30/08
2009

Game Two v Banfield

Argentinos Juniors 1 Banfield 1

It was the first home game of the season and I’m still finding my bearings so was not surprised to go through the turnstile and emerge in the section behind the goal where the barrabrava or hardcore fans stand. Yes, they still stand at Argentine grounds, leaning against metal posts, behind huge fences topped with razor wire. Ah! The old days.

The barrabrava in Argentina have a bit of a reputation. Not just for violence, which there is plenty of. Their influence, their poisonous stain, seeps much deeper into the Argentine game than it ever did in England. In some cases they control the terraces, dealing in tickets and selling drugs. There are reports of some controlling players’ contracts and, in a system in which club presidents are elected by the fans, having an undue and malignant influence on the running of some clubs.

So I was mightily relieved when I claimed my spot behind the goal to find I was standing near a couple of elderly ladies, grannies to be precise, although I wouldn’t say that to their faces of course. They wore their red Argentinos Juniors shirts stretched over bellies that had spent a lifetime being filled with Choripanes, the fatty sausages obligatory at football matches. They didn’t look like they were going to beat the crap out of anybody, although I wouldn’t want to risk walking muddy shoes over their living-room floor or playing football near their gardens.
There were also couples with babies, boyfriends and girlfriends holding hands and teenage boys with their dads.

Argentinos Junior’s reputation as a friendly neighbourhood club, a barrio club, was confirmed. I was safe.
There were some mean-looking heavily tatooed fellows hanging from the railings and a gentle waft of marijuana tinged the early evening air. There was a line of policemen at the back of the stand sporting an array of moustaches of the variety I’ve only ever seen displayed by Latin American policemen.

And the Banfield fans, decked in green and white, had come in numbers from their industrial suburb south of Buenos Aires.

But elsewhere, with the season still fresh out of its wrapping, the barrabrava had been doing their worst.
At the Boca Juniors training ground their goalscoring hero, a man who sweats blue and yellow blood for the team, Martin Palermo, was threatened by seven fans who called him a traitor for saying nice things, gentlemanly, sportsmanlike things, about a rival club.

“Who sent you?” asked Palermo, knowing they wouldn’t have bypassed the training ground security without some inside help. He once dedicated a goal to Rafa Di Zeo, a friend and former boss of the Boca barrabrava, now on day-release from prison where he’s serving time for beating up rival fans during a supposedly friendly match. While Di Zeo is out of action, a new man, Mauro Martin, has filled the void and there’s talk of a third faction edging into any spare gaps left on the terraces.

Boca 'fan' Rafa Di Zeo

Boca 'fan' Rafa Di Zeo

The battle for control of the barrabrava over at city rivals River Plate has spilled out onto the streets, with organised pitched battles and one ‘lieutenant’ being shot dead in a hit worthy of a Colombian drug gang.

The so-called fans at South American champions, Estudiantes, have also been in action. Last week, they went looking for former Manchester United and Chelsea player, Juan Sebastian Veron. They wanted to discuss the weekend’s derby match between Estudiantes and their La Plata city rivals, Gimnasia. Their spokesman was a man called Omar Alonso, recently released from fifteen years in prison for killing a taxi driver and drug dealing. Not the kind of man I’m inviting to my birthday party.

At the very least the barrabrava demand that the players give them tickets and free shirts. The clubs sometimes pay their travel and accommodation costs for away matches. One particularly influential bunch had an all-expenses paid trip to Germany for the 2006 World Cup.

In return, they promise security, loud support for the team and block votes for the candidates in the always keenly fought elections for club president. Let’s face it, if you’re too old, fat or useless to play the game, wouldn’t running your own local club do instead?

And because of this support, because the barrabrava have friends in the police force and in politics, in some cases are members of the police force or work for their local council or trade union, there is little talk about bringing them into line. Whenever they get out of control and there’s a killing or a players’ bus is attacked, there’s a lot of muttering and mumbling about doing something to curtail their influence. But generally they’re left to fight amongst themselves.
I could see none of that from where I stood behind the goal at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium. Simply a lot of noise and flag-waving which is just how it should be. I also saw Santiago Silva put the visitors ahead early on after a defensive blunder by Argentinos.

Gabriel Hauche, developing into a crowd favourite, put the home side back on level terms in the second half and one-one is how it ended – although Argentinos Juniors were probably lucky to escape with a point after some goal-line scares.

So two draws from two games. And I’ve staked my place on the terrace, just to the right of the goal, about fifteen steps up, to the right of the grannies, just behind where a couple spent most of the game snogging and to the left of a gaggle of very small children who accidently hit me often with long Argentinos Juniors balloons that they were given at the start of the game.

