My voice is a little hoarse from all the shouting at this afternoon’s game so you’ll have lean closer to the screen. The Red Bugs were back on form and, but for a nimble visiting goalkeeper, would have won this game 6-1.

Nestor Ortigoza doesn’t miss from the penalty spot and put Argentinos Juniors on their way after Ismael Sosa was brought down in the area. Gimnasia, a big club with relegation worries, equalised in the second half but the home side, with fine goals from Sosa and Santiago Raymonda, clinched it to leave us in second place, just a point behind the leaders, Estudiantes, with three games to play.

World Cup fever is beginning to bite here in Buenos Aires and the reason I can tell is that twelve-year-old boys are huddled in groups swapping their World Cup stickers.

“I’ve got three Stephane Grichtings of Switzerland – I’ll swap you one for Australia’s Luke Wilkshire.” At no other time are players so obscure held in such high esteem across the world.

At the moment, we’ve only got one Mexican but a glut of Cristiano Ronaldos. He’s worth nothing. What we need are more North Koreans. Kim Kum-Il would do or a Pak Nam-Chol. We’ll give you a Dirk Kuyt in exchange. He’s easy.

Got Beckham

I’ve long wondered whether David Beckham collects stickers of himself. He must be tempted, surely? “Ooh look,” he says, opening his packets over the breakfast table. “I’ve got me – again. I’ll give Giggsy a ring and see if he wants to swap me for Diego Forlan.”

“No you don’t,” shrieks Posh. “You’re keeping it. I want to stick you on the wall above my bed.”

“No,” scream the kids. “Beckhams are easy. Everyone’s got them. We want Carlos Costly of Honduras, number 618. He’s much better. Or Slovenia’s Nejc Pecnik. He’s worth three Beckhams.”

Closer to the World Cup, when our album is a little fuller, we’ll head to the Parque Centenario where boys and girls and those with them, otherwise known as ‘grown men who collect football stickers but pretend it’s their kids that are doing it because they’re too embarrassed to admit it,’ gather to trade.

We were there in 2006 when the scene at times resembled the floor of the Buenos Aires stock market just before one of the country’s many economic crashes.

Rumours were flashing around that the lad in the blue coat had a bucketful of spare Junichi Inamotos of Japan and West Bromwich Albion but he only needed a couple of Serb defenders to complete his album. Five-year-olds know that a hard-to-come-by Jermaine Defoe will fetch five easy to obtain Paraguayans. The rules of supply and demand are practised here in their most naked form.

This being Latin America, speculators have moved in. Men in dirty raincoats who have never really learned to shave properly, lurk on the outskirts of the park. They know the cash value of an Edison Cavani of Uruguay sticker. They know who’s rare and whether there’s a glut of Yacine Bezzaz’s of Algeria.

“Psst! I’ve got Chileans,” they’ll hiss through yellow teeth. “And the New Zealand goalkeeper.”

Do these guys have relations working at the sticker distribution plant? I don’t know, but you can guarantee that whenever and wherever there’s a demand, these fellows will come crawling out of the drains. They’re probably the same people who, within minutes of the first raindrop falling, are on every street corner selling umbrellas or before every Argentina game are at the traffic lights flogging sky-blue and white hats, shirts and horns.

I might see if they can come up with the Gerd Muller I need to complete my 1974 collection. And c’mon guys! Who’s hoarding all the Mexicans?

I don't know what this means. Pic by Lucas

We’ve already got Martin Palermo of Argentina and Boca Juniors and so, probably, has his Boca teammate, Juan Roman Riquelme – pinned to his darts board. For the two men, who form the backbone of the Boca team, hate one another with a passion. Their petty squabbling may go a large way to explaining why this usually regal beauty of Argentine football looks at the moment like an overweight tart cadging smokes at her local pub on a Saturday night.

Normally, you’d expect their great city rival, River Plate, to be gloating over this demise. But  they too are slumped near the foot of the table with their own fishnet stockings torn and lipstick smudged across their pudgy cheeks.

Martin Palermo is all blood, guts and passion. He puts his life on the line in every game and even when he’s not wearing a head bandage seeping blood, you feel as though he should be.

Riquelme is a tortured soul, intelligent, independent and some say, just plain weird. The Boca fans are split on whether he’s good for the team. There are those who say he’s one of the best playmakers the club has ever had. Others complain he doesn’t run enough and sows discontent in the dressing room.

He supplied the pass in a recent match that enabled Martin Palermo to score his 219^th Boca Juniors goal – a club record. But rather than join in the back-slapping and buttock groping, or whatever it is they get up to in those celebratory rucks, Juan Roman sauntered off in the other direction to file his nails, his nose stuck snootily in the air.

Claudio 'Bichi' Borghi

Palermo accused Riquelme of a whole host of things from not passing the ball to him enough to saying nasty things about him behind his back to borrowing his soap without asking. Riquelme responded and the club authorities had to ask them to tone it down. It seems to have worked since Riquelme supplied the pass that enabled Palermo to score in today’s 2-0 victory over San Lorenzo and the two men then hugged, kissed and danced the tango together.

