With the seconds slipping away the home side continued to pile on the pressure in search of the goal that would give them the victory they so richly deserved. Intense bombardment of the visitor’s goal had come to nothing through a mixture of wayward finishing, excellent goalkeeping, bad luck and defiant defending.

The home fans looked nervously at their watches then looked again. The referee glanced at his watch. His assistant signaled five minutes of stoppage time. Was there still time? Would the God of footballing justice intervene to ensure that the right team won? The ball bobbled loose from midfield as one of the home side’s most energetic but least proficient forwards picked it up on the edge of the penalty area. He controlled it, slipped it past a defender and then blasted it into the net. Victory was ours!

Yes, ours. Argentinos Juniors. No, not ManchesterCity. Yes, that was a great game. Call me old-fashioned if you like but I’m not especially impressed by the achievements of a team that cost $1billion to put together and even then only just managed to scrape a desperate, last-minute win over relegation-threatened QPR. 

The Imperial Guard or racist yobs?

I’m talking about a team of youngsters from a modest club who cost about $45 to put together and in the past week have beaten two of the biggest teams in Argentina — that impressive 2-0 victory away at Velez last week then this 2-1 win at home to the Manchester City of Argentina, Racing Club. ManchesterCity, that is, before they were bought up as a toy by one of the wealthiest men in the world.

Argentinos Juniors has long been known as the seedbed, the semillero, of Argentine football, producing a string of great players, including Diego Maradona, Juan Román Riquelme, Juan Pablo Sorín, Esteban Cambiasso, Fabricio Coloccini, Fernando Redondo, Claudio Borghi and Sergio Batista.

That work continues and again appears to be bearing fruit in the form an impressive midfield consisting of Gaspar Iniguez (18), Matias Laba (20), Juan Ramierez (18) and Santiago Naguel (19). Throw in the always impressive young goalkeeper, Luis Ojeda, and there’s the beginnings here of a team.

OK, these are players that will be poached, possibly by the likes of ManchesterCity. But if you support a club like this one, you have to enjoy your players while you’ve got them and hopefully they’ll stay together just long enough to give us a shot at the title next time round.

Despite an impressive away record this season, this was the first home victory and a welcome reward for the fans who have endured some horrendous 0-0 draws and dire defeats for what seems like months.

It’s good to write about something positive in what is otherwise a pretty miserable footballing landscape in Argentina. But another little bud of hope has sprouted at Independiente where the club president, Javier Cantero, has declared war against the barrabrava…the organized thugs that are bleeding dry the very clubs they claim to support.

Independiente fans...under scrutiny.

He has the backing of the ‘true’fans who in the weekend home game against All Boys overcame their fear of the hooligans, occupied the terraces normally filled by the bully boys and chanted: “Barrabravas, Nunca Mas…No more hooligans.” They received the support of other fans.

This was a hugely significant victory, hopefully the beginning of a campaign that will at least halt the growth of this poison in the Argentine game before it destroys it. The 3-0 home defeat was almost irrelevant.

The main reason the barrabrava have been able to grow and prosper is because they have developed links with the club authorities and politicians at local and national level. So Mr Cantero is making a brave stand to so openly break that link.

The Independiente barrabrava responded to this threat to their hegemony in true fashion – with a cowardly bomb threat against the school housed in the club’s ground.

Halfway through the second half of the Argentinos Juniors v Racing game the referee stopped play to consult with the police. The Racing fans, whose team meets Boca Juniors next week, had been chanting racist slogans…something about Boca traditionally fielding Bolivian and Paraguayan players. It’s a ridiculous slur anyway but the football authorities have said they will punish clubs that don’t try to check the unpleasant tendencies of their fans.

A half-hearted appeal went out over the tannoy system for them to stop but stop they did….no doubt fearing the so-far ill-defined sanctions that might be imposed on their already struggling team. I like to think they were punished for their racism by that late winning JJ Morales goal.

* Newell’s are now clear leaders after a 3-1 win over Union. Boca fell back after drawing 0-0 at home to Velez. Another surprise packet is Arsenal who have crept up to fourth spot with a 4-1 thumping of San Martin, leaving them level on points with third-placed Tigre, who drew 1-1 at Colon.

San Lorenzo and Olimpo and Belgrano and Rafaela all shared a goal apiece. Estudiantes beat Godoy Cruz 1-0 while Lanus won the south of Buenos Aires derby against Banfield 2-1.

It was almost inevitable that after last week dubbing Velez Sarsfield as my tip for the title, they would lose at home to a team struggling to find form and personality. So it came to pass and by all accounts, Argentinos Juniors were worthy winners.

The goals came from the very young Santiago Naguel at the start of the second half and a Pablo Hernandez penalty. Argentinos have shown championship winning away form this season yet play like donkeys at home.

With so much focus on elections in Europe, murmurings have begun in the Argentine press about who might succeed President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in the next elections here in 2015. She’s serving her second term in office so according to the constitution cannot run for a third.

The Immortals?

However,  some of her most fawning sycophants are tentatively suggesting changing the constitution to allow Cristina to run forever. They did it in Venezuela only for mortality to raise its ugly head and threaten Hugo Chavez’s eternal hold on power.

The issue has arisen partly because those who support Cristina believe her to be the reincarnation of Evita Peron, guided from beyond the grave by her dear, departed husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner, and partly because of the dearth of viable alternatives, from either her own party or the opposition.

