians, Germans and Dutch to gather when their teams are in action.

The plaza is on the edge of the business district so there were plenty of suited men on the grassy slope for this game. A drunken Russian stood behind me, a posse of city cleaners in front, tossing scraps of newspaper in the air in the way that Argentines do at football matches. I’m not sure they realised in their excitement that it was they who’d be cleaning it all up after the game.

There was blue and white smoke, there was swearing, there was a very tall, broad-shouldered man who stood in front of me just as the match started. It was just like the real thing, the next-best thing to being in South Africa. Perhaps better than South Africa because all I had trespassing on my eardrums were the ramblings of the drunken Russian and not the incessant cacophony of vuvuzelas.

Fly the Flags

Fly the Flags

Most Argentines at the beginning of the tournament were cautiously optimistic about their team’s prospects. With each match, with each Messi run, with each minute that passes without Maradona making a complete boludo of himself and shaming the nation, that cautiousness subsides and the optimism grows.

This is a team still finding its feet, its players still getting to know one another. Gabriel Heinze was the hero in the first match, hat-trick Higuain this time round. It could be Agüero, Di Maria or Tevez in the games to come. And Diego Milito, the man who single-handedly won the Champions League final for Inter Milan, hasn’t yet been allowed to take his tracksuit off.

I still believe that Argentina were the best team in the 2006 World Cup. I believed in them but I’m not sure they believed in themselves and went out to an average German side in the quarter finals.

Diego Maradona is no tactical genius but what he is good at is inspiring his players. He’ll whip them into a frothing frenzy. He’s said that if Argentina lifts the trophy, he’ll run naked around the obelisk in the centre of Buenos Aires and that’s something we all want to see. Don’t we?

With Argentina’s fourth goal and a second victory safely tucked away, the workers drifted away from the plaza and to their offices and factories. Form 7c went to their classroom to find that they did afterall have double maths. Mr Rodriguez, probably of mixed Spanish, Uruguayan and maybe even South Korean descent, wasn’t going to let a mere game of football deprive him of an opportunity to inflict sado-masochistic algebra on his pupils.

The Argentine side has shown to a country that takes its football very seriously — a country that suspends school for the big games for Christ’s sake! — that it’s a team to be taken seriously.

If I were in the Greek team, firstly I’d be very surprised. Secondly I’d have to change my name to Papadopoulos and thirdly, I’d be very scared indeed.

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12/06
2010

Argentina v Nigeria: Group B

Argentina  1  Nigeria  0

Thank goodness for that! I’m not sure I could have tolerated much more World Cup build-up. The newspapers have been producing World Cup supplements for some time now and long ago ran out of useful things to say. My favourite headline on one of the 24-hour rolling news channels was: “The dulce de leche has arrived.”

For anyone who doesn’t know, dulce de leche is a sticky brown milky caramelly sort of mixture that Argentines smear on cakes, biscuits, ice-cream and possibly even each other. They dip bananas in it. It’s as Argentine as Diego Maradona dancing the tango while he chews on a prime cut of beef.

It’s to Argentines what Vegemite is to Australians or decent tea-bags are to Brits. Even if you don’t indulge that much while you’re at home, it’s a point of national pride to make sure you’re well stocked while you’re living abroad.

So it was big news that the dulce de leche had arrived at the Argentine camp in South Africa. That sizzling headline was only pushed off the top spot when it was announced that Messi would be sharing a room with Veron.

Do any other colleagues, when travelling abroad for work, share hotel rooms? I thought not, unless they work for cash-strapped companies and the Argentine team certainly doesn’t fall into that category.

The thinking is, of course, that Leo Messi is young and Juan Sebastian Veron is a knotty, worldly, experienced sort of fellow. But what’s he going to do? Read Messi bedtime stories? Tuck him in? Make sure he’s up on time and cleans his teeth?

There is almost no shop, bank, estate agent or product in Buenos Aires that doesn’t, in some form or another, display it’s allegiance to the national cause. Sellers of sky-blue and white scarves, flags, hats, masks and general plastic and nylon tat have sprouted on every street corner.

The city council has erected two huge screens in public areas and hoardings for fizzy drinks have built in clocks counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds to the World Cup. The sale of flat-screen TVs has gone through the roof, boosting an otherwise sluggish economy.

Sky Blue and White

Sky Blue and White

It was dangerous to be on the street ten minutes before the 11am (Argentine time) kick-off  for Argentina’s first game against Nigeria as all battled to be in front of a screen on time. There was anxious and impatient tutting at the supermarket check-outs where we queued with baskets laden with crisps, beer and dulce de leche. Then a mad dash. Ten minutes after the kick-off Argentines, not known for their punctuality, were still dashing … then – silence.

The birds were quiet, the wind blew the brushwood across the empty streets, the bar-room swing door creaked and a couple of lone Canadian tourists scurried nervously back to their hotel, wondering if perhaps the world had ended or the military were about to take over.

Then there was a collective roar that sent the Buenos Aires pigeons fluttering from trees as Gabriel Heinze, on the other side of the world, strayed into the Nigerian box and, unhindered by opposing defenders who were all attending to Mssrs Messi and Tevez, headed the ball into the net.

This was a solid team performance in which Messi played well. In any other context that sentence wouldn’t sound very dramatic. But given how disjointed Argentina’s recent team displays under Maradona have been and how poorly Leo has played for his national side, it really is very significant.

This was a good start against formidable opponents. Some players, most notably Tevez and Veron, didn’t play particularly well but the team did and the less impressive players will play better. With the likes of Gabriel Milito and Sergio Aguero sitting on the subs bench, they’d better. Most Argentines will be quietly content with this performance which, but for an outstanding Nigerian goalkeeper, would have delivered a more convincing scoreline.

The only dark cloud hanging over a promising start for Argentina is the presence in South Africa of a number of barra brava … the hardcore Argentine fans, some of them with criminal records.

More than a Cardboard Cutout...

More than a Cardboard Cutout...

The media here lets us know who they are and what some of them have done. Twelve were turned around and sent home by the South African authorities on their arrival in Johannesburg. Some of them have their trips financed and are given tickets for the games by the Argentine clubs, national football association and political parties. Quite what they get in return is not clear.

Thursday’s game against South Korea kicks off a 8.30am so the schools have installed big screens in the playgrounds and assembly halls so that no child need miss a single moment of the action.  Business deals have been rearranged, weddings postponed and non-life threatening operations rescheduled.

Argentina needs football and it needs victory in football, especially on the world stage, to feel good about itself when so much else is not as it should be. And it’s all so much better in high definition on a flat screen that stretches from wall-to-wall.

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