What concerns me most about all this turmoil at Boca is that rumours have begun circulating that they’re keen to poach the Argentinos Juniors manager, Claudio ‘Bichi’ Borghi. He’s done fine things in a very short with limited resources at this modest little club. What might he do, so the thinking goes, to revitalise a slumbering giant like Boca Juniors?

Don’t go Borghi! We wouldn’t swap you for a whole team of Mexican stickers, even with a Carlos Costly and the North Korean badge thrown in for good measure.

I’ve just been watching Arsenal v Everton on the TV in my shorts, no shirt and an ice-cold drink in my hand. There’s nothing quite like seeing those sixty-thousand or so frozen, wool-wrapped fans huddled together like penguins having a bad day while all those  around me are complaining about the excessive southern hemisphere summer heat.

Punta del Este-for those who can afford it

They get so hot and bothered down here in January that all those who can head for the Atlantic beach resorts – those with a few pesos to rub together go to Punte del Este in Uruguay or to Brazil, while the rest head for resorts on the Argentine coast.

Those of us who have stayed behind in Buenos Aires can enjoy emptier streets and plazas and shorter queues at the ice-cream parlours.  We’re also being treated to a spectacular political drama.

President Cristina Kirchner wanted six-and-a-half billion dollars from the national reserve to pay off a chunk of Argentina’s huge foreign debt which is due later this year. But the head of the central bank, Martin Redrado, told her to keep her hands to herself.

She stormed off in a huff and announced that Mr Redrado had resigned – only he hadn’t. “It’s my job,” he said, “and I’m keeping it.”

So the president signed a special decree to have him removed. But she needed the signatures of her cabinet to make it valid. However, they were at the beach, working on their tans, making sand-castles, sipping cocktails etc and had to be dragged back to Buenos Aires, sand between their toes, sun-cream on their noses and tans less than complete.

Then a judge nullified the decree and Mr Redrado went back to work. It’s not over yet and as we count the days until the start of the new football season, it’s keeping us amused.

Redrado-should he stay or should he go?

Those players not captured by the European club nets that trawl Argentina at this time of the year are back in training. Running through Bosque de Palermo the other day, I saw the River Plate squad going through their paces. I know it’s early, but I think I’m in better condition than most of them.

You probably think I’m making this up, but as I stood at the edge of the lake recovering from my run I saw two turtles having sex in the water. At least I think they were. How do you know they’re not fighting, one on the other’s back applying the turtle equivalent of a half-nelson? Or were they dancing a slow, slow tango? On reflection, it was definitely sex, proof that there’s still plenty of fun to be had in a half-empty, football-free, hot and humid Buenos Aires, for the turtles at least.

The extreme heat is punctuated by thunder storms which, as well as relieving the humidity, wash away the dog shit which has become one of the most irritating aspects of life in Buenos Aires.

Much of the population lives in apartment blocks, highly inappropriate for keeping dogs, often big, hairy ones totally unsuited to the heat.  Crime is an issue but it’s not nearly as bad as some porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, will tell you it is. Plenty of the more paranoid residents buy their pets as guard-dogs. Others love their pooches dearly. But they’re often too lazy, busy or scared to walk them, so will hire a professional dog walker to do it for them.

It’s a common sight in Buenos Aires to see a walker with up to fifteen assorted poodles, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Great Danes and terriers straining at their leashes and dumping all over the pavements. Of course, the walkers are supposed to clean up but they rarely do.

Dogs' Life

This business has become so lucrative that many walkers now use vans to pick up their charges and drive them to the park. There, they’re tied up to trees while the walkers chat with fellow walkers, drink mate tea and perhaps kick a ball around. I know this because they gather in the park where I run. Overnight the area is used by prostitutes who discard the used condoms among the trees and by day by the dog-walkers who don’t walk. Runners are advised to tread very carefully.

The park cleaners have a tough job, but so too do the journalists who have to fill the sports pages during the summer months. There’s no cricket here, so they cover the pointless triangular pre-season tournaments being played at the beach resorts or tell tales of new shirt designs or who is joining the annual exodus to Europe.

The football may be taking a break but the battle between rival fans never rests. If you saw the World Club championship final between Barcelona and Argentina’s Estudiantes last month you may have wondered why some of the fans had banners with a simple 7-0 on them.

Estudiantes may have won the South American Libertadores cup and reached the pinnacle of world football with a final against Barcelona, but a game their fans revel in more than any other was the 7-0 victory in 2006 over their rivals in the city of La Plata, Gimnasia y Esgrima.

A young Gimnasia fan, Maxi Vazquez, sent a photo of himself wearing the club shirt to get his national identity card renewed. But his new card was processed by an Estudiantes fan who scrawled 7-0 on the photo before stamping and coating it with plastic. Maxi was livid. The offending official was tracked down and fired, despite a support campaign on Facebook that attracted more than eight-hundred and fifty fans.

I don’t know whether there’s a park in La Plata where turtles have sex but that former official now has plenty of time on his hands to investigate while he waits for the referee to blow that first whistle of the season.

I, meanwhile, think I’ll plop another ice-cube in my glass. Que calor!

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.