And then I read about Courtney Love passing the image rights of her dear, departed husband, Kurt Cobain, to her estranged daughter and the subsequent speculation about Cobain’s image being resurrected, manipulated, transmitted in holistic form onto a stage or even back into the midst of the Nirvana line-up.

Then it struck me that the same could be done for a politician. After all, a modern-day politician is nothing more than a being that is picked up by a public relations crew and molded into an image that will appeal to the widest number of people possible. He or she is barely tangible. We, the voting public, don’t know them. You’re not likely to run into David Cameron in the pub – and let’s all be thankful for that. My point being, that it doesn’t really matter if they’re alive or dead.

We remember Juan Domingo Peron, Nestor Kirchner, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle etc. for their image and ideas. Those can be resurrected in holistic form and I’m sure that the bulk of the voting public wouldn’t mind.

The country would save one inflated wage and wouldn’t need to worry about security. And the Argentine constitution only stipulates that a president cannot serve more than two consecutive terms. Nestor stood aside to let his wife become president and avoid that problem. I doubt there’s anything in the Argentine constitution that refers to the mortality of the candidates.

Nestor, like his widow, never answered questions at news conferences and rarely mingled with his people so his intangible form would hardly differ from the real thing.

I thought I was being very clever with this idea until it was pointed out to me that George Orwell came up with it first….in 1948 when he wrote 1984. The only difference now is that we have the technology and the public relations people to make it happen.

The danger, of course, is that the image could be manipulated and abused by rascals and ne’er-do-wells which conjures up the possibility, at least in my addled imagination, of Nestor Kirchner on stage performing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ 

Remarkably, Boca Juniors are still top of the table despite stumbling and spluttering their way through the season. They lost the lead at Atletico de Rafaela, then went 2-1 down and were saved with a last-minute equaliser from Nico Blandi which they celebrated as though they’d just done something magnificent.

The dark horses are Newell’s who beat bottom side, Olimpo, 2-1 to join Boca at the peak. Newell’s were dismal last season but have been spun round by their new manager, Gerado Martino.

Tigre, who thrashed Union 4-0, are in the bizarre situation of sitting third in the table, just one point off the leaders, yet they’re battling against relegation because of their points average over the past three seasons.

San Martin beat Banfield 2-1. That was a game marked by tragedy as the news came through that 20-year-old Banfield player, Lautaro Bugatto, had been shot dead at his home by an off-duty policeman who was trying to tackle some thieves. The details are murky.

Arsenal beat Independiente 3-1 in another game tainted by violence. Independiente fans who couldn’t get in threw rocks into the ground at both the home and their own fans.

Lanus beat Godoy Cruz 1-0 away, Racing breathed a sigh of relief by beating Estudiantes 2-0, Colon triumphed by the same score over Belgrano and All Boys and San Lorenzo drew 0-0.

It’s a long holiday weekend and many people are away, Argentinos Juniors haven’t won at home all season and have scored very few goals and rain was threatening. So it wasn’t surprising that the terraces were as sparsely populated as a gathering of the John Terry Appreciation Society.

When you pit a team that’s not won at home all season against one that’s not won away then a grindingly dull 0-0 draw that the Clarin newspaper the next day reported under a headline ‘United in Mediocrity’ is perhaps the inevitable result.

It was easy to find my mate Hernan and we chatted about the economic disaster in Europe, the  Argentine government expropriation of the oil company, YPF, the recent films we’d seen and the John Terry sending-off against Barcelona while keeping half an eye on what purported to be a game of football. Half an eye was all it deserved.

I’d missed the previous 0-0 at home to Belgrano but Hernan informed me that this game was just as bad. Argentinos were marginally the better team but every attack fell apart in a muddle of poor passing and a dearth of ideas. Rafaela simply had no ambition and looked as though they’d come for the draw.

For the second half, we moved on to other topics of conversation. Luckily the rain held off which is probably the most positive thing to be said about the afternoon. The home side did spurn a couple of chances but as the game ground on it looked increasingly unlikely that the ball and the back of either net would ever become acquainted with one another.

Not Much to Shout About...

The visitors did score towards the end but it was ruled offside. In the cold light of day this game was a disgrace. It’s not that the players are no good. Most of them possess the technical attributes for which Argentine players are renowned.

Earlier in the day, I’d watched the Tottenham versus Blackburn game…in which Blackburn didn’t have a single shot on goal. The spectacle however was a delight, I thought, thanks to Spurs’ energy and fluid passing, the intelligence of Modric, the mad, headless chicken runs by Lennon and that Walker goal from the free-kick.

But imagine two teams playing like Blackburn. That’s what we were faced with at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium and have been for much of the season. While the Argentine game stumbles from one crisis to another, no team, apart from perhaps Velez, Boca and Newell’s at the top, is prepared to take chances. There’s no belief in their undoubted abilities, no thoughts beyond short-term survival.

The Argentine football association had been looking at the possibility of restructuring and last week made the dramatic announcement that they’d change almost nothing. The very short, 19-game season would remain very short. The dwindling number of fans would, they decided, be happier with two champions per year rather than endure a sensible 38-game season like they have in much of the rest of the world.

Plenty to Cry About...

And the difficult to fathom, average points over three years system, designed to protect the bigger, established clubs, would also remain. When you’re in crisis, then no-change is not a good policy. But this is generally a country that does not embrace change easily.

