This was the resumption of the second game of the season, called off after eight minutes because of torrential rain. And it looked to me like the Argentinos Juniors players never really dried out. Banfield are the current champions and it showed. They were snappy, they were hungry and they enjoyed [...]]]> Banfield  3  Argentinos Juniors  0

This was the resumption of the second game of the season, called off after eight minutes because of torrential rain. And it looked to me like the Argentinos Juniors players never really dried out. Banfield are the current champions and it showed. They were snappy, they were hungry and they enjoyed their football. They never allowed the visitors time on the ball and when they won it they always had options, always had players running into space.

I must confess that I didn’t go to this game – a 9.30pm kickoff in one of Buenos Aires’s nether regions and the prospect of a late night trip home on public transport didn’t exactly set my red and white blood racing. And the game was live on state-run television. All the first division games are live on TV under a government-financed scheme introduced last year to bring football back to the masses and win tens of thousands of votes into the bargain. They’d have mine, I thought as I settled down with a cold beer and a bowl of crisps, if I had one.

Falklands - Malvinas?

There are two things and two things only that guarantee almost total agreement in Argentina – support for the national football team and the knowledge that the Falkland Islands, Las Islas Malvinas, are rightfully theirs and should be returned forthwith.

A British company, Desire Petroleum, has just moved its drilling platform, the Ocean Guardian, into place about one hundred kilometres off the islands in the search for oil. Lovely, slushy crude oil. Some say there may be as many as 60 billion barrels in them there treacherous waters. But I suspect that’s a crude, slushy estimate. Ask yourself, how can anyone with any certainty know how much of anything lies under the sea bed beneath several hundred metres of some of the wildest waters on the planet? And it won’t be down there in 60 billion neatly-packed barrels either. Sixty-billion barrels of wishful thinking on the part of some oil executive with a model rig on his desk and a dream of owning a much bigger car.

The Ocean Guardian is putting down its roots as the Argentine government flounders in turbulent waters of its own. Inflation is rampant, although official figures say it’s not, the government is losing control to the opposition in the two houses of parliament and President Cristina Kirchner and her husband, Néstor, the previous president, are being accused of dodgy dealings. And there are elections next year.

The national football team, with Maradona at the helm, looks increasingly like a colony of penguins which can’t find its fish. They’re unlikely to bring Argentina together in wild rejoicing in July. So the Falklands will have to do. It’s a sure-fire winner, just as long as they don’t go overboard and send in the troops like they did in 1982. That just upsets people.

The Malvinas is an issue here. School text books show them as Argentine property. As you leave airports and cross borders, the first thing to welcome you into the country are signs reading: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas.” The bus that takes me to the Argentinos Juniors ground goes down a street called The Malvinas Combatants and there’s a particularly good ice-cream parlour around the corner from my house called: Las Malvinas, which does a very tasty sheep and penguin flavour cone. To tell the truth, it doesn’t, but it should do.

There are active Falkland war veterans groups across the country. They differ over whether the 1982 invasion by the then military government was a good idea or not. They criticise subsequent governments for the treatment they’ve received. Hundreds of veterans have committed suicide, unable to fit back into a society that labelled them as losers or as unwitting tools of a repressive regime. Some former soldiers are suing their officers for human rights abuses, saying as well as being under-trained and poorly equipped for battle, they were abused and sometimes tortured. But, like 99.9 percent of all Argentines, they all agree that Las Malvinas son Argentinas.

Closer to tango than bagpipes

The British established their presence there in 1833 in the days when the fellow with the biggest ship and the most cannons could thrust his country’s flag into the ground and claim pretty much anywhere outside of Europe for king and country, while just a few stray penguins looked on. The Spanish wanted them, the French wanted them and, when the Spanish left, the fledgling Argentina said they wanted them. They are, after all, the closest – by several thousand kilometres.

The sticking point has always been the residents, the kelpers as the Argentines call them, none too kindly. They want to stay British in a very steak and kidney pie, Enid Blyton, tea and cricket on a Sunday afternoon sort of way.

