Buenos Aires– mid-January and it’s hot, very hot. There’s no football, not real football anyway, into which the players put their hearts and souls. It’s simply not worth it when it’s 34 degrees centigrade in the shade and the humidity is dense enough to make the buildings sweat. Although that might be leaking air-conditioners. I’m not sure.

The players are in training for the start of the 2012 Clausura season which kicks off in a few weeks time. They play in lots of mini-three and four team tournaments at coastal resorts since that’s where anyone who can has gone to escape the searing heat of the cities.

No-one cares that much, despite some frantic coverage in the football pages since they’ve got to fill the space with something, so anything will do.

The Beach at Mar del Plata. Room for more?

With the exodus to the beach, where city dwellers will sit sweaty armpit alongside sweaty armpit with other city dwellers, but from different cities to the one they’re from, Buenos Aires becomes almost tolerable.

The roads are not jam packed, except for those leading out of the city. And there are seats to be had on the underground, more now than ever before since the city council has just put the fare up by a whopping 127percent.

You find that the shops, bars and cafes that you usually frequent are often closed with a hurriedly scribbled note on the door reading: Back in February, or March. Doctors, dentists, electricians and car mechanics have also migrated to the coast or the mountains.

Tough luck if you’d left your sandals to be repaired or you were awaiting a replacement heart pacemaker.

The summer also draws a very peculiar creature out into the open – right out into the open. I’m sure there are sub-species in Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere but I believe the most intense concentration is to be found in Buenos Aires. It’s the ageing sun seeker.

While in Britain the sound of the cuckoo heralds the arrival of summer, in Buenos Aires it’s the sighting of a portly but already all-over tanned man of between sixty and eighty years old with his shirt off.

Susana. How old?

A short while later, the female of the species will emerge to prostrate herself in the most sun-baked, open spaces in the city wearing the kind of bikini you wouldn’t let your fifteen year-old daughter be seen in.

I spotted one the other day while warming up to run in the Bosques de Palermo. From a distance, when all I could see was bikini and tanned limbs, I thought I’d stumbled across a younger member of the species and went to investigate, in the interests of anthropological research, obviously.

This however was a fine example of a more mature specimen, at least seventy years-old, her much tanned leathery skin dangling loosely from a skeletal frame. She displayed the obligatory cigarette in one hand and the Blackberry in the other. Her straight, dry hair was of a colour not known to nature.

These creatures can read and have access to the Internet yet seem to know nothing of UV rays or the increasingly fragile O-zone layer.

I’d like to emphasis here that I’m trying hard not to be judgmental. These people have the right to tan wherever and whenever they want, although I’d rather they didn’t do it in public before I’d had my breakfast.

The fact that the notion of growing old gracefully is totally alien to them or that smoking the amount they do gives them a voice that sounds like Lemmy from Motorhead after a particularly bad night is simply an observation – not a judgment.

Like male body builders, they seem unaware that they’re generally unattractive to the opposite sex and really only out to impress and compete with others of the same ilk.

The most skilled and celebrated exponent of this art of growing old ungracefully is Susana Gimenez – a once beautiful model, actress and talk show hostess who is now in her eighties, or possibly nineties, who continues to believe that she can defy the advances and ravages of time by much make-up, plastic surgery and photo-shopping. You’ll not find her tanning in public. It’s strictly the tanning studio and the beaches of Punta del Este in Uruguay for the upper end of the market.

Another, but much younger exponent of the art is the president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who will shortly turn 59.

Cool Summer

Cristina has been known to keep other heads of state waiting while she prepared to face the cameras.

Her husband and predecessor as president, Nestor, died in October 2010 and she’s worn black ever since. But not just any old black.

She wears glamorous, fashionable black and rarely the same outfit twice, adding a new twist to that old Henry Ford adage about being able to choose any colour you liked, as long it was black.

Reading this back I’ve realized that it’s impossible to talk about appearances in this way without sounding bitchy. So I guess I’m just going to have to pour myself another saucer of milk and live with that

It’s 34 degrees centigrade in the shade and I was thinking about slinging the hammock in the patio but really can’t be arsed.

My antidote to the suffocating heat is to switch the fan on, prepare some form of iced drink and watch English winter Premiership football on cable TV….Kenny Dalglish in that ridiculous coat, goose-pimpled Newcastle fans in cap-sleeved T-shirts and cups of steamy Bovril all round.

