I’m sorry that I’ve fallen so far behind while so much has been happening. Two wins out of three for Argentinos Juniors sees them finish the season with 22 points and qualify for the Sudamericana Cup…the Intertoto Cup of South America. That was a 2-1 home win over Arsenal, a 1-0 defeat at All Boys and a 1-0 victory over Olimpo on the last day of the season at home.

But I guess more importantly, the world has been saved from the threat of global warming, at least on paper. I’m still in Durban, South Africa, recovering from observing two weeks of negotiation at the United Nations Climate Change talks.

Climate Change Saviours?

My work entailed interviewing anyone and everyone who had some connection with what they call the Conference of the Parties or COP17. They included scientists, negotiators, meteorologists, oceanographers, forestry experts, politicians, youth group representatives, Indonesian dancing girls, earnest Scandinavians, researchers from the Amazon and the Sahara, excited Australians who claimed to have found a way of turning camel dung into a renewable energy source that would provide power for half of Asia and more green pressure groups than you could shake a cucumber at.

We all pretty much know what the problem is. The world, but particularly the rich nations with the United States at the top of the list, have been burning so much carbon fuel – oil, coal and gas – into the air for so long that the world’s temperature is rising. And if we keep on at the present rate we’ll be fried, but not before we’ve suffered floods and droughts and starvation and possibly even plagues of locusts of biblical proportions.

Boca Juniors. A White Rhino?

Many claimed to have the answers. Vegans told us that not eating meat was the cure. His Holiness 1008 Shri Shri Soham Baba, a monk wearing orange robes and sporting a large silver tea pot, puts his money on greater spiritual awareness. He first noticed the effects of climate change while living in a cave in the Himalayas. More electric buses, more bicycles, less petrol burning cars, less long distance flights.

Everyone, it seemed, is green and no-one is polluting. One oil company executive told me his firm was exploiting oil reserves in the Ecuadoran Amazon causing the minimal amount of damage. A US navy rear admiral said he travelled the world and saw the undeniable effects of climate change in all corners, reports his findings to his government which simply chooses to continue polluting.

I visited the boat of a Swiss sailor, a former ski instructor, who noticed the ice melting around his office. Dario Schwörer embarked on a fifteen-year mission to highlight the effects of global warming by sailing the world, climbing all of the world’s highest mountains and using only his sails, his bike and his feet to do it. He’s travelling with his wife and four children. When the seas get choppy he hangs the kids from the ceiling on elastic ropes to keep them out of harms way. “Dangerous?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied. “Our biggest danger is from drunken drivers when we cycle through city centres.”

There were 194 countries represented in Durban. We could all cite many examples of any two countries with unresolved disputes stretching back hundreds of years. Try getting 194 to agree on anything.

The Rest...dung beetles?

Basically, the poor countries say they don’t pollute much yet suffer the worst of the droughts and the flooding caused by climate change which in turn has been caused by the rich world. The wealthy nations admit that there’s a problem but feel the developing countries should stop buring carbon fuels and take on equal responsibilities. And do India and especially China still qualify as developing nations?

The phrase circulating around the negotiating chambers was ‘equal but differentiated responsibilites.’ If ever there was a legal-political term designed to flumox the people then this is it. We’re all in the same boat, but some more than others.

As I’m sure you know by now, after some tense last minute huddling in dark corners, the negotiators saved the process and came up with the wording that pretty much brings all 194 nations on board.

The trouble now is that they’ll all have gone home and will, at this very moment, be poring over the small print with their lawyers to see just how differentiated they are and in what ways they can wheedle out of their full responsibilites. Meanwhile, the world continues to pollute, the temperatures are rising and the floods and droughts are becoming more severe and more frequent.

Of all the many people I spoke to, perhaps the most poignant was a young man from the remote Marshall Islands, somewhere out there in the Pacific Ocean. He was munching on a BigMac and fries during another of the many lulls in the negotiations. Every year, he said, they could observe the sea levels rising. “We move further inland,” he explained. “And one day we’ll have no-where left to go.”

I’ll be expanding my carbon footprint shortly with the flight back to Buenos Aires. By that time Boca Juniors will have finished celebrating their Apertura championship victory – unbeaten and out of sight of second-placed Racing Club.

They talk a lot in South Africa about the Big Five, the five mightiest beasts – lion, elephant, rhino, leopard and dung beetle. Sorry, that last one should read buffalo. I went on safari yesterday and only saw the rhino.