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23/08
2009

Game One v Boca Juniors

La Bombonera - a ground of three thirds

La Bombonera - a ground of three thirds

Boca Juniors 2  Argentinos Juniors 2

Well, I thought it was worth waiting the extra week for the Argentine football season to begin. The players were fitter, leaner and hungrier. Not a single nil-nil draw and plenty of surprises.

The Argentine season is very short, just nineteen games. So if you get off to a poor start that’s it, no time for a late surge or any chance to emerge refreshed from the Christmas break.

We start the 2009 Apertura season with the last chill of the southern hemisphere winter and will end it in late December with the Christmas tinsel wilting in the early summer sun.

I went to the Bombonera, the home of Boca Juniors for the visit of Argentinos Juniors.  It’s an imposing yellow and blue concrete hulk which sits on the edge of the working class dock area of La Boca. It’s a shrine, an icon, a Mecca in a country where football is pretty much a religion. It’s also bloody difficult to get into, even if you’ve got a ticket.

And the reason is the abundance at every turn of pompous, officious, uniformed bastards whose sole aim in life is to make things difficult for the paying customer.

Life in Latin America can be sweet. A little money helps but the key to long life and happiness is to stay clear, whenever and wherever possible, of anyone in a position of authority. Latin Americas’ many military dictatorships and oppressive police forces speak for themselves.

Foreigners will tell-tales of hours lost in cavernous government buildings in the search for official residency papers. Locals talk through gritted teeth about epic visits to the cable TV, telephone or electricity companies to get things repaired or to correct wildly outrageous bills. No-one that I know has ever spent less than an hour in the bank or post office. I once paid a two-hundred dollar bribe and spent six hours at the customs office to retrieve something that was mine and they had no right to be holding in the first place.  And I was shushed and then ignored for a good ten minutes by staff at the place where they issue ID documents because they wanted to watch the end of the local Big Brother.

My generously sympathetic theory is that these poorly-paid, ill-trained staff are treated abysmally by their superiors and the only joy they can retrieve from an otherwise dismal life is to be obnoxious to defenceless punters like myself for the short time they have us at their mercy.

I was polite and respectful to all of the fifteen or so policemen, women and ground stewards I asked directions from outside the Boca ground. They sent me in at least fifteen different directions. And it was only when I’d returned to the same one for the third time that their veneer of pure spite began to crack and they showed me a modicum of sympathy. Or it might have been when I slumped to the ground sobbing in anger and frustration.

I made it to my seat about two minutes before kick-off by which time I didn’t much care about the football. Or global warming, the dry rot in the living room or anything else for that matter.

But there’s nothing like a good game of football to take your mind off of your problems. And this was a good game of football. Boca Juniors looked tired and disjointed. They are back under the command of Alfio ‘Coco’ Basile, a man with a voice so deep and gravelly the ground shakes when he speaks. The last time he was in charge, Boca simply couldn’t stop winning. He had to go because the carpenters couldn’t build new trophy cabinets quickly enough. But he didn’t do so well as the national team coach and Boca didn’t do so well without him. So he’s back.

The visitors, Argentinos Juniors, who last season finished last, were sprightly and imaginative. They had a goal disallowed for handball. That only works if your name is Diego Maradona and you have a special relationship with the Almighty!

But then Gabriel Hauche on the half-hour and Nicolas Gianni on the stroke of half-time put Argentinos two up. This looked like being a shock of shockingly shocking proportions.

Marino Boy

Marino Boy

Taking a leak at half-time, the old fellow mopping the floor told me that Boca had made a couple of changes. He mopped with one hand while holding a radio to his ear with the other and spoke with authority. I imagine that a man with a keen ear who mops the floors at Boca Juniors must learn a thing or two and is worth listening to. He may have just cleaned the Boca changing room floor or emptied Coco Basile’s spit bucket for all I knew.

And so it came to pass. There was a strange rumbling in the concrete structure which I put down to the half-time dressing down that Basile gave to his lacklustre players. One of the new men he put on was Guillermo Marino who neatly put the ball into the visitor’s net twice in five minutes to level the score.

That’s the way it stayed. A fair result in a game of two halves and one that Argentinos Juniors will be more pleased with than Boca.

The big shock came elsewhere with humble Banfield beating Boca’s big rival, River Plate 2-0. The current champions, Velez Sarsfield, won their opening fixture 1-0 away at Colon and lumbering, slumbering giants, Independiente lost at home to Newell’s Old Boys.

Football is back as an intrinsic part of the fabric of Argentine life. She’d been gone for far too long.

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Posted in Away Matches | 6 Comments »