I’ll be back when the season kicks off. Stay warm!

For anyone who believes that football is just a game, you really had to see this match and its grisly aftermath.

River Plate needed to win by two clear goals, after losing the first leg in Cordoba 2-0, to avoid relegation to  “La B,” as the second division here is called, for the first time in their 110 year history.

River started well, Mariano Pavone, scoring after just five minutes when the visiting defence made itself scarce. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of nervousness, play was sloppy and the fouls came in thick and fast.

The TV cameras seemed to spend almost as much time focussing on fans biting their nails, gripping their neighbour and praying to whichever god they thought might be listening as on the football.

You couldn’t fault the home side for commitment but the Belgrano goalkeeper, Juan Carlos Olave, was playing a blinder and there were plenty of examples to show why River Plate, despite being one of the richest, best supported and prestigious clubs in Argentina, are in this dire situation.

Belgrano made the task almost impossible seventeen minutes into the second half when Guillermo Farre took advantage of two River defenders doing an impression of the Keystone Kops and slipped the ball between the goalkeeper’s legs.

Grisly aftermath...

But it wasn’t over yet. The script writers were busy with more nail-biting drama. The referee, Sergio Pezzotta, handed River what I thought was a dubious penalty. Pavone hit it low and hard to the goalkeeper’s right but this was always going to be his afternoon and he saved it.

That miss seemed to knock the wind out of River. They ran and they scraped but they never again looked like scoring. In the final minute of the game River fans began ripping their stadium apart and throwing chunks onto the pitch.

The game was abandoned with just seconds left to play but the result was irreversible. Belgrano were up. But the real news is that River Plate are down.

The violence continued. River fans turned on one another. They tried to find their own players, presumably for a ritual lynching. The police fired water cannons, the fans broke windows. The police fired tear gas, the fans hit them with sticks. The police charged them with batons, the fans smashed up a TV van. It wasn’t pretty.

These are simply fans not accustomed to failure. They’ve been national champions 33 times and won the Libertadores cup twice. Even when they don’t win, they reach finals, they challenge for top honours. Not any more, they don’t.

This being Argentina, the psychologists had already been called on to analyse the trauma the River fans were going through. They reported an increase in the amount of anti-depressants being asked for.

One said that some fans identified with the club as a kind of substitute parent. They idolised it but when that idolatry goes into reverse, when the club lets them down, they’re likely to turn nasty, to express a comparative amount of anger and violence.

That’s exactly what happened, even before the final whistle was blown. And it’s likely to get worse for River fans.

After years of gloating about their success to friends and colleagues, they’re going to have to suffer a fair amount of reciprocal taunting, especially from Boca fans.

Unlike in the English league, there’s no umbrella payment to soften their fall into the lower echelons.

The 28million pesos (about US$6million) they get in television money each year will be reduced to just four million. Their entrance fees, set by the Argentine football association, will be cut, the value of their players will diminish and they’re going to have to pay for the damage caused to their own stadium by their angry fans.

The footballing authorities do all they can to ensure that the big clubs don’t get relegated. They have to perform consistently poorly over three years to be relegated or be forced into a play-off against a team aspiring to rise from the B. River were that bad.

It’s been a long and slow decline. The way back up may be equally as tortuous. This may be the time to do something about losing that nickname…Las Gallinas – the Chickens.

* Just to round up the season. Another big club, but not as big as River Plate, Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata, also went down after 26 years in the top flight. They lost their two-leg play-off against San Martin from San Juan province who replace them in the first division. The two clubs winning automatic promotion were Atletico Rafaela and Union, both from the north-eastern province of Santa Fe.

That signifies a radical shift in balance away from Buenos Aires. Three of the four relegated clubs — River Plate, Huracan and Quilmes — are from in or near the capital. All four promoted clubs are from distant parts of what residents of Buenos Aires, los portenos, often refer to disparagingly as ‘la interior.’

Meanwhile, River Plate continue some deep soul searching about where it all went wrong. Several club officials are being investigated over how far they were responsible for allowing some of the barrabrava into the referee’s dressing room at half-time. They threatened to kill him unless he gave River a penalty. He did but River missed it. Their president, Daniel Passarella, wants an interview with the president of the nation no less to discuss what he claims is a conspiracy against the club.