Buenos Aires has its own Big Five. Boca Juniors, River Plate, San Lorenzo, Racing Club and Independiente. Only Boca deserve that title at the moment. The rest? Dung beetles!!

This is my one-hundredth blog post since I started covering Argentina in August 2009 from the terraces of whichever ground Argentinos Juniors were playing at. And sometimes in front of the tele. My first game was against Boca Juniors and in a spookily coincidental way,  so was this one.

Telegram from the Queen perhaps?

That one was a 2-2 draw at their place,  this one a 0-0 at ours. The latest match was better than the score would suggest with the Bichos stand-in goalkeeper,  Nereo Fernandez,  playing the game of his life and the home-side’s front men,  profligate in front of the Boca goal.

In the early days,  The Hand of Dan was thankful for a trickle of curious traffic. It now receives tens of thousands of visitors each month and the numbers are rising. My knowledge of blogging is as sketchy now as it was then but I have become intrigued by the weird ways and twisted mentality of the spammers,  who send me a couple of hundred unwanted bits of rubbish mail each day.

For those of you who blog regularly,  you’ll know about the inconvenience of spam but if you don’t here’s some examples of the kind of thing that plagues my blogging life.

Getting rid of them is a daily chore but it does educate me about whole new aspects of this disturbed world in which we live.

To those of you who write in Arabic,  Russian,  Greek,  Hebrew and Hindi,  thanks for taking the trouble but I’ve no idea what you’re getting at. And to the mini-cab company in Blackburn,  Lancashire,  I’ll bear you mind should I ever find myself in your neighbourhood.

There are offers for cures for ailments I didn’t even know existed and I now wonder whether I should have cause for concern. Hair growing on the male member,  for instance. I’ll keep the spam,  just in case.

Acquired taste.

A ridiculous number offer sex in different places,  with different people in a variety of contorted and sometimes unhealthy sounding circumstances. And to those people I say: “There is more to life! Expand your horizons!” There’s football,  for a start. And basketball,  rugby,  tennis,  beer and books.

And one week I received a ridiculous amount of spam from clinics offering to cleanse,  for want of a politer term,  the poo tube. Could it have been because that weekend Argentinos Juniors played Colon…a team representing a city by the same name in the north-east of Argentina which in turn was named after Cristobal Colon,  known to English-speakers as Christopher Columbus?

I suspect that those selling Gucci handbags are not as authentic as they say they are and a handbag,  however fashionable and chic it may be,  will do nothing to enhance the tough-guy image of the barra brava at Argentinos Juniors.

I’ve a strong suspicion that neither Justin Bieber nor Lady Gaga are fans of Argentine football nor read my blog but mail purporting to be from them keeps landing in my inbox. In case I’m wrong,  thanks guys – I’m honoured.

We’ve all got egos that can be got at but I have trouble believing those mails that start with the words: “Your writing style is superb and I’ve no hesitation in saying that it’s changed the way I look at this vital subject.”

Off the wall comment.

Or the ones that sound like lyrics from a bad blues song: “My wife died last week and today the doctors told me I have terminal cancer and only have three weeks to live. I was going to end it all then I read your blog and it gave me a reason to hope.”

Most are in a style of English which makes me suspect they were not written by human beings. Like this for example: “I truly wanted to make a remark in order to thank you for all the stunning steps you are giving out at this site. I would claim that we readers actually are really endowed to live in a perfect site with very many outstanding professionals with good tactics. I feel quite blessed to have come across the web pages and look forward to really more pleasurable minutes reading here.” What!!?

It defeats and befuddles me why anyone would buy acne pills,  knitting patterns,  a time-share apartment in Marbella or hire an accountant in Cardiff,  Wales,  on the strength of an unsolicited mail that’s landed in your spam box. But I suppose there must be enough mugs out there to make it worth their while or they wouldn’t do it. Would they?

Back to the real and un-spam tainted world of Argentine football. That draw for Boca Juniors consolidates their top spot with a four point lead over Racing who only managed a 0-0 draw at San Lorenzo.

Tigre and All Boys drew 1-1 and Olimpo and Arsenal 2-2. San Martin won the battle between two of the newly-promoted sides with a 2-1 victory over Rafaela. Velez beat Independiente 1-0 at their place and Belgrano also clocked an away win – 3-2 at Estudiantes.

Banfield went back to losing ways — 1-0 at Union which keeps them and not Argentinos Juniors at the bottom of the pile. Lanus and Colon and Newell’s and Godoy Cruz all drew 1-1. The Newell’s manager, Javier Torrente, resigned after this game, the latest in what’s been a dismal season so far for the Rosario club.

