How I’ve reached the seventeenth game of the Argentine football season without mentioning tango I really don’t know. It’s either a gift or I’ve been criminally negligent. But the time has finally come for me to pull on my fishnet stockings and stiletto heels and rectify my lapse to a two by four beat.

San Lorenzo are from the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Boedo – the cradle, many will tell you, of the tango. An equal number will tell you that that’s as bogus as a French World Cup qualifying goal. But the barrio does boast a fair number of bars, street corners and lamp posts, for all I know, named after tango legends such as Osvaldo Pugliese and Homero Manzi. And there’s a whole bunch of famous tango songs which mention Boedo.

Carlos Gardel

Whether tango gets your feet tapping or not, there’s no doubt that it’s an intrinsic part of the Buenos Aires culture and nightlife. You realise that slumped in the back of a taxi at three on a Sunday morning as the driver wrecks his suspension over the cobbled streets with a Carlos Gardel song playing on the radio.

Gardel is the Sinatra, the Presley, the Dylan of tango. If the bars and cafes of Argentina are adorned with three pictures, then you can pretty much guarantee that one will be Diego Maradona, another Evita and the third Carlos Gardel.

He was a cool dude and no mistake, an early superstar with his slicked-back hair and dapper suits. There is some dispute over whether he was born in France or Uruguay but there’s no doubt that he grew up in Argentina. He was what they called in those days ‘a ladies’ man.’ There are rumours that he also served time in prison. Gardel toured Europe in the nineteen twenties and made a couple of Hollywood films in the thirties. Then, like all true superstars, he met an early death — in a plane crash in Medellin, Colombia, in 1935.

There’s a statue of him by his grave in the Chacarita cemetery near my house where admirers regularly place a fresh cigarette in his hand.

Forget your sequinned ballroom tango – the real thing is both sexy and seedy. That’s not surprising when you consider its roots in the bars and brothels of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. That’s where Gardel found and nurtured it before helping to make tango music international.

It Takes Two...

At the end of the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of European immigrants were flooding into Argentina. Some were fleeing squalor and persecution, others were filled with dreams about what they might do in a land with huge unfulfilled potential.

There were far more men than women and many spent their well-earned wages on their well-earned days off at the brothels. Business was brisk and there was a fair amount of waiting around. The more considerate Madams provided musical entertainment and that, so the story goes, is where the men perfected their tango dance moves – dancing with other men since the women were busy.

There’s another story that the dance developed as the men practised their knife fighting moves. The jerkiness of the dance, especially when that stiletto flicks up between your legs to within a whisker of your most sensitive parts, may lend some credence to that theory.

The truth is that the early days of tango were not well documented which leaves us open to rumour and conjecture. I’ve been told that that tango touches the soul. Not mine, I’m afraid. That’s only ever happened to me at Upton Park and then very, very rarely.

Tango has spread around the world – to Japan, France, the United States and Finland. Hundreds of dancers come to Buenos Aires every year to immerse themselves in the roots of the dance and the music. One woman with a tango school in Holland once told me that she came to Argentina every year to ‘top up her tango mojo.’ Its avid practioners will claim that it’s changed their lives.

People have often told me that I should take advantage of the fact that I live in Buenos Aires and learn to dance tango. But I’m wise enough to know two things. Firstly, that there are people who can dance and then that there are people who should never dance if they don’t want to embarrass themselves and those around them. I fall into the second category. And the second thing I know is that you should write down the things that you know since, with age, you’re liable to forget them.

Buenos Aires these days is awash with tango shows, huge spectaculars in which tourists can watch some of finest dancers and listen to the best musicians that Argentina has to offer. The tourist boom has given it fresh impetus, with tango schools springing up to cater for youngsters who want to follow a career in fishnet stockings.

From the sixties onwards, with the invasion of European and American rock and then the development of the home-grown variety, a whole generation of Argentines rebelled against tango. Many are returning now, ignoring their parents who know nothing, and instead turning to their grandparents to teach them the old steps.

Tango Paraphernalia

The real thing never really went away. It’s practised in milongas – dance schools, often running in the afternoon, where you receive lessons before launching into an orgy of tango dance and music. Everyone dances with everyone else. As the classes end, it’s common for gangs of elderly, dapper gentlemen with Clark Gable moustaches to turn up looking for an eligible female dance partner.

It’s all about tango talent and it’s not unusual to see a short seventy-something year-old man in a suit he’s been wearing since 1952 with his face lost in the cleavage of a tall blonde twenty-year old.

Very Benny Hill, until they start dancing. If they’ve got it, then size, age and language don’t matter.

This was an interesting game on a damp, cold day, far too chilly for fishnets. San Lorenzo took the lead with a Pablo Pintos goal in the first half when the Argentinos defence looked like they were playing in tango high-heels and simply gave the ball away. But the home side found their rhythm in the second half with some well-choreographed moves. The equaliser came from a Facundo Coria free-kick on the edge of the penalty area. The second looked from where I was standing like a Gustavo Oberman cross that somehow ended up in the net. But who’s complaining?

This was an impressive victory against one of the so-called Buenos Aires Big Five. The other four, although I shouldn’t have to tell you, being Boca, River, Independiente and Racing.