** And if you’ve got time on your hands and want to be informed and titilated in equal measure, take a peek at the European Football Weekends blog where you’ll find me, the handofdan and Argentinos Juniors featured. http://europeanfootballweekends.blogspot.com/

Hasta la vista amigos.

He was also the man who helped to negotiate state television taking over the broadcast of all live first division games. That meant free footy for the fans and an end to expensive satellite dishes or having to watch your team at a nearby bar where you’d make one beer last for the full ninety-minutes.

Oh! And he was also the former president of Argentina, the husband of the current president and the man likely to be the next president, after elections next year.

Too Much!

What he was not was a healthy man. Nestor Kirchner had deep, sunken eyes surrounded by shadows darker than those cast by the clouds over Upton Park. His hair was lank and his suits ill-fitting.

He’d already been taken to hospital twice this year with heart problems. He went under the knife in February shortly after Racing had kicked off against Arsenal. When he came to, he asked what the score was and, it was reported, his wife and the medical team lied to him in order to help his recovery. Racing had lost 4-2.

He was back in hospital in September when he was given heart by-pass surgery. Forty-eight hours after being sewn up he was back on his feet, alongside his wife, Cristina, at a political rally. His doctors have every right to now say: “I told you so.”

He was that rare creature in modern-day politics who didn’t seem to care about his image. There was none of that jogging around the presidential garden with his body-guards for the TV cameras nor coaching from image consultants. He was however totally at ease munching on a fatty Choripan while negotiating with union leaders over beer in smoke-filled rooms.

He was a crappy speaker, doing nothing to hide a slight speech impediment. And charisma he probably thought was a new defender signed from Paraguay during the close season. Pablo Charisma, hard tackler and a useful left foot. Kirchner was a backroom operator, a wheeler-dealer, a man who forged alliances and made deals. Whether you agreed with him or not, he knew what he wanted out of politics and how to get it.

He’s been credited with overseeing Argentina’s return to relative stability and prosperity following its economic and social crisis at the end of 2001. He stood up to the International Monetary Fund, which many Argentines blamed for that crisis. And he ensured that the prosecutions were resumed of those responsible for human rights violations under military rule in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

Some accused him of corruption, others said he was a man who bore grudges. His move to put football on state television was driven by his dispute with the media group that had previously owned the rights.

But the national show of sorrow and mourning was immense and genuine, I suspect because, love him or hate him, he was genuine.

His love of football was certainly real, not something added on by his advisors to improve his standing among the working classes.  If it were, they’d have insisted he support Boca Juniors or River Plate rather than perennial losers, Racing.

Nestor Kirchner

Racing, based in the industrial suburb of Avellaneda just south of Buenos Aires, really should be much better. Their stadium is right next to their local rivals, Independiente.  Both are big clubs with a huge number of fans. But while Independiente have a trophy cabinet bulging with silverware from both national and international competitions, Racing’s displays large gaps with the words ‘unfulfilled potential’ written in the dust.

The team’s ability to sustain their optimism in the face of cock-up after cock-up is admirable. They remind me of Newcastle United or Manchester City, before they became a rich man’s toy. This ability to consistently disappoint can have done nothing to help a man suffering from stress.

The outpouring of grief for Nestor Kirchner’s passing has been impressive, with some waiting twenty hours to pay their last respects to his closed coffin, laid in the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. Presidents flew in from across South America.

Diego Maradona came. Nestor Kirchner was his strongest ally in his bid to retake the reins of the national team. It probably wouldn’t have been enough but with Nestor’s passing, I suspect the little fat fellow has lost any faint hope he might have had of fulfilling his dream.

The crowds were out again on Friday, in the rain, causing several hours delay in moving Kirchner’s body to the city airport. From there it was flown to his home town, Rio Gallegos, deep down in Patagonia, where it was laid to rest in the local cemetery, I suspect accompanied by a blue and white Racing Club scarf.

I’ve said it all along to anyone who would listen – which pretty much reduces it to my cat and the elderly neighbour who walks around the block all day mumbling to himself – that Argentina have the best collection of players in the world and could and should have been champions in both 2006 and 2010.

As we all know, a collection of players does not make a team. But here, against the world champions in the Monumental stadium in Buenos Aires, we saw something of what could have been and what might be under Sergio Batista.

All Politely Seated...

This was a joy to watch in the early Spring sunshine with an array of players before us to make the mouth water as much, if not more, than the succulent Choripan that I’d eaten before the game.