It was only a fleeting glimpse and of course he’d shaved off the beard – well, he would, wouldn’t he – but I saw a bloke among the Boca Juniors fans who looked just like Osama bin Laden.

If you don’t buy the story that his bones are being picked clean at the bottom of the ocean and instead a deal was done to give him a new life away from terrorism, then where is the place you’d least expect to find him? Running a fish and chip shop in Doncaster? Selling hot dogs in Boston? Or working as a welder in Avellaneda just south of Buenos Aires and following Boca Juniors at the weekend?

Where's Osama?

In fact, where better than Argentina which has a history of harbouring criminals on the run from international justice? Hundreds of European Nazis came here after the Second World War, living comfortable lives and plotting the creation of the Fourth Reich, unmolested by either the local or the foreign authorities.

All that is, except one, whose case bears some similarities, and some stark differences, to that of Osama bin Laden.

Adolf Eichmann was a key player in the operation to transport and then exterminate millions of European Jews. He arrived in Buenos Aires in the early nineteen-fifties with false Red Cross papers and lived an unremarkable life with his family working, bizarrely, among other things, as a rabbit farmer.

He had a cunning plan which bamboozled the intelligence of international Nazi hunters for many years. “I vil change my name from Eichmann to Ricardo Clemens zen zee enemy vil nefer know my true identity.” His wife and kids still went by the name of Eichmann.

He lived unmolested for many years in Buenos Aires. In 1955 his wife gave birth to the couple’s fourth child. This failure to find him, whether intentional or through ineptitude, was on a par with the inability to pick up Bin Laden, living in a huge complex within sniper range of a military establishment.

Eichmann on trial

Eichmann’s peace was shattered when his son, Klaus, became friendly with Sylvia Hermann, a young Jewish girl, the daughter of a holocaust survivor. The girl’s father became suspicious and contacted the Israeli authorities. They sent some of their top secret agents to investigate the former Obersturmbannfuhrer, who had moved from breeding rabbits to work at the Mercedes Benz factory.

They kidnapped and drugged him then took him to a safe house for interrogation. He was  given the choice of instant death or a trial in Israel. Bin Laden was given no such choice.

Eichmann was drugged and disguised as a flight attendant and bundled aboard an El Al flight to Israel. (Look carefully the next time a glazey-eyed steward spills coffee over you.) When the news got out, many in Argentina, especially on the right, were outraged by the encroachment on their sovereign territory. The Israelis didn’t admit to having him at first but when their prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, announced the operation to the Israeli parliament, he received a standing ovation.

Eichmann was tried before a civilian court where he blurted out that now famous line: “I was just following orders.” He was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people and hanged on 31 May 1962, reportedly chanting: “Long live Germany. Long live Argentina. Long live Austria.”

I think we all understand the need to break some rules when in pursuit of evil-doers, especially if the host nation is not cooperating. What does leave me perturbed however were the boisterous celebrations on the streets of the United States. This was not a fucking Bruce Willis film.

The more civilised footballers, when scoring against their old clubs, mute their celebrations out of respect for their former fans and colleagues. Many indigenous tribes mourn the killing of the animals they hunt. There are things you’ve got to do because you’ve got to do them without the need to gloat.

Those crowds dancing in the streets brought to mind the spectators who used to attend public executions and cheered wildly when the axe-man raised the severed head in the air, cerebral entrails dripping on his work clothes.

Is Obama not revealing photos of the dead Osama because he’s worried they might incite anger in the radical Muslim world or because of the reaction he fears from blood-lusting Americans? Or both?

In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes peeled in case I come across that Osama look-alike again. Now I think of it, there’s a bloke who works at the hardware shop around the corner who bears an uncanny resemblance to Saddam Hussein. Same moustache, anyway.

I’ll nip over there now to buy a new screwdriver since I’ve got some loose screws that need tightening. I’ll report back.

But first this match which I suppose I must mention. It was one of those games when nothing went right. Martin Palermo scored after just four minutes when the Argentinos Juniors keeper, Nico Navarro let tumble what looked like a fairly tame cross.

Nothing to cheer about...

Then the always controversial, never happy Juan Pablo Riquelme almost smiled after scoring their second, from a direct free-kick while the referee had his arm up to indicate that it was indirect. Shouldn’t they know the rules before they let them out with a whistle?

Argentinos Juniors’ attacks on the opposition goal are so seldom these days that future opponents might think about resting their goalkeepers and playing an extra attacker.