It finds what it likes…an asado every Sunday, Tinelli and Legrand on the tele, a Kirchner in the president’s chair….and will hold on until they’re no longer tenable and beyond.

The anger at the end of this poor excuse for a game of football from some of the Argentinos Juniors fans was palpable. They ran to the perspex glass behind the dugouts where the players leave the pitch to spit and scream, eyeballs bulging, veins standing out on foreheads like decrepit pipes at bursting point.

There was no coherence in either the play nor the fans’ diatribes but this kind of ranting and raving only undermines the players’ confidence. They tried. They tried and failed but at least they tried.

San Lorenzo are inching away from trouble, this time with a 2-0 win over Arsenal. Boca were lucky to beat Colon 1-0 and stay top while Newell’s could only draw 1-1 with All Boys. Velez, my tip for the title, won 2-0 at Estudiantes while Lanus overcame their recent poor form with a resounding 3-1 thumping of hapless Racing.

San Martin beat Godoy Cruz 1-0 while Independiente versus Banfield and Union against Olimpo both ended 2-0.  Belgrano and Tigre drew 1-1.

There are seven more games to go until the end of the season. I’m not sure I care any more.

Unless you’re involved in business in Argentina you might not realize just how endemic corruption is.

Everyone pretty much accepts that the Customs office and the police force are riddled with corruption. Politicians, on moderate wages, cavort like millionaires.

“But what can you do?” the people ask. They shrug their shoulders and get on with their lives as best they can.

But every now and then things happen, information comes to light that reveals just the tip of what appears to be a very corrupt iceberg.

The government’s re-nationalization last week of the former state oil company YPF can and has been analyzed from many different angles.

Repsol, the Spanish owners of the bulk of YPF, probably were not investing all that they’d promised in the industry, Argentina does face an energy crisis and wants to ensure that its resources are fully exploited and a bit of nationalistic flag-waving does no harm as a distraction when your vice-president is embroiled in a corruption scandal that won’t go away.

At the same time, nationalizations of this nature are guaranteed to scare off much needed foreign investment while Argentina is being cast as a pariah on the international stage.

Dirty Lucra!

Soon after the government had switched the Repsol headed notepaper for its own, it placed members of its youth-wing, the vociferous, slightly shady Campora group, in key YPF positions, many of them unable to distinguish an oil slick from an oil painting.

The respected political analyst and no friend of the Cristina government, Nelson Castro, possibly put his finger on a key point. The newly nationalized YPF, he said, is not subject to auditing by any organization controlled by the state. This leaves the doors open for YPF to become a phenomenal instrument of corruption. The luxury car salesmen must be rubbing their hands with glee.

Corruption also comes to light when revealed in places outside the control of the Argentine government and the country’s corrupt institutions. Like the United States, for example.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission, doing a little bit of Spring cleaning, has revealed that Biomet, an American company that manufactures artificial limbs, paid massive bribes to both Argentine customs officials to import their products and then to doctors to use them.

“The payment of bribes to doctors to use prosthesis is common,” said Jose Charreau, a doctor involved in the purchase of artificial limbs. But most express “shock and amazement” that such practices take place. “I don’t know anything about any bribes,” said Dr Salomon Schachter, a member of the national traumatology association.

Biomet paid more than $400,000 in bribes in 2008 alone. And that’s what’s been revealed by the investigation in the United States– by one company that deals in one specialized area of medicine.

Is it fair to assume that similar practices are being carried out across the board? The former health minister, Graciela Ocaña, resigned her post when she clashed with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner after denouncing a different case of corruption in the health service.

So who pays?  The patients of course! Not only are they in pain, limping about with deficient limbs, they are being ripped off by the very people they should trust – their doctors and their elected representatives. Pretty much everyone here has viewed the police and customs officials with disdain for some time.

Meanwhile, I’m writing this a little late and have pretty much already forgotten about Argentinos Juniors’ 1-0 defeat away at Colon at the weekend. I watched it on tele, flicking channels to see Spurs lose at QPR at the same time.

The top two teams, Boca and Newell’s only managed 1-1 draws, against Belgrano and Arsenal respectively, so remain linked at their artificial hips. Velez lost an opportunity to make up some ground by only drawing 0-0 at home to Lanus. Godoy Cruz and Independiente suffered the same scoreline.

Racing beat San Martin 1-0. Tigre climbed away from the automatic relegation zone with the same score over Olimpo while All Boys beat Union 2-1 and Atletico de Rafaela thumped Estudiantes 3-2. So that just leaves Banfield and San Lorenzo who drew 1-1.

I’ve just returned from a mission in search of one of the great unanswered questions of this or any other time.

No! Not where lies the Holy Grail. Even if it did exist, I’d not be much interested. It would probably be a dusty, battered goblet with a bright light emanating from it, less impressive than the latest i-Pad. If it doesn’t download books, films and music, then what’s the point?

Perhaps, you’re thinking, the reasons for the persistent popularity of Madonna? No, not that either. I know the answer to that one. Many people are simply stupid and/or have no taste. Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers suffice to confirm that assertion.

My quest is far more relevant to what lies at the heart of modern society.

The question?

“How is it that a country as small as Uruguay, with a population you could squeeze into a double decker bus and a land area overshadowed by neighbouring giants, Argentina and Brazil, is so bloody good at football and has been for a long time?”

A Secret Within?