Imagine putting the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, a spattering of Rembrandts, a few Van Goghs and the best that the National Gallery can spare from its really expensive room on display at the same venue at the same time.

As well as the artistic talent on show, the combined value of the Spanish and Argentinian benches, never mind the starting 22, probably amounted to the GDP of a medium-sized European country.

Argentina, with a point or two to prove, were sublime from the starting whistle, passing the ball around to the sound of the crowd’s mocking ‘Oles.’ Spain, with little to prove since they’re world champions, didn’t really show up…at least not for the first half.

I’m talking figuratively here. But from where I was sitting way up in the clouds and almost touching distance from the planes that use this as the flight path as they come in to land at the city airport,  it is possible that those specks in red shirts down below were not David Villa, Cesc Fabregas and Andres Iniesta. It could be, and I’m being unnecessarily kind to Scotland here, that there was mix-up as they changed planes in Belgium or somewhere, with the Lichtenstein team on their way to Glasgow for their Europe 2012 qualifier.

And Lichtenstein, having arrived in Buenos Aires along with Spain’s red shirts, thought: “Well lads, we might as well.” While the Spaniards, one nil up against Scotland suddenly realised: “Hey, we’re supposed to be Lichtenstein.” And let in a couple of late goals.

Argentina were two up in fourteen minutes with goals from Messi and Higuain. Carlos Tevez took advantage of a comical slip by the Spanish keeper, Jose Reina, to add a third before half-time. This was dream football, only something was not quite right.

Collection of Artists

“Oi! Sit down. I can’t see.” What? We were in the stands, standing room only, in a country where football is watched for the most part with your knees straight, the soles of your shoes firmly resting on concrete and the earlobe of the bloke in front obstructing your view of the corner flag.

This was not opera in the Teatro Colon. But the insistence on being seated, the level of noise, the polite ripples of applause that barely disturbed the balmy evening air brought to my mind a summer evening in a small English village watching cricket. “Excuse me Mrs Pilkington. Would you kindly pass the cucumber sandwiches.”

This crowd was made up of people who don’t normally frequent the club grounds at the weekend. Here were men with their jumpers carefully slung over their shoulders like they were going punting in Cambridge. They didn’t know the words to the songs. There were times when the loudest voice was that of the ice-cream seller eight blocks and fifteen rows away. “Helados. Helados. Get your strawberry helados” are hardly the kind of lyrics to stir your team into action.

Presumably Del Bosque gave the Spaniards a good talking to at half-time because they came out with a little more purpose. But still, that patient build-up for which they were praised during the World Cup, here was often languid. Argentina showed more grit and all their players did what we know they can do, especially Lionel Messi.

Time for Fireworks

He produced a few moments of pure magic played as though he were genuinely on speaking terms with the rest of the team. Ever Banega showed his class, Javier Zanetti, making his three-thousandth appearance for his country aged 94, played as he always does, with composure and never at any moment at any risk of putting a single hair on his immaculate head out of place. And Sergio Romero, to my mind a goalkeeping fashion icon, was both authoritative and agile.

And when you have the luxury of being able to bring on as second half substitutes the likes of Sergio Aguero, who scored Argentina’s fourth,  Angel Di Maria and Andres D’Alessandro then all you can really do is sit back and purr.

OK, OK. I know that this was only a friendly and we shouldn’t read too much into it. But Argentina is a country where the phrase ‘unfulfilled potential’ is unfortunately applied far too often in many areas of life.

So at least in the sporting world, on the same day that Argentina beat Brazil in the basketball World Cup in Turkey and shortly after the women’s team had beaten England in the hockey World Cup in Rosario, the post-match firework display was a fitting celebration.

Much has been written about this Clausura 2010 championship since pretty much every Argentine is a football expert and some of the lucky ones even manage to earn a living by adding a tinge of authority to their rantings and ravings.

The Moment

Nearly all seem to agree that the Red Bugs were worthy winners – not for their money because they ain’t got much, not for their sturdy defence for they shipped a fair few and not for their power and influence in the Argentine game since this is a small neighbourhood club with a ramshackle but often intimidating ground.

The word I’ve seen more than any other is ‘dignified.’ They were dignified champions who brought dignity to the Argentine league.