This defeat, only the second this season, means the best that Argentinos can hope for with the five games that remain is mid-table mediocrity. The truth is that I can’t remember the last decent game they played. And to think, this time last year, we were building up to take the championship. It all seems so long ago!

A win for Boca Juniors, any win, is big news here so it was all over Monday’s front pages and beyond. River Plate lost 2 0 at home to All Boys so that uses up an almost equal amount of ink. Godoy Cruz beat stumbling, bumbling Newell’s 3-1 and Olimpo plunged Huracan into further crisis, beating them 2-1 at their place. Racing beat Arsenal by the same score and Tigre thumped Colon 3-0. Independiente and San Lorenzo, Lanus and Estudiantes and Quilmes and Gimnasia all drew. Velez sit solidly at the top of the table, with a four point lead after beating Banfield 2-0.

It’s quite an experience to enter into the lair of the dragon then emerge, exuberant,  two hours later with a couple of bags of his goodies. The Bombonera is big, noisy and potentially intimidating. But not to us, the hardy supporters of modest Argentinos Juniors, nor to the players who put on a brave performance and snuck away with two late goals – one from Santiago Gentiletti, the other from Ciro Riuz.

We owe a huge dollop of thanks to the Argentinos ‘keeper, Nicolas Navarro, who put on a performance of breathtaking agility. This game marked the return to the Boca ranks of their miserable but masterful maestro, Juan Roman Riquelme. He’s been out injured for six months and there were times when I could see why he’s been sorely missed. His vision and passing were sublime. Unfortunately for Boca, their aging war horse, Martin Palermo, looked like he needed to be retired to nibble grass in a meadow.

Dragon's Lair

Boca are in crisis. So are their main rivals, River Plate. The two meet in their next match for the so-called superclasico – a fixture looking less and less a clasico and a long way from super.

How they must pine for the days, not so long ago, when Mauricio Macri was their president and if a trophy sparkled, Boca won it. He’s now mayor of Buenos Aires. The city muddles through. It’s hard to know to what degree its successes and failures can be accredited to him.

He is basically the son of a very wealthy businessman who adopted Boca as his toy and then did much the same with the city council, possibly using it as a springboard for a career in national politics.

In my line of work I’ve had what some would call the privilege, others would say was the misfortune to meet a fair few politicians. What has always surprised me, with one or two notable exceptions, is that they always came across as less intelligent than their public image led us to believe they were. Often, they were just downright thick, or somehow lacking in the kind of worldliness you’d expect of a person who represents the people.

The truth is that if you’re not a self-serving, hypocritical, arse-licking, two-faced piece of shit when you go into the business, you’d better become one very soon if you’re to survive and prosper.

Most of us, because we’re nice people with ideals and compassion, look at the options and say: “No thank-you very much. I’m going to earn my living as a carpenter or a professional footballer or work on the supermarket check-out where I get to shout several times a day: “More change please Mavis.”

Intrepid Bichos

But we need politicians, apparently. So we’re left in a terrible situation where none of us, because we’re nice people with ideals and compassion, is willing to take on this essential service. Instead, we’ve got the kind of people making decisions on our behalf we’d certainly not want to share a beer with and probably wouldn’t even let into our homes to unblock our toilets.

Because we’re not willing to take on this task, do we have the right to criticise those who do? Of course we bloody do! So I will. This mild rant is merely a prelude to an attack on an Argentine politician who I’ve not met but have recently taken a particular dislike to as a result of a couple of stupid comments he’s made.

The target of my vitriol is the economy minister, Amado Boudou. He’s a youngish, trendy sort of chap often photographed at the better Buenos Aires restaurants. Economy minister in Argentina is one of the few jobs more precarious than first division football manager. That’s mostly because they’re ineffectual puppets and that’s because the president, or more recently the former president, Nestor Kirchner, until he died last month, runs the economy.

Then, as soon as something goes wrong the minister gets the blame and is sacked and replaced by someone equally as ineffectual. The other reason they’re sacked is if they forget their place and speak out of turn. Boudou’s days are numbered.

Firstly, in a row between the government and the main media groups, he accused the two major newspapers of being like the people who cleared out the Nazi gas chambers. Not surprisingly, he provoked outrage in the Jewish community both in Argentina and beyond.

He was forced to make a half-hearted and none-too-convincing apology. Then, learning nothing from his experience, he said that inflation was a problem that only concerned the middle and upper classes. He added that the true rate of inflation in Argentina is, anyway, what the official statistics office, INDEC, says it is.

