So who am I and what qualifies me to write about Argentine football in particular and Argentina in general? On the football front I know no more than the average punter. My aim is to follow Argentinos Juniors through thick and thin – I suspect thinner rather than thicker. I’ll go to all their home games in the 2009 Apertura season and to as many of the away games as family commitments and a lousy sense of direction will allow.

I’m married to an Argentine, Claudia, and have been since shortly after the end of the Falklands/Malvinas war. So that, and the Hand of God goal, are two things we simply don’t talk about.

I first visited Argentina about the time Alex Ferguson arrived at Old Trafford and Wimbledon were a force to be reckoned with.

After a number of subsequent visits, I came to live here early in 2006 as the BBC’s South America correspondent. As the correspondent based in Buenos Aires you will inevitably cover tango, meat and football.  Not a bad job, although the tango can wear a bit thin after a while especially if, like me, you dance like Vinnie Jones in a pair of hob-nail boots.

Previously I was the BBC’s man in Havana. A Socialist paradise, some will tell you. But how can any land in which baseball is the national sport and football a mere foreign novelty, be any kind of paradise?

Now Madrid at the end of the nineties – that was more like it. I was a regular at the Vicente Calderon stadium – the home of Atletico Madrid and made occasional forays to the Bernabeu and other Spanish grounds.

My first game in England, as a nipper on the back of my dad’s scooter, was to see West Ham when Bobby Moore still had the imprint of the Jules Rimet trophy on the palms of his hands. And I’ve reacquainted myself with Upton Park whenever I’ve been back in London for long enough to save up for a ticket.

My sons Benjamin (12) and Lucas (9) are the only boys in their school, probably the only boys in Buenos Aires, who wear claret and blue to their football lessons.

I am no longer the BBC correspondent here, or anywhere else for that matter. Hopefully all those years of experience and know-how will serve me well on the terraces at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium – home of Argentinos Juniors.

Daniel Schweimler (August 2009)