The manager, Claudio Borghi, brought together a collection of strong personalities and melded them into a team. It was a team in which the first priority was always to play attractive, attacking football. They held their shape, the midfield created options and, what always struck me, was that the whole team seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The player who perhaps best symbolises this team is 39-year-old Jose Luis Calderon. A fine physical specimen, he ran as much as the youngsters. “With his experience, he calmed us in moments of madness,” said teammate, Nicolas Pavlovich.

Borghi brought him out of retirement, convinced he still had much to give. Calderon played seven-hundred and forty-three games in his long career, after making his debut for Estudiantes in 1992. He played for Napoli in Italy, America and Atlas in Mexico, won the Argentine league and the Libertadores cup with Estudiantes and the Copa Sudamericana with Arsenal.

Borghi substituted him ten minutes before the end of the Huracan game and the crowd erupted. His teammates crowded around him and tears were no doubt shed. “It was a dignified way to end my career,” said Mr Calderon.

But he wasn’t alone. There was also that magical midfield partnership between Nestor Ortigoza and Juan Mercier. “It’s like a marriage,” they said. I think I know what they meant but I’d rather not pry into their private lives.

In attack, there was Ismael Sosa, uncomfortable at Independiente, he was borrowed by Borghi who knew how to bring out the best in him. He’s fast, wears bright yellow boots and was the club’s top scorer with nine goals.

The names will be remembered by the young Argentinos Juniors fans when they’re in their nineties and have forgotten where they left their false teeth. The slightly eccentric goalkeeper, Nicolas Peric, that defensive rock, Matias Caruzzo, the tireless running of Gustavo Oberman and the personality of Ignacio Canuto.

And then, of course, the man at the helm – Claudio ‘Bichi’ Borghi – a fine player in his day and Argentinos Juniors lynchpin the last time they won the championship twenty-five years ago. Whether the team was winning or losing, playing well or not, he sat like a frozen Buddha in his dugout, calm, collected and confident that the team was on the right track and that eventually they’d win through. They usually did, losing only two games all season and often leaving it until the final five minutes to plop the ball in the net.

So a great team but a one off, frozen in time. No sooner had those millions of scraps of paper thrown by the fans washed into the gutter to block the drains the next time it rains, than the talk of dismantling had begun.

Borghi is hot favourite to take over at slumbering giants, Boca Juniors. The thinking is: “If he can produce a championship-winning team with everyone else’s flotsam and jetsam, just think what he’ll do with Boca’s money and influence!” Mercier and Caruzzo may well follow him.

The Celebration

Now that Independiente know what Sosa can do, they’ll want him back and I doubt they’ll even say ‘thank-you.’ Calderon has already swapped his boots for carpet slippers and Ortigoza – my own favourite – would grace any team in the world with his effective tackling, pinpoint passing and inability to give up.

So what now? Well, let’s enjoy the moment for a little longer. The rump of a good team remains and the spirit and tradition are still there. So much depends on who takes over from Borghi and how many players the club manages to hold onto. They will be playing in the Sudamericana and the Libertadores cups which should bring in cash to bolster the squad.

And Argentinos Juniors is not known as the seedbed of Argentine football for nothing. A healthy crop of youngsters is sprouting up through the ranks and there’s hope that we won’t have to wait another twenty-five years to reap a harvest like this one.

I’m off now to do a bit of research, scouting the backstreets and alleyways of Buenos Aires for the best bars and cafes in which to watch the World Cup. I may be gone for some time.

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.

I’ve just been watching Arsenal v Everton on the TV in my shorts, no shirt and an ice-cold drink in my hand. There’s nothing quite like seeing those sixty-thousand or so frozen, wool-wrapped fans huddled together like penguins having a bad day while all those  around me are complaining about the excessive southern hemisphere summer heat.

Punta del Este-for those who can afford it

They get so hot and bothered down here in January that all those who can head for the Atlantic beach resorts – those with a few pesos to rub together go to Punte del Este in Uruguay or to Brazil, while the rest head for resorts on the Argentine coast.

Those of us who have stayed behind in Buenos Aires can enjoy emptier streets and plazas and shorter queues at the ice-cream parlours.  We’re also being treated to a spectacular political drama.

President Cristina Kirchner wanted six-and-a-half billion dollars from the national reserve to pay off a chunk of Argentina’s huge foreign debt which is due later this year. But the head of the central bank, Martin Redrado, told her to keep her hands to herself.