Inflation in Argentina is one of the highest in the world. Meat now costs double what it cost last year. Milk and bread are about 50% more. But INDEC would have us believe that annual inflation is no more than 10%.

Boudou. Be-doobie-doo!

Their monthly announcements are met with snorts of derision and incredulity. It’s certainly true that the middle and upper classes are suffering. The price of pilates classes has gone up, taxi drivers recently increased their tariffs and the cost of sending your kids to private schools goes up at least 20% a year.

But the working classes and the people in the shanty towns also need milk, bread and clothes for themselves and their children. Some have received wage increases, many have not. The shanty towns are growing, the number of people sleeping on the streets has gone up, along with the figures for those who have fallen below the poverty line.

But INDEC also changes the figures related to poverty to make the government look better. Since INDEC have all the tools at their disposal and the rest of us simply shop, it was at first difficult to challenge their credibility with our anecdotal evidence. But, eventually, the truth will out.

We shop every day and the prices rise pretty much every day. The workers at INDEC have been known to leave their desks and protest on the streets that they were not being allowed to do their jobs without government interference.

Newspapers employ an army of independent economists to produce an inflation figure closer to the true one that we experience every day.

Last month, a leading delegate at an international conference in Chile complained about the presence there of the head of INDEC, Ana Edwin. The former head of statistics in Canada, Jacob Ryten, called her invitation deplorable.

He said that inviting Edwin was like inviting a convicted thief to discuss the sanctity of private property.

But this blog remains inflation proof. It costs nothing and will continue to cost nothing. It looks to me like Estudiantes are running away with the Apertura title. After a 3-0 Friday night win over Lanus, they’re now clear of second placed Velez, who keep up the pressure with a 3-2 win at Banfield. Olimpo trounced Huracan 4-0. Racing and Arsenal drew 2-2 and Newell’s and Godoy Cruz shared the spoils without goals. With the superclasico between Boca and River just around the corner, River are also in crisis after losing 1-0 at All Boys. The Bichos’s next opponents, San Lorenzo drew 1-1 with Independiente and Colon beat Tigre 1-0. The bottom club, Quilmes, lost 1-0 to the team just above them, Gimnasia. The players’ bus was attacked by their own fans then, when they arrived back at their ground, they found their cars had been vandalised. Football is no fun when you’re losing.

It’s not my fault that the Argentine Football Association scheduled the start of the season smack-bang in the middle of the summer holidays. That’s why I found myself in Bolivia when Argentinos Juniors kicked off possibly the biggest game they’ll play all season against the always glamorous but not always convincing Boca Juniors.

Bolivia is a country of humid, tropical lowlands in the east and high, cold mountains, with limited supplies of oxygen, in the west and south. The Bolivians are also passionate about football – from President Evo Morales down to the smallest child in the most remote indigenous community high in the Andes mountains.

Too high?!

The national team has not exactly set the world alight. But it’s still got plenty to shout about. They finished second from bottom in the South America World Cup qualifying group. But along the way beat three of the top four qualifiers Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The trouble is those, and a victory over bottom team Peru, were the only games that Bolivia won and they were all at home.

Bolivia plays its home games in the capital, La Paz at 3,600 metres above sea level. Getting out of my chair at that altitude left me gasping for breath. An hour after arriving, I felt nauseous, had a headache and felt an uncomfortable tingling in my fingers and toes. The locals recommend copious amounts of coca-leaf tea but that only left me stumbling towards the toilet and unable to sleep.

The Argentine team arrived in La Paz, displaying their stars like an array of Inca treasures, just hours before the kick-off. And were thumped 6-1.  The Argentine manager, Diego Maradona, to his credit, didn’t blame the altitude.

Some of the La Paz streets are steeper and scarier than a fair-ground ride. And one of the problems, I imagine, in developing football there is that if one attacker belts the ball over the bar and into the street it can bounce and roll down the mountain and end up six neighbourhoods away. By the time Juan has fetched the ball, the sun’s gone down and llamas are nibbling the grass in the goalmouth.

But despite those steep streets, football has developed in Bolivia and their championship boasts some fierce rivalries. Bolivar have in recent years lauded it over The Strongest in La Paz. Wilstermann and Aurora do battle in Cochabamba and Oriente Petrolero and Blooming divide the eastern oil and gas city of Santa Cruz.