I’m not just talking about the baggy shorts and flinging caps into the air era when they won footballing gold at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. Nor their 4-2 final victory over Argentina in the inaugural World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. Add to that the 1950 World Cup when they stole the Jules Rimet from the Brazilians in their own Maracana stadium in front of 200,000 fans and that they reached the semi-finals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and are currently South American champions, knocking out Argentina, Messi et al, on the way to the final where they beat Paraguay. They’ve been continental champions fifteen times, which is more than either Argentina or Brazil. Their dominant club teams, Peñarol and Nacional, have clinched the Libertadores Cup eight times between them, as well as sharing eight runners up spots. They churn out talented players, Diego Forlan, Luis Suarez, Sebastian Abreu to name just a few, like a factory conveyor belt.

Compare them with other footballing nations. England, population 49million give or take a hundred or so. (I know that the Robinsons in Basingstoke didn’t fill out their last  census form and the Joneses in Scarborough have gone underground to dodge the taxman so my estimation is a rough one.) One World Cup.

France, lots of people, a lot more than Uruguay anyway – one World Cup.

Argentina, population 40million including some quite good footballers, two World Cups.

The Centenario Stadium

They’re passionate about their football in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and Peru yet they’ve not got a World Cup between them and barely figure on the list of South American championship winners.

“OK, OK!” I hear you say. You’ve made your point.

I went straight to the heart of the beast – the national team’s training ground just the length of a Suarez free kick from the international airport. Down a dirt track and under a battered, wobbly barrier I encountered thirty or so young men in sky blue shirts in intense training under the chill autumn sun. Five minutes later, when I couldn’t find anyone I was looking for, I realized I was at the wrong training camp. This was first division side, Danubio – the national squad was next door.

When I say national squad, I mean the Under-23s and the Under-20s since most of Uruguay’s top players are shoveling spades full of Euros into their bank accounts in the Europeans leagues.

But what we had here was the bulk of the team that will represent Uruguay at the London Olympics, the first time they’ve qualified since clinching gold in 1928. Does this signify another golden era in Uruguayan football? They nonchalantly suggest that it might.

Also present was The Maestro, the national team manager, Óscar Tabárez, keeping an eagle-eye on his talent as they went through their drills.

“What,” I asked him, “were the major characteristics of the typical Uruguayan footballer?”

“Speed, organization and a deep-seated feeling for the game which comes from being born into a culture that is steeped in football,” was his answer.

He talked at length about the golden eras of Uruguayan football and how he believed they were entering another one, in a more competitive world with more strong teams competing at the top level.

Uruguayans revel in their football history, demonstrated by the monuments to past victories all around and plastered onto Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium.  Inside the stadium is their Football Museum, glittering with trophies and adorned with sweat-stained shirts, thankfully in glass cabinets.

Among them was one that made me swoon – the red shirt worn by Geoff Hurst when he scored his hat-trick to win the 1966 World Cup for West Ham and England. Not strictly Uruguayan but a donation I’m sure he made in recognition of their footballing prowess.

I spoke to the director of the museum, Dr Mario Romano, who told me about the importance of football to a small nation, how it permeates every element of society, how young players are aware of their football heritage, the importance of the game to Uruguay.

That evening I went to a restaurant with at least seven screens showing the Copa Libertadores game between Velez Sarsfield from Buenos Aires losing three-one at home to modest Uruguayan outfit, Defensor Sporting.

You could sense something of the joy of the little guy poking the big fellow in the eye – a reliving in different guises of that 1950 final.

But as is usually the case with these quests – the great Kenyan runners, the mighty Cuban boxers, the exceptional Kiwi rugby players – there is no secret, no one magic answer.

The Holy Grail? Geoff Hurst's 1966 shirt.

Hard work, dedication, passion, history, responsibility and strength are values that are bandied about and mulled over and spat out. And undoubtedly they all go some way to answering the question. Let’s be honest, if there were a secret to Uruguay’s success, they were not going to reveal it to me.

I wouldn’t however call my quest a failure. I may not have discovered the secret but I know a lot more than I did and it was fun trying. It also meant I missed what was by all accounts a painfully dull 0-0 draw between Argentinos Juniors and Belgrano.

“They could have played until Thursday and not scored,” my mate Hernan who was at the game texted me.

Elsewhere, the shock of the weekend was Tigre, whose bright star had faded in recent weeks, beating the leaders, Boca Juniors 2-1. Boca now share top spot with Newell’s who thumped Banfield 3-0.

All Boys beat the whipping boys, Olimpo 2-1, Independiente thrashed their local rivals, Racing, 4-1, which led to their boss, Alfio Basile, resigning, while San Lorenzo ended their slump with a 3-0 victory over Godoy Cruz.

Union beat Arsenal 1-0,Lanus triumphed with the same score over Rafaela, Velez beat San Martin 3-1 away to keep in sight of the top while Estudiantes and Colon drew 2-2.

Boca Juniors really should have been my team. When I first visited Argentina I said I was a Boca fan since my wife supported them and it was the obvious thing to do. It was either them or River Plate and it was never going to be River since I realized right away that they were simply not my style. I didn’t like the cut of their jib, I couldn’t identify with them in any meaningful way, I was irritated by their arrogant, scowling fans.

I didn’t know about the other teams then. They were just names. I visited Platense with my new father-in-law since they were his boyhood team. But the second I stepped into the Diego Maradona stadium and saw Argentinos Juniors lose 1-0 to a fumbled last minute goal against Independiente that left them bottom of the table, I knew they were the team for me.

