Arsenal 1 Argentinos Juniors 0
Where is it all going so horribly wrong? The answer is a simple one – in attack. Argentinos Juniors have scored just twice in five games, which is bad enough. But it’s the scarcity with which they attack the goal which is so worrying.
If it carries on like this, the next few teams on the fixture list might be advised not to bother with goalkeepers.
“Tell you what boys. Stay at home. Spend some quality time with the kids. We won’t be needing you at the weekend. It’s only Argentinos Juniors so we thought we’d play an extra outfield player in a 4-5-2 or a 3-5-3. It’ll give the goalmouth grass a little more time to grow back. It’s looking a bit sparse.”
It’s not that they’re playing badly. If points were given for artistic merit then the defence and midfield might be sitting pretty in the middle of the table. And it’s not a problem with possession either. The Red Bugs saw more of the ball than a fortune teller.
But when the midfield’s relationship with the front three is like a mountain rescue team trying to find climbers lost in a blizzard, it’s enough to try the faith of even the most ardent fan.
It’s a well worn cliche but football is like a religion for many Argentines. If you plan your weekend well, you can watch all ten Argentine first division football matches back-to-back on tele from Friday right through to Sunday night, padding out the gaps with English, Italian, German and Spanish top flight games.
But what of those poor lost souls who don’t follow the footy? There are some here. They can be satisfied with a rich cultural life, boosted by the recent reopening of the Colon theatre – an acoustic masterpiece which hosts some of the best opera and ballet in the world.
But with the top tickets going for about half the average monthly wage, it’s a pursuit that only feeds the souls of a few and they’re generally not found in the poorer parts of Buenos Aires.
Some there turn to drugs, others to the growing number of evangelical churches. But a much more disturbing phenomenon came to light last weekend.
San La Muerte - you've been warned!
After a gun battle, police in the rundown neighbourhood of Rivadavia arrested a 22-year-old student known as Marcelito. They then announced that he was responsible for at least seven murders, all sacrifices to a saint known as San La Muerte, the Saint or Lord of Death.
The murders, until then, had attracted no attention in the Argentine media. The victims were all poor people killed in the shanty town. That’s what goes on there. Killings in the wealthier parts of the city attract substantial media attention, increasing security concerns and the subsequent profits of the many security companies that prey on those with something to lose.
But human sacrifices in the name of a death spirit, now that was news. San La Muerte is said to have a large following in Argentina’s prisons and in the growing shanty towns in and around its major cities. The figure is used to ask for favours, such as to win a fight or protect a harvest but can also be used to request the death of an enemy. It evolved in poor communities in the north of Argentina where characters from traditional indigenous religions merged with elements from Roman Catholicism.
The murders were shocking. But more shocking for many was that it revealed a previously unknown side to Argentine life that most in the sophisticated white, European parts of Buenos Aires where ladies in mink coats take coffee in the Parisian-style cafes of Recoleta know nothing about. And even if they did know about this dark underworld of human sacrifice in the drug-riddled shanties or villas of Buenos Aires, their reaction would only be to tut and perhaps dedicate a little more thought to their security situation. It was news for a day or so. Then it was coffee as normal.
A survey out this week showed that insecurity and growing crime were Argentines’ biggest worries while poverty concerned just 19percent of the population. I imagine that’s because the pollsters didn’t dare take their clipboards into the villas – I certainly wouldn’t – where I suspect they’d have found that poverty was the biggest concern of close to 100percent of poor people.
A Buenos Aires villa miseria...
The point I’m trying to make here is that it’s so easy to forget that this widespread misery is there just a few blocks away from our swanky shopping malls. But we choose not to notice it until some extreme manifestation of this misery, like human sacrifices to San La Muerte, is drawn to our attention, for a day or so at least.
The price we pay for ignoring it is that one day the villas won’t be able to contain the misery and it’ll spill out into the shopping malls and coffee shops of the ‘sophisticated’ parts of Buenos Aires. I at least will have the satisfaction, as they loot and pillage my home and present my still beating heart to San La Muerte, of being able to say: “I told you so.”
But that’s why we watch football – so we don’t have to concern ourselves with all that. Although football is not really producing the distraction from misery that Boca Juniors fans might like. They’re in a similar situation to Argentinos Juniors but because they’re so much bigger and their expectations so much grander their grief is apparently greater. They lost again, 2-1 at home to San Lorenzo, and the new job of the former Argentinos Juniors boss, Claudio Borghi, is looking precarious. River Plate, who started brightly, are already fading and lost 2-1 to Velez who jointly top the table with Arsenal. All Boys beat fellow newly-promoted side, Olimpo 1-0 and Newell’s and Independiente fought out a 1-1 draw. Estudiantes, as always, are looking strong with a 2-1 win away to Godoy Cruz and Lanus beat relegation contenders, Gimnasia 2-0.
Argentinos sit two places off the bottom but are really not much worse than the top two teams. Either they’re all nearly as good as one another or nearly as bad. I’m erring on the positive side and going for the former — for now at least.