She stormed off in a huff and announced that Mr Redrado had resigned – only he hadn’t. “It’s my job,” he said, “and I’m keeping it.”

So the president signed a special decree to have him removed. But she needed the signatures of her cabinet to make it valid. However, they were at the beach, working on their tans, making sand-castles, sipping cocktails etc and had to be dragged back to Buenos Aires, sand between their toes, sun-cream on their noses and tans less than complete.

Then a judge nullified the decree and Mr Redrado went back to work. It’s not over yet and as we count the days until the start of the new football season, it’s keeping us amused.

Redrado-should he stay or should he go?

Those players not captured by the European club nets that trawl Argentina at this time of the year are back in training. Running through Bosque de Palermo the other day, I saw the River Plate squad going through their paces. I know it’s early, but I think I’m in better condition than most of them.

You probably think I’m making this up, but as I stood at the edge of the lake recovering from my run I saw two turtles having sex in the water. At least I think they were. How do you know they’re not fighting, one on the other’s back applying the turtle equivalent of a half-nelson? Or were they dancing a slow, slow tango? On reflection, it was definitely sex, proof that there’s still plenty of fun to be had in a half-empty, football-free, hot and humid Buenos Aires, for the turtles at least.

The extreme heat is punctuated by thunder storms which, as well as relieving the humidity, wash away the dog shit which has become one of the most irritating aspects of life in Buenos Aires.

Much of the population lives in apartment blocks, highly inappropriate for keeping dogs, often big, hairy ones totally unsuited to the heat.  Crime is an issue but it’s not nearly as bad as some porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, will tell you it is. Plenty of the more paranoid residents buy their pets as guard-dogs. Others love their pooches dearly. But they’re often too lazy, busy or scared to walk them, so will hire a professional dog walker to do it for them.

It’s a common sight in Buenos Aires to see a walker with up to fifteen assorted poodles, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Great Danes and terriers straining at their leashes and dumping all over the pavements. Of course, the walkers are supposed to clean up but they rarely do.

Dogs' Life

This business has become so lucrative that many walkers now use vans to pick up their charges and drive them to the park. There, they’re tied up to trees while the walkers chat with fellow walkers, drink mate tea and perhaps kick a ball around. I know this because they gather in the park where I run. Overnight the area is used by prostitutes who discard the used condoms among the trees and by day by the dog-walkers who don’t walk. Runners are advised to tread very carefully.

The park cleaners have a tough job, but so too do the journalists who have to fill the sports pages during the summer months. There’s no cricket here, so they cover the pointless triangular pre-season tournaments being played at the beach resorts or tell tales of new shirt designs or who is joining the annual exodus to Europe.

The football may be taking a break but the battle between rival fans never rests. If you saw the World Club championship final between Barcelona and Argentina’s Estudiantes last month you may have wondered why some of the fans had banners with a simple 7-0 on them.

Estudiantes may have won the South American Libertadores cup and reached the pinnacle of world football with a final against Barcelona, but a game their fans revel in more than any other was the 7-0 victory in 2006 over their rivals in the city of La Plata, Gimnasia y Esgrima.

A young Gimnasia fan, Maxi Vazquez, sent a photo of himself wearing the club shirt to get his national identity card renewed. But his new card was processed by an Estudiantes fan who scrawled 7-0 on the photo before stamping and coating it with plastic. Maxi was livid. The offending official was tracked down and fired, despite a support campaign on Facebook that attracted more than eight-hundred and fifty fans.

I don’t know whether there’s a park in La Plata where turtles have sex but that former official now has plenty of time on his hands to investigate while he waits for the referee to blow that first whistle of the season.

I, meanwhile, think I’ll plop another ice-cube in my glass. Que calor!

The Feminine Touch

Reds  4   Yellows  2

In Argentina they call them Villas Miseria – Misery Towns – rambling, ramshackle communities built on somebody else’s land with stolen bricks and cement, corrugated iron roofs and poor drainage.  Spider webs of electricity and telephone cables criss-cross the sky.

The oldest, biggest and most firmly established shanty-town in Buenos Aires is Villa 31, kind of squeezed behind the main long-distance bus terminal and alongside the tracks leading out of the Retiro railway station.

Me, I know no fear and with little regard for my own safety, I strode boldly into the narrow alleyways of Villa 31 to bring you a first-hand account of life where lesser men fear to tread.