Me and Argentinos Juniors...

The fans were few in number but tight-knit and passionate. The ground was and still is a wreck but is oozing with history and personality. They try and usually fail, but at least they try, to play open, attractive football. It was a match. I was an Argentinos Juniors fan although the mother-in-law still keeps buying me Boca shirts which fill a large space at the back of a distant cupboard.

A football club has a personality and as with humans you either gel or you don’t. If you’re the kind of shallow, one-dimensional character that craves easy success at all costs then you’ll adopt a Chelsea, a Real Madrid or a River Plate as your team.

If however you have a more multi-layered personality and are interested in the genuine things in life like character, craftsmanship and silky one-touch football capable of delivering a swift counter-attack up the left wing for a curling pinpoint cross and a neat header into the top right-hand corner then you’ll adopt a team like, ooh let’s say West Ham (although Big Sam is delivering neither such football nor enough of the right results) or Argentinos Juniors.

I find the same relationship is true of a city. With some it’s love at first sight. Me and London, New York and Madrid get on like houses on fire.

I lived in Havana for a couple of years and we never really saw eye to eye, although I recognized its ample attributes. And Bogota you’ll find has always, remarkably, left his wallet at home when it’s his turn to buy the drinks.

I loved Buenos Aires when I first arrived, exemplified by the football. All the passion, the personality, the frustrations and the juicy chorizos found around the city are concentrated and glorified in and around the cancha on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

I was running with some foreign friends this morning and after bitching about Buenos Aires for a while we extolled its virtues – the crisp blue skies, the buzzing cultural life and the bustling restaurants.

But my love for the city has begun to wear thin. It’s not the corruption or the gradual but seemingly inevitable decline. It’s more the fact that so many residents seem so resigned to the corruption and because so many believe that the decline is inevitable, it’s become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“Nah! Que puedes hacer?…What can you do?” with an Italian shrug of the shoulders is the common response.

It used to be that Argentines in times of crisis fled to Spain and Italy, gripping the passport they’d exchanged for their grandfather or mother’s crumpled yellowing European birth certificate.

I hope so since no-one likes to see a relationship that they’ve invested so much time and emotion in falter. Buenos Aires and I could learn to love again.

I will however never love that linesman who, no doubt intimidated by the Bombonera crowd, refused to flag for a blatant offside which resulted in Boca’s winning goal.

Pablo Hernandez scored in the second minute to give the visitors the lead. But Boca obviously woke up and put Argentinos under the cosh. Juan Insuaurralde equalised just before half-time after a shot bounced off of the goalkeeper, Luis Ojeda’s knee. And then came that offside goal twenty minutes into the second half scored by Dario Cvitanich.

Elsewhere, All Boys beat the now struggling Tigre 2-0 and Atletico de Rafaela won 3-1 at home to San Martin. Lanus, despite a resounding 6-0 victory over Paraguay’s Olimpio in the Copa Libertadores in mid-week, continue to struggle in the league and went down 1-0 at Colon. Banfield and Union drew 2-2.

On Friday, Arsenal beat bottom club Olimpo 2-1 to take the top spot, until Boca claimed it back on Saturday, while Velez and Independiente shared a goal apiece. Racing and San Lorenzo also drew 1-1. Belgrano beat Estudiantes 2-1 while Godoy Cruz and Newell’s drew 1-1.

The big Sunday game was in the ‘B’ where high-flying fallen giants River Plate took on humble, struggling Atlanta, the team they’d beaten 7-1 earlier in the season.  If there’s such a thing as certain victory then this was it. So of course, Atlanta pipped this one 1-0 to move away from the relegation zone and humiliate their famous rivals. Is there gloating across Buenos Aires today? You bet there is!

See! If you keep playing good football and believe in yourself then the rewards will come. Argentinos Juniors were unjustly defeated last week by Estudiantes but outplayed another of the in-form sides, Tigre, for a well-deserved victory this weekend. Two goals from Fabian Bordagaray.

Tigre are in the odd position of being near the top of the table yet under threat of relegation – a victim of the system that takes the average results from the previous three years to decide which teams are for the drop. Argentinos Juniors, in eighth place in this season’s league, are fourth in the long-term division and third in the fair-play league behind San Martin and Velez.

The bottom two teams, currently Olimpo and Tigre, go straight down, the two above them, at the moment Atletico Rafaela and San Lorenzo, go into playoffs with the third and fourth-placed teams from the ‘B’ – the second division.

Sort that lot out!

It’s messy, it’s complicated and it takes time and effort to calculate but that’s the way they seem to like things here.

There’s a tendency to make complicated what should be simple. Hours of needless form filling and standing in line. I take the following example simply because it happened last week. But there are similar incidents every week and anyone who has spent any length of time in Argentina will identify with my experience since they will have suffered variations on the theme.

My 14-year-old son plays handball for a team run by the Buenos Aires University. He needs a full medical certificate which I’m all in favour of, especially given the recent ‘temporary death’ experience of Fabrice Muamba.

Three trips to the local surgery get me the prescriptions supplied by the doctor…eleven of them, for blood and urine tests, lungs, heart and a number of others that I simply can’t read. Doctors’ handwriting is illegible the world over.

Of course, all these tests are to be carried out at different venues splattered around the city. A long battle with a recording machine gets me through to a human being to book the heart monitor test.