Bolivia and The Strongest

But Bolivia’s biggest battle in recent years has been with the world footballing authorities. After a whingey, whiney protest from Brazil  that its players were left panting for breath and in need of oxygen after playing in Bolivia, FIFA imposed a ban on any competitive game being played at more than 2,500metres above sea level. They said medical evidence showed that running around at altitude was bad for players’ health and that Bolivia, and other mountainous countries, had an unfair advantage since their players were accustomed to the altitude.

That immediately swiped La Paz, Quito, Cuzco and Potosi off the world footballing map. President Evo Morales, never slow to pull on the green Bolivian national shirt, led the campaign against the ban, playing games of football as far up as he could get. He took his team, a ball and a pair of ponchos as goalposts to places where normally only llama herders and mountain climbers roam.

I always thought that Fifa had a weak case. When teams from sunny southern Europe have to play the Faroe Islands they simply pull on a pair of gloves and tights and get on with it, even if the wind messes with their hair.

Fifa did lower the altitude limit, leaving just La Paz out of bounds to weak-lunged opposition. Then they relented again and said the ban had been suspended to allow for more investigation.

Rational thinking prevailed. Or perhaps something more mysterious had a bearing on the outcome? Bolivia is officially a Roman Catholic country. But you don’t have to look very far to find evidence of pre-Spanish indigenous rituals and customs.

The entrances to the silver mines of Potosi are smeared with llama blood to ensure the miners’ safety. Dried llama foetuses (or should that be ‘foeti?’) are on open sale in the markets of La Paz. And with time to kill while waiting for a bus in the small village of Vista Mar in the middle of some Bolivian wilderness, my wife and I walked across the football pitch and found llama bones scattered in one of the goalmouths.

Perhaps, I thought, a disoriented animal had simply strolled onto the pitch as the away side was attacking and clashed with a chunky centre-forward and died.

Llama Power

“No,” explained our driver. “The home side makes a ritual sacrifice at the beginning of every season to bring good fortune.”  Then he muttered something in Quechua which I took to mean: “With Sullivan and Gold at the helm West Ham can now put their troubles behind them and hopefully go from strength to strength.”  However, with hindsight, I suspect it was more along the lines of: “These idiot gringos will believe any old shite we throw at them.”

On my return to Buenos Aires I’ve scanned the world-wide-web for information on how Vista Mar United, with the aid of llama sacrifice, are doing, but so far I’ve found nothing.

I did consider carrying out my own llama sacrifice to play my part in curtailing the number of injuries in the West Ham squad. But as I opened my Swiss Army knife and I looked into the big, doleful eyes of that fluffy white llama with pink ribbons in its ears, I just couldn’t do it. I only hope the immigration papers come through quickly and Mimi can join me in Buenos Aires as soon as possible. The Hammers meanwhile will have to sort out their own injury problems.

Argentinos Juniors held their own on the first game of the season without the aid of animal sacrifice.  Boca, with goals from their stalwarts, Juan Roman Riquelme and Martin Palermo, twice took the lead. First Ezequiel Munoz then Ismael Sosa in injury time pulled the game level for the home side. It’s Lanus away on Saturday and I hope to be there with a full supply of oxygen in my lungs to cheer them on – and, I must confess, just one small llama bone that I picked up from the Vista Mar pitch — just in case.

A rather disappointing draw for Argentinos Juniors against the bottom team, but they’re still up there with the title contenders. However, all eyes today were on the big local derby, the Superclásico between Buenos Aires rivals River Plate and Boca Juniors, which also ended 1-1. This one always steals the limelight. This is not just any derby. This is United v City, Red v Blue, Rangers v Celtic, Barça v Madrid, rich against poor, all rolled into one.

Sunset over Tigre.

The media starts talking about this one weeks in advance. This is one important game. Or at least it used to be. Boca are languishing in mid-table which, by their standards is not good enough. River’s feathers are even more bedraggled. They won their last title in early 2008 then the following season finished in last place. They’ve never really recovered.

There are many reasons for this decline. But the main one is that both clubs simply lose their best players much earlier than they used to – or they never get their hands on them in the first place. In the old days, if a smaller club did well – maybe had the audacity to win a piece of silverware or two – Boca and River would wade in with sacks of cash and buy up the cream. The status quo would be restored.

But now the big European clubs are practically detecting Argentina’s footballing talent in the womb. And they’re descending on the humble homes of the future Messis and Tevezes with offers of gold, frankincense, myrrh, penthouse apartments and more. Who can resist?

But they – and I’m not really sure who ‘they’ are or how they could possibly know with any certainty – say that seventy-three percent of the Argentine population still supports either Boca or River.