They use Argentina’s long history of economic chaos and military repression as a reason for not swapping Queen and country for tango and big, juicy steaks. If the Falklands did became Las Malvinas then within weeks the driving would get much worse, inexplicable queues would form at the post office and government buildings would become swamped in bureaucracy. There would also be more beauty parlours and hairdressers, pubs would also be open longer and children would be allowed in.

But if you take a look at Argentine demographics you’ll see that the majority of the forty-million population lives in and around Buenos Aires. Vast expanses of Patagonia in the south and the hot, northern provinces are almost bereft of human habitation. So how many Argentines would actually go and live in the Falklands?

OK, who's got the fish?

It used to be about how much of the world map you could claim as your own. Now it’s all about oil. If the United States and Britain invaded Iraq under the false justification of weapons of mass destruction, they’re not going to let a few whingeing Argies stop them from extracting a possible 60 billion barrels from the South Atlantic.

Argentina has the support of the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean. The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, appealed directly to Queen Elizabeth to give the islands back. Argentina has gone to the United Nations. Tension is high. But Argentina won’t be invading this time.

The government, with its many faults and problems, is a democratic one and proud of it. The military, defeated and disgraced in the 1980s, is not the force it was and doesn’t have the stomach or the hardware for a fight.

There’ll be plenty of shouting and some frenzied flag waving. But if it’s a result Argentines are looking for, then it looks like the pressure is back on Diego, Leo, Carlitos and Javier to deliver the goods in South Africa later this year.

And so ends this journey through an Argentine first division football season.  But my word, what a way to end it! The sun was shining, the Argentinos Juniors fans were in fine voice, Huracan supporters had travelled in numbers and there were goals galore. The home side went ahead after just [...]]]> Argentinos Juniors  5  Huracan  1

And so ends this journey through an Argentine first division football season.  But my word, what a way to end it! The sun was shining, the Argentinos Juniors fans were in fine voice, Huracan supporters had travelled in numbers and there were goals galore. The home side went ahead after just eight minutes with a debatable penalty slotted home with confidence by the consistently impressive, Nestor Ortigoza. The Bichos were two up by half time thanks to a Juan Mercier strike from the middle of the penalty area. In the second half they passed the ball exquisitely to shouts of ‘Ole’ from the home supporters. Gabriel Hauche notched up a hat-trick.

I shall miss you....

It’s long been my ill-researched theory that football in so many ways is a reflexion of real-life – all contained within the confines of the stadium. You experience all the hopes, the anger, the expectation, the exhilaration, the disappointment and the unpleasant smells of life on the outside. Only you do it vicariously, safely, through the actions of the players and the officials and that obnoxious bloke with the huge belly who keeps shouting the same insult at the referee throughout the game.

It therefore follows, in my malt-whisky addled mind, that a league will reflect the characteristics of the country in which it’s played.

The English premiership, with its dodgy club owners, glitzy corporate executive boxes, expensive foreign imports and greasy cuisine, I think sustains my theory.

The Argentine league, like the country itself, should be up there with the big boys, but isn’t. It’s become a seedbed for foreign clubs to come in and exploit. A few clubs thrive but the majority are victims of their owners’ greed and ineptitude, further weakened by their rotten barrabrava, the organised, hardcore fans.

Grounds are decrepit and no-one ever adequately explains where all the transfer money goes, however politely you ask them. But the depth of player talent is awesome, the atmosphere on match-days is never less than interesting and the passion for and knowledge of football is second to none.

The weekend newspapers said that this season’s climax was more exciting than ever. They always say that. For some weeks there had been a two-horse race for the title between Newell’s Old Boys and humble Banfield, with Newell’s going into their final game two points adrift.

Playing at home, they had to beat San Lorenzo and hope that Banfield wouldn’t get a result away to Boca Juniors. Both lost their games 2-0 and Banfield, for the first time in their history, were crowned Argentine champions. Buenos Aires was awash in a sea of green and white.

Huracan - Glowing like a soggy sparkler

The season was marked by the big clubs, Boca Juniors, River Plate, Racing Club and Independiente, all failing to challenge at the top and all bobbing about in mid-table. An Argentine side, Estudiantes, did win the South American club championship, the Copa Libertadores, and the national team snuck into the World Cup with a less-than impressive fourth automatic qualifying place. But with Dumpy Diego at the helm the journey to South Africa was always going to be a strain on the suspension.