“Read me the doctor’s request…” she demands.

“I can’t,” I reply. “Doctor’s handwriting.”

“You’ve got to read it to me,” she insists in a tone both patronizing and contemptuous since it’s obvious to her that I’m a foreigner and therefore, stupid.

We agree that I’ll fax the relevant pieces of paper and two days later I find a functioning fax machine at the back of a cigarette and chocolate kiosk. I call the booking receptionist a couple of hours later.

Standing in Line.

“I can’t read this,” she says. “What does it say?”

“Dunno what to tell you,” I reply.

And she’s suddenly struck by a wave of sympathy. “April 19^th at 10.50am.”

“But he’s at school every morning,” I say. “Any afternoon would suit us.”

“We only do fifteen year olds and over in the afternoon. It has to be mornings.”

“He’ll be fifteen in just a few months…” I say more in hope than expectation. He’ll probably by 25 by the time we sort this out, I think. If he doesn’t keel over on the handball court with a heart attack first.

I take what’s offered, reveling in a small breakthrough.

I tell my son later that day that I’ve fought through fire to get him his appointment, expecting at least a grunt of gratitude in one of those micro-pauses you sometimes get while your kids are on the Playstation.

“I’m not sure I’m going to continue with the handball,” he tells me, nonchalantly. “Too much hassle.”

I consider strangling him but then realize that might result in another fight with hospital bureaucracy so I kick the cat instead. Now the vet!!! Don’t get me started on the vet!!

Boca Juniors go a point clear at the top after beating Estudiantes 3-0 at their place. Argentinos Juniors visit the leaders next Saturday in what will be a tough test. San Lorenzo’s woes continue with a 2-0 defeat at home to Velez. Their manager, Leonardo Madelon, decided he’d had enough and resigned.

Newell’s won again, 2-0 over struggling Racing. But Independiente breath a little easier with their own 2-0 win over Rafaela. Lanus continue their freefall, losing 1-0 at home to Belgrano while Banfield keep moving away from the bottom spot with an impressive 5-2 victory at Olimpo, who themselves are now bottom.

Arsenal beat All Boys 2-0 while the remaining two games ended in draws – San Martin and Colon 2-2 and Union and Godoy Cruz with one apiece.

I use this blog as a way of exploring and analyzing Argentina. And I chose football as the vehicle with which to conduct that exploration since I don’t have to be good at it as I would if I’d chosen, for instance, tango. I simply have to stand on the terraces and let myself be subjected to the passion, the abuse, the sun and the rain, the sometimes magical football and the often abysmal.

I had all of that against Estudiantes in a game the home side really should have won. But don’t we always say that? Although the Clarin match report did quote a home fan saying: “If life’s not fair, then why should football be?”

When the referee gives a penalty against your side in the first two minutes you know you’ve got a mountain to climb. Argentinos did their best in what I think is shaping up to be a decent team that at least tries to play football. It often doesn’t work but the team was applauded off the pitch by the discerning home fans who appreciated the effort.

Argentinos Juniors fans...disappeared

That undeserved victory puts Estudiantes on top of the table, ahead of Boca who could only draw 2-2 at home to Lanus, and Tigre who lost 1-0 at Arsenal.

To return to my original point: Does football adequately reflect the society we live in or is society represented in football? A bit of both, I suspect.

Argentina has been marking 36 years since the military came to power and kidnapped, tortured and killed about thirty-thousand of its own people.

Life moves on but the scars remain deep from the human rights abuses committed during and after the dictatorship. Football fans were victims too and were remembered before this game. One of them was Julio Lopez who disappeared in 2007 after appearing as a witness in the trial of one of the worst human rights abusers. 

Two other more recent incidents spring to mind. I was just reading about the riots in Egypt after Al-Masry were banned for two years for the violence at their ground in which 78 people died. And last week there were violent incidents at San Lorenzo when the visitors, Colon, were awarded a goal that was obviously off-side to everyone but the referee. That decision resulted in a 1-1 draw when San Lorenzo need the points and need them badly. San Lorenzo lost again this weekend – 2-1 at Atletico de Rafaela to compound their misery.

The referee, Diego Abal, had to be given a police escort from the pitch and extra security for him and his family in the past week. The vice-president of the Argentine referee’s association, Francisco Lamolina, gave an interview a couple of days after last week’s game in which he put the situation into context.

“We’ve got to end this madness,” he said. “If we carry on like this a referee is going to be killed for a game of football. And that is total and absolute madness.”

He, like everyone else, agreed that the referee had made a mistake. But, he said, that’s all it was…a mistake. Abal is still on course to be one of Argentina’s designated FIFA referees at the Brazil World Cup in 2014. “Abal is totally reliable,” he said. “He made a mistake and that was it.”

Football, continued Lamolina, is a piece of the country that we live in. “These things happen,” he said, “because unfortunately there is a lot of aggression in people on the street. You get in your car and every ten blocks you’ll see something. It’s not a coincidence, this violence. This is the country we’ve got.”

Argentina is heading for an economic crisis. It happens every ten years or so with such regularity that for many it’s become a foregone conclusion. Argentines, never mind foreigners, don’t invest here and the economy muddles through on a wing and a prayer and a fiddling of the figures.

The military dictatorship ran the country into the ground between 1976-1983. Hyper-inflation in 1989 left many Argentines in ruin and the scars linger to this day. While 2001-2 saw one of the biggest defaults in history.