Over the years the big two have won more than their fair share of silverware. Between them, they’ve picked up fifty-six championship titles – 33 for River and 23 for Boca. So that makes River the better team, obviously. But hold on a minute! Boca have won more international trophies, including six Libertadores Cups, than River. So that makes them top dog.  Surely!!?

It all began in the flat cap and baggy shorts days when both Boca and River were neighbours, and fairly friendly neighbours at that, in the working class dock area of La Boca. River won the first clash 2-1 in 1913. Then River had the audacity to move house and in 1923 settled in the much posher Núñez neighbourhood in the north of Buenos Aires. It’s a mere 7km but a whole other world away. They’ve now played each other one-hundred and eighty-five times in proper competitions, with Boca having the slight edge.

These days La Boca is, in parts, a picturesque touristy area. But the Riachuelo river that runs alongside it stinks, a pungent souvenir of the neighbourhood’s industrial past. The fans are known as Los Bosteros, politely translated as The Shovellers of Pig Excrement. The site of the club’s Bombonera stadium was once a factory which used pig manure in the manufacture of bricks.

La Boca’s corrugated-iron houses were painted different colours, from whatever was left in the tins after coating the ships that stopped there. A necessity then, quaint now. The immigrants, mostly Italian, were crammed into narrow ramshackle homes, tighter than an Inter Milan defence.

Today’s Boca shirt bears testimony to their roots with the word Xeneizes – Genoan dialect for Genoese – on the back. The story goes that the club administrators, trying to decide which colours to adopt, said they’d pick the flag of the next ship to dock. It was Swedish and blue and yellow it became.

The Núñez neighbourhood, which is dominated by River’s stadium, doesn’t smell, unless your nose is attuned to the aroma of money. The residents of Núñez and the barrios to the north are rolling in it, hence the club’s nickname, Los Millonarios or The Millionaires. They’re also known as Las Gallinas or the chickens, after bottling it in a couple of key games way back when.

Boca 'til you Die...and Beyond!

So this rivalry is about rich versus poor and middle and upper class versus working class. In Argentina the team you support plays a big part in defining who you are. Most fans support their neighbourhood team – that would be Argentinos Juniors if you live in or have some connection with La Paternal. Vélez Sarsfield if you’re from Liniers. The city of Rosario is split down the middle between Newell’s Old Boys and Rosario Central and La Plata between Estudiantes and Gimnasia. But that means that the vast majority of Argentines simply don’t have a first or second division team in their neighbourhood. And so they’ll pick either Boca or River, depending on their political inclination or their family allegiance.

All the women in my wife’s family support Boca. That’s never been a problem for me since I don’t think they’ve ever met West Ham. And I can say with some certainty that if they ever did, the Hammers would teach them a footballing lesson or two!. But my sister-in-law has foolishly married a River Plate fan. Their battleground is in the bringing-up of their two sons. The oldest has sided with his dad, all white with a red diagonal stripe down the middle. The youngest is still undecided but the trauma is such that I suspect he may opt for a life in ballet.

The bosteros can even remain fans after they’re dead. There’s a nifty line in yellow and blue coffins, with a very tasteful yellow and blue silk lining and the club crest on the lid. There’s also an urn version for those more inclined towards cremation. And there’s a Boca Juniors cemetery south of Buenos Aires, decorated with yellow and blue flowers.

Having spent a lifetime in conflict with River fans, imagine the ignominy of having to spend eternity lying side-by-side with one of them!

All of this attention focussed on the big two, of course causes a certain amount of resentment among fans of the smaller clubs. So a little dash of gloating I think is in order as Argentinos Juniors look down the table from our lofty championship-contending place on Boca and River in the lower echelons. Can you hear us down there?

It’s difficult to explain to anyone who is not a rabid, obsessive football fan what makes a person travel for endless hours across the country in a rickety bus to stand on the terraces at a ramshackle ground to watch your team lose – and then spend all of the next night and much of the following day heading home again.

If you’re a Newcastle fan travelling to Plymouth, I don’t want to hear your pathetic whining and moaning. My Argentinos Juniors baseball cap comes off to the fans of Atletico Tucuman. There were hundreds of them in Buenos Aires for this game. Tucuman is 1,340km (that’s 832 miles for you who haven’t been metrificated) to the north-west of Buenos Aires. That’s compared to just four-hundred and forty-four kilometres (or 276 miles) from Newcastle to Plymouth which, in comparison, is pretty much just nipping down the road.