Argentinos Juniors, after finishing in last place last season, could only get better and they did so in style, finally resting in sixth place. For one brief moment, halfway through the season after a win against Estudiantes, the Bichos fans even whispered about perhaps, just maybe, you never know, winning their first silverware in more than twenty years. But then, like a Maradona diet, it all came to nothing, with a rash of draws against teams from the soggy section of the table.

The man I mocked at the beginning of the season, the lumbering awkward Number 5, Nestor Ortigoza, has become my favourite player for his precision, intelligent passing and willingness to battle for every ball. I shall follow him with interest in the Paraguay squad in South Africa.

The little goalscorer, Gabriel Hauche, was also impressive – too impressive, I fear, to linger for long at Argentinos Juniors. I’ll be surprised if he pulls on a Bichos shirt next season. The other man unlikely to be stretching the red and white shirt over his expansive belly is the manager, Claudio Borghi, who I suspect will be plucked from his dugout by one of the vultures from Argentina’s big, underachieving clubs.

There was much less crowd violence this season. And all the matches finished on time, despite a delayed start to the season because of a crisis over television rights and coverage.

Argentina is a bit like that. Things rarely progress as you would like them to. But after false starts and prophesies of doom, gloom and corruption, everything tends to work out alright in the end.

This is the end

In the week the season ended, the trial finally began of one of the most hated figures from Argentina’s military dictatorship, Alfredo Astiz, a former naval commander, known as the ‘Blond Angel of Death.’  He operated at the Naval Mechanics School, the biggest and most gruesome detention centre where he’s accused of killing, among others, two French nuns.

He also led an elite squadron during the Falklands War. He surrendered without firing a shot to British troops in South Georgia. It’s taken more than thirty years to bring him and his cohorts to trial. But after sustained pressure from the families of the victims and human rights groups, and some help from the government, it finally happened.

I went to fourteen of the nineteen games this season. There was some fine football, just one 0-0 draw in the rain, a few appalling refereeing decisions and a fair number of chorizo sausages which make me wince to think about them even now.

It was a respectable season for Argentinos Juniors that, with a little more luck and self-belief could have been a much better one. They drew against the eventual champions, Banfield, 1-1 and beat the runners-up, Newell’s Old Boys 1-0 away.

I shall be retiring to my hammock for the summer break but I hope to return early next year, rested and rejuvenated, for another season and a preview of the World Cup from the terraces of the Diego Armando Maradona stadium.

Phew! What a relief. The Red Bugs finally returned to winning ways after six games. And well deserved it was too. However they play out the last few games of the season, Argentinos are assured of comfortable mid-table safety but nonetheless played this one with passion. Gimnasia fear relegation [...]]]> Gimnasia y Esgrima 1  Argentinos Juniors  2

Phew! What a relief. The Red Bugs finally returned to winning ways after six games. And well deserved it was too. However they play out the last few games of the season, Argentinos are assured of comfortable mid-table safety but nonetheless played this one with passion. Gimnasia fear relegation and needed to win, but were simply not very good.

They took the lead fifteen minutes into the second half with a goal from Jose Vizcarra who was left unmarked in the penalty area from a Gimnasia corner.  Argentinos equalised with an offside goal from Gabriel Hauche.  Then Gonzalo Prosperi scored the winner with a back-heeler off the post while he was lying on the ground, if you can picture that!

This match was played in the city of La Plata, about an hour south of Buenos Aires, and home to two first division sides – Gimnasia y Esgrima and the current South American champions, Estudiantes.

It’s a pleasant university city with a fine cathedral. It’s also the home town of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and a museum housing some of the best dinosaur finds anywhere in the world.

But it’s a place that I’ll always associate with the worst excesses of Argentine police corruption and brutality.

The tone was set by Miguel Etchecolatz, the chief of police in the city during military rule in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. It’s difficult to compile a list of the worst abusers of human rights during a nightmare in which an estimated thirty-thousand people were kidnapped, tortured and killed. But Etchecolatz would certainly figure in the top ten.