Crime is up and inflation is painful. Government subsidies on utility bills are being withdrawn and public transport fares have gone up with more likely to follow. The popularity of President Kirchner’s government is plummeting as it targets all the wrong culprits and trips over its shoelaces in the process.

Julio Lopez - Remembered

There is increased tension on the streets but it’s often an individual thing. But put thirty thousand people together in one place, thirty thousand people with a week’s worth of pent up anger and frustration, and then see the referee wrongly allow or disallow a goal and you’ve all the sparks you need to ignite the explosion.

Worse still, ban your club for two years, deprive the fans of the only outlet many of them have to vent their anger and the resulting violence is often inevitable. And Allah knows that Egyptians have had enough to be angry about these past few years.

Back in Argentina, it’s been interesting to watch how those south of Buenos Aires rivals, Racing and Independiente, have been experiencing both hope and dejection in tandem.

When one wins, the other wins. They both lost 3-0 this time…Racing at home to Union and Independiente at Colon.

Belgrano and San Martin drew 1-1, Banfield and All Boys shared a 0-0. Newell’s suprisingly good form continues with a 1-0 win at always tough to beat Velez. While Godoy Cruz and Olimpo drew 1-1 to round off the weekend.

I suspect that I’m sometimes seen as a bit of a freak in Buenos Aires…especially in the leafy middle-class neighbourhood where I roam. No, nothing to do with the lederhosen I wear in public nor the poetry recitals in the local bakery. That’s perfectly acceptable if done with the right degree of dignity.

I don’t have a car and I don’t want a car. And that, in these parts, is just plain weird. I adopt radical modes of transport like walking, taking the bus, train and underground and, when the need arises, taxis. I’ve also been known on occasion to hire a car.

The simple truth is that Buenos Aires is very often close to traffic gridlock. The current method of protest is to block key roads. In recent weeks, parents demanding a school bus service, teachers requesting more pay and poor people who want to be richer have taken their banners out onto the streets, sometimes just a handful of them, and caused jams that ruined the day for thousands of motorists.

Bus

And although you won’t find many locals who admit it, the public transport system is not that bad.

OK, it could do with a bit more investment and a few weeks ago an overcrowded train coming into Buenos Aires from the poorer southern suburbs crashed into the buffers killing fifty-one people. And yes, the bus drivers are reckless cowboys who don’t stop at red lights or respect pedestrian crossings and kill many people every year with apparent impunity.

I generally work from home so don’t have to endure the rush-hour chaos, the packed trains, the buses that  start moving before you’ve got your foot on the step, the obnoxious taxi drivers and the pickpockets on the underground system, or subte.

But it’s cheap. At least it was. The national government recently dumped the whole subte system onto the Buenos Aires city government. There were two reasons.

The government is heading for financial crisis and the system was costing it many millions in subsidies. And since President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hates the city mayor, Mauricio Macri, it seemed sensible to let him pay and take the stick from angry commuters who saw fares more than double overnight. Her ruse was so callously successful that she’s planning to do the same with thirty-three inner-city bus lines.

Fares then may well rise from about 25cents a journey to a dollar. Cheap compared to London or New York but a huge chunk out of the wallets of the people who take the buses to work, people without cars.

I know some here who have never taken a bus. Their kids see it as an adventure, a journey into another world. “Ooh, ooh! Can I put the money in the machine?”

I’ve just read that sales of motorbikes have shot up in the past year. And with it the consequent increase in accidents involving bikers – a quarter of all the road deaths last year.

There are cyclists but not that many, despite a city government plan to lay cycle lanes all over the place which has merely pissed off the bus and taxi drivers who form a particularly miserable race anyway. That’s a shame since Buenos Aires is a flat city with wide streets which, with a bit of clever planning and a change in attitude, could be transformed into the Amsterdam of South America…only without the canals. And the tulips. And the waffles. Although we do have an exact reproduction of the Anne Frank room here.

I’m not sure what point I’m ambling towards except that Buenos Aires, like most big cities, has a traffic problem and several small solutions that only nibble at the edges and don’t face it full on.

Subte underground train

Meanwhile, the sale of new cars continues to rise. It’s cool to have car and it’s a little weird not to have one. And while that remains the case the gridlocks are only going become more severe and frequent and I’m going to become just a little more smug as I walk at a brisk pace to wherever I’m going.  

One of the reasons I chose Argentinos Juniors as my team to follow is that the 113 bus takes me from close to my house to within a block or two of the ground in about half an hour.

Lanus is a more complicated journey involving a combination of train, subte, train and a longish walk. I didn’t do it this time since I was recovering from taking 35 11 and 12-year-olds to lunch to help celebrate my son’s birthday. I watched it with a stiff drink in front of the television.

This was the second game under Leonardo Astrada and there are signs of a team developing. There were moves, most of which didn’t come off, but at least there were moves. Lanus came into this game after three consecutive defeats and Argentinos went at them from the start.

The only goal of the game, from Pablo Hernandez fifteen minutes after the break, was, says a less than unbiased observer, a just reward and lifts the Bichos into comfortable mid-table with two wins, two draws and two defeats.

The controversy of the weekend came with the equalizer scored by Colon in their game at San Lorenzo. The linesman clearly signaled it as offside and reiterated his decision several times, only for the referee, Diego Abal, to overrule him and award the goal.

