A couple of weeks ago I donned crampons and harnessed the huskies for a trek into unchartered but still familiar first division territory. This weekend I pulled on a wet suit and filled the oxygen tanks for a spot of diving, down into the second division – ‘La B.’

I went in search of goals and a bit of excitement but emerged with not much of either. The justification for my search was confirmed by yet another Argentinos Juniors 0-0, this one away to San Martin in the distant San Juan province. That’s three in a row if you count the dire scoreless draw against Velez Sarsfield last Thursday in the first leg of their South American Cup tie.

Tickets please!

Football without goals is like beer without alcohol or coffee without caffeine. Most of the ingredients are there but you end up asking yourself: “What’s the point?”

Caballito is a densely populated, fairly affluent neighbourhood smack bang in the centre of Buenos Aires. That being said, it was surprisingly difficult for me to get to, taking the Linea B underground to connect with the new Linea H which got me on to the ancient but charming Linea A which landed me about ten minutes walk from the home of Club Ferro Carril Oeste.

For the less Spanish-speakingly inclined readers that translates as the Western Railway Club – a once half decent first division side which won the championship in 1982 and 1984. Their Ricardo Etcheverry stadium looks alright from a distance. But close up it’s a wreck.

Their green and white clad fans were noisy and enthusiastic. But not for long did that hide the rickety nature of the wooden stands, the wood warped and the green and white paint but a faint, flaking memory. There’s a large, curved concrete roof over the stand which to my slightly blurry eyes looked like it had chunks missing.

Proud to be Green.

Much of the ground was empty, partly because travelling fans are banned in the second division but also, I suspect, because it’s simply unsafe for human habitation. Just as well I brought the oxygen tanks.

A friend of mine, who knows about this kind of thing, told me that Ferro is the victim of poor administration, owners that pocketed the cash and put nothing back into the club. Ferro, he told me, should be like Velez, challenging for honours and entertaining exotic visitors from across South America. Instead, it made the games I used to watch as a teenager at Aldershot’s Recreation Ground against the likes of Rochdale and Darlington look distinctly glamorous.

A goal was scored by the home side midway through the second half to give them a 1-0 victory over Almirante Brown, the yellow and black clad visitors. But by that time I didn’t care. This, remarkably, lifted them to second place in the table behind River Plate, who dropped their first points of the season in a 1-1 draw against Quilmes.

Remarkable because the football was dire. Not once did I see three passes strung together. The crowd cheered clunking defensive tackles or balls hoofed up to the safety of the heavens. It might have been an illusion but the defenders to me looked larger and more menacing and the attackers wispier and somehow less relevant than those in the first division. I was often more intrigued by the game being played in the empty space below me by a gang of kids in green and white who had long lost interest in the match.

Needs more than a paint job.

There must come a time when a fan’s love for the club, the sense of belonging, the fading reminiscences of a once fairly alright past cloud the quality of the football. The barra brava, while cajoling the fans to sing louder, had their backs to this game, huddles of women chatted amongst themselves and plenty seemed to arrive late and leave early as if they were just popping in.

This was not my first visit to the ground. I came in 2007 to cover a rally by the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez. The then US president, George Bush, was on a half-hearted tour of Latin America which included neighbouring Uruguay but not Argentina.

Bush and the previous Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner, had never gotten on, Kirchner forming part of that uppity gang of Latin American leaders, led by Fidel Castro but also including Chavez, the Bolivian leader, Evo Morales and the president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, that refused to do anything that Washington told it to do.

So while Bush was in Uruguay, President Chavez was in the Ferro stadium haranguing him across the Rio de la Plata about the evils of US imperialism. The crowd, representing the whole spectrum of the Argentine left, was loud, possibly louder and more numerous than the ground has seen since.

Chavez was a good deal more entertaining and his attacks more incisive than anything either Ferro or Almirante Brown could produce.

Returning to the surface, new boys Rafaela keep their top spot with a 1-0 win at fellow promoted side, Union. Boca tail them, also clocking a 1-0 away win, this one at Independiente. That defeat for the reds led to the departure of their manager, Antonio Mohamed. Lanus are equal second with Boca after their 2-1 victory over Estudiantes.

Champions Velez lost 2-1 down south at Olimpo, Godoy Cruz won 2-1 at Arsenal and Belgrano clinched a 1-0 win at fast-sliding San Lorenzo. All Boys against Racing and Newell’s against Colon were both goalless. And Tigre beat the bottom club Banfield 1-0. Banfield have lost all five games they’ve played this season and not scored a single goal. Now that is a team with cause for concern.

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.