He was sentenced in 2006 to life in prison for kidnap, torture and murder. The day before the sentence, a retired labourer, Julio Lopez, a victim of torture who had given evidence at the trial, disappeared. He’s not been seen since.

Where is Julio Lopez?

There has been a huge campaign across Argentina for information about his whereabouts but his family suspect he was abducted by supporters of the military regime, police officers or former police officers sending a stark message to other potential witnesses in the countless human rights trials clogging up the country’s legal system. It later transpired that judges, lawyers and other witnesses in the Etchecolatz trial were threatened.

In December last year investigators discovered the remains of hundreds of people at a former detention centre just behind a police station in La Plata. They said the evidence showed that the bodies were thrown into a pit, covered in fuel then set alight alongside tyres to cover the smell of burning flesh.

The day the discovery was announced I found myself in the course of my duties as the then BBC South America correspondent in a mini-van distributing condoms to the transvestite street workers of La Plata.  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7793183.stm)  I was travelling with ex and current prostitutes who were running their own health clinic for the city’s sex workers.

La Plata has a thriving sex trade, catering for all tastes. Many of the men and women, usually from neighbouring Paraguay or Argentina’s poor, northern provinces, are coerced into the industry. A large number are underage, working in seedy hovels at the end of dirt roads on the outskirts of the city.

I visited one brothel – a co-operative run by a group of men and women – near the centre of the city. My host told me that he paid the local police four-hundred dollars a month for protection.

“Protection from what?” I asked him.

“They tell me, it’s protection from third parties,” he replied.

I think it’s fair to say that most Argentines have a poor opinion of their police forces and do their best to steer clear of them. Of course, that’s not always possible.

One friend told me her great aunt had died. I expressed my condolences and asked when the funeral would be.

“We don’t know,” I was told. “We’re trying to raise the money to pay the police for the certificate to release the body.”

The old lady had died of natural causes but the bureaucracy demands a certificate to verify that. With a combination of grief and the knowledge that any complaint will only meet more bureaucracy, the family decided it was easier simply to pay the bribe and move on.

The corruption is so endemic that it’s difficult to know where any reform of the system would start, should the political will ever arise to confront it.

I came across corruption at its lowest level on a simple trip to a new takeaway restaurant in my neighbourhood to buy some empanadas – little pasties filled with meat, cheese or tuna. The policeman in front of me collected his food and walked out without paying.

“He gets them for free?” I asked the cook.

“If we don’t want problems,” he shrugged. “He gets a few free samples a couple of times a week for him and his mates.”

There are no doubt some fine Argentine police officers. Many brave men are killed every year in the line of duty. And if, by any chance, you are an Argentine police man or woman reading this blog, I’m sure you are one of the good ones.

The city of Buenos Aires government, sick of being policed by the national men and women in blue, has been trying to establish its own force. But it’s become embroiled in farce even before a Buenos Aires bobby has collared his first villain.

Thin Blue Line

The first proposed boss, Jorge Palacios, had to resign and is under investigation for allegedly covering up evidence after the attack on the Jewish culture centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed more than eighty people. Another major police player is embroiled in a phone tapping scandal.

The new police force is the baby of the mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, who in 1991 was himself kidnapped  – by a gang of policemen. In fact, the assumption when anyone is kidnapped in Argentina is usually that current or former police officers are somehow involved.

My only brush with the local law was some years ago on my first visit to Argentina when the taxi I was travelling in with my wife and her aunt was pulled over by a traffic cop. He was a corpulent fellow who pointed a machine gun at us as we lined up against the wall. It might have been nerves but I found myself giggling, until my wife whispered that I’d need to present some form of ID. Not to do so was a criminal offence.

All I had on me was my Hackney library card – I never left the house without it – which you won’t be surprised to learn impressed our interrogator no end. He sent us on our way with a cheery smile. Nowadays I’d use my Argentinos Juniors membership card.

Anyway, back to the football. The previous leaders, Banfield, on Sunday lost their unbeaten record with a 2-1 home defeat to Racing Club. So Newell’s Old Boys took advantage with a 1-0 win over Colon to go top of the table with just three games to go.

It was the first home game of the season and I’m still finding my bearings so was not surprised to go through the [...]]]> 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

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.