Newell’s Old Boys 0 Argentinos Juniors 1

The first victory of the season and a surge up the table. Not much to complain about there, surely? Well, yes there was actually. Firstly, this was a poor game of poor passing, little cohesion and sparse goalmouth action. There was a barely noticeable burst of promise from Newell’s at the end of the first half when they should have, but didn’t, score. And the visitor’s goal came in the second half when Nestor Ortigoza rammed home what had been an indisputable penalty.

Ortigoza is not, has not and never will be part of the exodus of South American players who have been plucked in their prime by foreign clubs. It’s not that he’s a bad player. He was probably the man of the match in this one with, admittedly, not much competition. His problem is that, to be blunt and a little cruel, he looks like me on the pitch. Me or any other forty-something, slightly out of condition, beer swilling, Sunday morning park slogger. That’s why I like him.

Nestor Ortigoza - like me, but much, much better

The difference between Ortigoza and me is that, despite being more wildebeest than graceful gazelle, he is a deceptively skilful and sometimes very effective player. And he plays with a passion that the fans love and they love it because, to echo a whinge heard around the world, it’s a passion not often found in the game these days.

We’ve all heard about the mercenary nature of modern football. But in the case of Argentina that moan takes on more resonance with the knowledge that more than one-thousand home-grown players ply their trade abroad. That’s more than one-thousand compared to England’s, let me think for a moment, one. At least Mr D Beckham is the only one I could find on a brief scan of the web.

But replace the word ‘English’ for ‘Argentine’ on your search engine and you’ll travel the world. We all know about Carlos Tevez, worth every penny at Manchester City, Lionel Messi advertising razors at Barcelona and Sergio Aguero providing for Diego Maradona’s grandson at Atletico Madrid. And who would begrudge former Argentinos Juniors player, Julio Arca, whatever wealth and happiness he found at Sunderland and Middlesborough?

But what motivates Julian Eberhardt as he pulls on his Lightning Fayetteville shirt in the US fifth division? Or Carlos Martino who plays for Scorpion in the Nicaraguan league? There are more than sixty Argentines playing in Mexican football. One-hundred and seventy four in Spain and nearly as many in Italy. And then of course there’s Mariano Caporale, Hector Parodi and Mariano Sanchez dazzling the home fans at Ahrahami Chittagong in Bangladesh!

Wherever you roam in the world of football – from the Greek second division to the Panamanian league, from Indonesia to Malta, the Maldives to Andorra – there are Argentine footballers earning a crust.

Good for them and good for world football, I say. But the situation does raise a number of points on the bleak terraces back home. Firstly, what has become of the more than thirteen billion dollars paid over the past ten years to Argentine clubs for this lucrative export? I’m not sure how much Bong da Binh Dong of Vietnam forked out for Diego Morales, perhaps nothing at all.

But little of the money generated by Tevez, Mascherano and Aguero has been ploughed back into the Argentine game. Many of those playing abroad have never even been seen by the home fans. Messi was shipped off to Barcelona aged just thirteen and never pulled on a Newell’s Old Boys first team shirt. The national team goalkeeper, Sergio Romero, played just four games for Racing Club before moving to AZ Alkmaar of Holland.

And what does the constant flow of Argentine players do to the quality of the home league? The truth is that there is no shortage of aspiring, talented youngsters and there’s a fine teaching structure in place to bring them on. But the motivation to continue investing time and money in nurturing this young talent is fast deflating. What’s the point if your promising fourteen year olds all end up in the Greek second division?

It’s a problem that has long been reflected in the rest of Argentina. A good education system churns out keen young citizens. What often awaits them at home is a sometimes corrupt, always bureaucratic country in which you’re rewarded by who you know rather than what you know. The temptation of a more lucrative and comfortable life abroad is often too difficult to resist.

This was one of the few games that my adopted team have to play outside of Buenos Aires. Newell’s Old Boys are one of the two teams in Argentina’s second city, Rosario. The other, you’ve guessed it, is Rosario Central.

It’s a fair old trek for a kick-off at ten past nine on a Friday night so being a fair-weather fan I watched this one in a local bar with my taxi driving mate and fellow Argentinos fan, Pablo.

There was just about enough to celebrate on the night. But we agreed, over our ham and cheese sandwiches, a bleak looking future. That’s been exacerbated by two dismal performances in the past week from the Argentine national team, which leaves their qualification for the 2010 World Cup in some doubt. Perhaps, we pondered over coffee as the barmen mopped the floors around our table, a symptom of the malaise in the domestic game.