A West Ham United baseball cap is usually all it takes to keep potential attackers at bay. Those crossed hammers translating in any language into ‘Don’t Mess With Me, Sucker!”

The fact that I was met on the outskirts of the shanty-town by a petite young woman called Carolina who works in the labyrinthine streets of Villa 31 armed with no more than a friendly smile and a willingness to make a difference should not detract from my undoubted bravery.

I was also accompanied by my kids, Benja, aged 12, and Lucas, 9, who has just passed his first Tae-Kwon do exam with flying colours, and Aunty Marilyn visiting from London.

Carolina works for an NGO called Goals for Girls/Metas para las Chicas that helps the girls and young women of the community to play football.

“Football,” I hear you gasp. “In Argentina! Now there’s a novelty.” But the truth is that it’s a man’s game here. Women in Argentina grow up with football, their dads and brothers play it, watch it, obsess about it, their boyfriends and husbands may even drag them to games and will still expect their dinner on the table afterwards, but women in general are not encouraged to play it. Those that defy convention and insist are given very little space in which to kick a ball.

The Goal...

Playing football in the Villa gives the girls that space. They practise regularly and play matches at the weekend. They are also given talks on the benefits of exercise and healthy eating in order to be better footballers but also to be healthier people in an environment where simply staying alive and finding the next meal is often the primary concern.

But it ain’t easy. A dusty dirt pitch has been marked out, surrounded on three sides by precarious looking houses and on the fourth by a brightly painted church. They’ve got two proper goals with nets and a bag of balls which are kept locked in a wooden cupboard.

The referee for this game between the reds and the yellows called in sick and a brief search ensued for a suitable mug, someone easy to abuse and too old and slow to keep up with the action, to fill the void. That honour fell to me. I vowed to be firm but fair but was mostly simply ignored.

The skill levels were high and the players were fierce but fair. Men pushing bikes, teenage boys smoking joints and on the prowl and women returning from shopping nonchalantly strolled across the field. Gangs of boys regularly started their own matches by the corner flags, gradually spreading out onto the pitch.

The female players are forced to look after kid brothers and sisters and kickoffs are delayed because the players have to complete household chores, ‘women’s work,’ before they’re allowed out.  Football, they’re told, is for boys.

But the girls are not listening. With the help of Goals for Girls they’re expanding and developing. About thirty of them play regularly, organising games against female teams from other shanty-towns. They’ve established links with women’s football federations from other countries and there’s the constant battle to raise funds for transport, kit and footballs.

It’s impossible to say with any certainty how many people live in Villa 31 because the residents don’t take kindly to questioners with clipboards delving into their lives and it’s a community that grows pretty much daily — with migrants arriving from Argentina’s poor northern provinces, squeezed off the land by drought and the ever more voracious soya producers. They’re joined by Paraguayans, Bolivians and Peruvians attracted to one of the wealthiest cities in Latin America.

It’s not a place you’d want to find yourself wandering in after dark. Most Porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, have seen Villa 31 from the train or from one of the long-distance buses taking them on their holidays to the coast or the mountains but few have ever set foot there, or would want to.

A dark mystique has grown up about the villas of Buenos Aires, fed by tales of the criminal gangs operating there, the crack cocaine factories, the teenage pregnancies, the murders.

The Church View

Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez grew up in Fort Apache, one of the city’s most notorious villas, and has told of how he’d lie awake at night listening to gunfire. All the stories that seep out into the affluent northern neighbourhoods are no doubt true. But there is another rarely told side to life in Argentina’s shanty towns.

The vast majority of residents are honest people fighting against the odds to give their children the opportunities they never had. They put great store by personal hygiene and are generally polite and generous to visitors.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not getting all romantic about shanty-town life. I’ve visited a few and am not about to fork out the US$10,000 that houses in Villa 31 reportedly sell for. The residents are neglected, exploited and ignored. But they’re not hopeless.

I blew the final whistle and walked off the pitch for a well-earned ice-cold bottle of water. The players didn’t seem to notice my departure and, despite the intense heat and humidity, kept playing – until they were called home to prepare lunch or look after a young sibling. The last stragglers were finally forced from the pitch by a torrential downpour.

Pictures by Benja

Goals for Girls website: http://www.democraciarepresentiva.org

For More: http://www.santelmoproductions.com/en/#/portfolio/goals_for_girls