He needed a police escort to get off the pitch and anger and violence were expressed both inside and outside the ground. San Lorenzo are in danger of the drop after several poor seasons. This was a decision that denied them two valuable points and dumps them further into trouble.

Little Tigre stay top after a 1-1 draw with Estudiantes. Boca are snapping at their heals with a 1-0 win at San Martin. Both Independiente, with a 2-0 victory over Belgrano, and Racing who won 3-0 at Olimpo, lifted themselves out of harm’s way.

Newell’s continued their good form by beating Atletico de Rafaela 1-0. Arsenal won by the same scoreline over Banfield. All Boys and Godoy Cruz drew 1-1 while Union and Velez shared six goals…the draw leaving Velez in third place.

It wasn’t so much the fierce mid-afternoon sun baking Buenos Aires to a crisp that was hard to bear. It was the intense, wet-blankety humidity that brought rivulets of sweat pouring from every crevice and orifice of anyone brave or foolish enough to take their head out of the freezer or venture far from the always struggling effects of fans and air-conditioners.

But the Diego Maradona stadium beckoned for my first game of the season, the Bichos Colorados fresh from their victory last week against Independiente and a new manager, Leonardo Astrada, to boot.

All we had to do was to stand on the terraces and sing. The players had to run around and kick a football. The fire-brigade, always on hand at Argentine football games in case there’s, er? a fire, performed an act of humanity by spraying the crowd at half-time with their hoses. 

And there are other little innovations in the Argentine game that the rest of the world might do well to heed. They’re innovations that do nothing to alter the fabric of the game but, in their own small ways, help its ebb and flow.

One is the referees’ use of the spray can. It’s very light and attaches to his shorts. He’ll spray a circle of foam on the grass where a free-kick should be taken and then a line behind which defenders should stand. There are no grey areas, no petty arguments about the distance, no pushing and hustling. And about a minute after the free-kick is taken, the foam has faded away as though it were never there.

The other is the mid-half half time. With the weather being so hot it’s a life-saver. It’s simply a five minute break in the middle of the first half during which the players can take in some much needed liquid.

The first time I saw it I thought my watch must be broken. Or the game had been so exciting that forty-five minutes had seemed like twenty-two and a half.

I’d watched the Bolton v QPR game on the tele beforehand and like the QPR players, the fans, the TV public and everyone else except the linesman, saw that ball cross the line for a goal. Only it wasn’t because the easily available and simple to use technology that could solve these issues in a matter of minutes has not been applied.

I understand the traditionalists but the longer the authorities hold out, the more the integrity of the game is compromised. If I were a QPR fan, I’d just be pissed off.

Tired and sweaty heroes.

Back in Buenos Aires, there were flashes of football amidst a general soggy mush of poor passing and aimless dribbling.

The hardest working man in the stadium was the driver of the electric golf-cart that tends to the injured. No sooner had he parked his vehicle than he was called out again as the players, probably feigning injury in order to grab a rest, fell to the ground like extras re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo.

I thought our hard-working but totally ineffective frontman, JJ Morales had finally got his name on the scoresheet with a headed goal mid-way through the first half – the first home goal of the season – only to discover later that it was recorded as an own-goal by Cristian Grabinski.

But a goal is a goal, especially when your team finds them as difficult to score as this one obviously does.

Argentinos Juniors have made the one-one draw their own. So one-nil up usually only means one thing. And sure enough the equaliser came in the second half shortly after another incursion onto the pitch by the man with the golf-cart.

The home players were obviously taking advantage of the break to dream of ice-cold beer, heads in freezers and diving into swimming pools since none of them seemed aware that San Martin were launching pretty much their first attack of the game. They waltzed through the middle of the home defence like pensioners on a weekend trip to Southend for Gaston Caprari to slot home the inevitable.

Then, as if things were not hot enough, the temperature rose a degree or two. Our goalkeeper, Nereo Fernandez, lurched out of his box to bring down a visiting forward and the referee, who had been abysmal all afternoon, showed him the red.

Argentinos Juniors had already used their three substitutes so the departing keeper had no option but to pass his sweat-soaked jersey to the tallest, most nimble defender, Juan Sabia. But hold on!

The new manager, Leo Astrada , had other ideas. This was a draw that, with only ten men, had to be defended. So he overruled commonsense and told JJ Morales, the shortest man on the pitch, to stand between the sticks.

He looked like a little boy who couldn’t reach the light switch. His discomfort was only heightened when one of the trainers brought him out a smaller pair of gloves since the original goalkeeper’s kept slipping off his dainty little hands.

He got a huge cheer when he picked up a stray ball and his defence guarded him valiantly. The crowd appreciated a battling performance in the face of adversity and in the end we were all grateful for a draw that really should have been a victory.

But all of that paled into nothingness after the game between Boca Juniors, who were top, and Independiente, who were bottom without a point this season. At Boca’s Bombonera, the visitors took a 3-1 lead. Boca pulled it back to 3-3 then took the lead. With just two minutes to go, Independiente equalised then scored the winner in added time. It was a partidazo, as they call them here, and is front page news and beyond.

Other strugglers also won key games. Racing beat All Boys 3-0, San Lorenzo got a vital 2-1 away win at Belgrano and Tigre took all three points with a 2-0 at Banfield. Union also clinched the points away at Atletico de Rafaela by the same score. Arsenal beat Godoy Cruz 1-0, Colon lost 3-0 at home to Newell’s and Estudiantes won at home to Lanus by the single goal.