They came from afar

It won’t be much consolation to the Tucumanos, but this was an absolute belter of a game. This was ninety non-stop minutes of quality passing, heart-stopping goalmouth action, a sending off and three pretty good goals. It was just the kind of game I needed to re-establish my faith in football after a 0-0 draw in the rain.

I passed through Tucuman once, many years ago, on my way to somewhere else. I had about four hours to kill between getting off the train from Buenos Aires and taking the bus to somewhere even more remote, hot and dusty.

I didn’t know anyone. It was a Sunday, the streets were empty and the only place open was a porno cinema just off the main plaza. A couple of rancid old men sat on the steps outside. This place epitomised seediness. I must admit that I was tempted to go in. Firstly, it was open and secondly it promised air-conditioning on what was a hot, humid, suffocating day. I fought that temptation. You may not believe me but my wife does.

When, many long, long hours later, my bus finally pulled out of the main terminal, I vowed never to return to Tucuman. That’s the kind of attitude towards the interior of Argentina shared by many who live in and around Buenos Aires. They talk of it, not often, with a disparaging flick of the hand. For the capital city and its surroundings dominate and overshadow the rest of the country in a way that few other capitals dominate theirs.

Forget England’s north-south divide or the disdain many French people feel for the arrogant Parisians. This is much, much worse. Buenos Aires has fought wars with the provinces. There were countless uprisings and mutinies throughout the nineteenth century. And it’s not over yet. Just last year the country’s farmers revolted over government plans, Buenos Aires plans, to impose huge export taxes on their produce. They blocked roads and destroyed cargoes, rather than let them reach the city’s supermarket shelves.

There’s also a race issue here. Most of those who come from Argentina’s interior are of mixed indigenous and Spanish blood. They’ve got dark-skin, black hair and brown eyes. The majority of the residents of Buenos Aires are of Spanish, Italian, German, Croat and British stock – Europeans. Many still have ties with the ‘old country.’ That’s where they do their business and take their holidays, although recent years have seen a strong shift towards the United States.

More than one-third of Argentina’s forty million population lives in and around Buenos Aires. It’s a seemingly endless urban sprawl where it’s often difficult to find any open space, except in the River Plate defence of course! When some does appear it’s usually soon filled by migrant families from the countryside drawn to the big city’s bright lights and overflowing rubbish bins.

The Buenos Aires-based media rarely ventures out of the capital, unless it’s to cover the places where they take their holidays – the southern ski resort of Bariloche or the coastal resort of Mar del Plata, for instance.

And of course it works both ways. Those who live in the countryside generally view those from Buenos Aires, the portenos, as loud, arrogant and ignorant.

Loud, arrogant and ignorant

All of this, you won’t be surprised to learn, is reflected in the structure of Argentine football. There are twenty teams in the national first division – thirteen are based in and around Buenos Aires. Fifteen if you count Estudiantes and Gimnasia, from the city of La Plata a mere one hour’s drive south of the capital.

The only two regular residents of the Primera found more than spitting distance from the capital are Newell’s Old Boys and Rosario Central from the country’s second city, Rosario. They’re the kind of Birmingham City and Aston Villa of Argentina. Away matches for Atletico Tucuman, tucked away in the far north, are really long, long way away matches.

It also means that most football fans in Argentina simply don’t have a local top team they can support. I once went to the house of a Wichi indigenous man near the Argentine border with Paraguay. On his mud-brick walls he had a picture of the then president and the Boca Juniors line-up. “You ever get to see them?” I asked rather insensitively. “I’ve never been to Buenos Aires,” he replied. “But I love Boca.”

The national football authorities – would you believe it, based in Buenos Aires? – have even devised a system which makes it very difficult for the established big city clubs to be relegated. They would have to play very, very badly over several seasons to be eligible for the drop. This means that the newly promoted teams, usually from the far-flung corners of Argentina, often only get to enjoy a season or two in the top-flight before they’re forced back down to where they came from.

This means that teams like Atletico Tucuman and their fans really enjoy the short spurts they get to spend hobnobbing with the big boys. And beating the Buenos Aires clubs has a strong political resonance. Like their two-nil victory last week over the biggest of the big boys, Boca Juniors who paid the price, like many from Buenos Aires so often do, for not showing their country cousins sufficient respect.

Thankfully, Argentinos Juniors didn’t make that mistake. There was a goal in each half from Ismael Sosa as reward for as fine a display of quality football as I’ve seen in some time. Luis Rodriguez pulled one back for the visitors. If it carries on like this, I’m going to have to invest in an Argentinos Juniors shirt. Five games, still unbeaten and making a steady climb up the table.

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

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.