Of course, everyone tries just that little harder to beat the champions. And with a lot of new players, Argentinos Juniors were still finding their feet. And their midfield playmaker, Nestor Ortigoza, was missing and the wind blowing in a north-north-easterly direction always has an impact on the way the home-side plays, especially on the seventh of the month when that month begins with the letter ‘A.’

Whatever the reasons, this was painful defeat, especially after all the hope and expectation harvested last season. Yes, there were a lot of changes. But the new manager, Pedro Troglio, had the team playing the same attractive passing game. Argentinos controlled the first half, taking the lead with a well-worked goal from one of the new boys, Gonzalo Vargas, five minutes before the break.

Thanks Champs

The crowd liked that and took him to their hearts, immediately giving him a nickname – ‘the Uruguayan’ because he’s, well, from Uruguay.

Everything was running according to plan. There was a big crowd, full of expectation. Someone even spent the close season cutting big letters out of polystyrene, and painting every other one red, to spell out the words: Gracias Campeon.

As I approached the stadium I could smell the newly cut grass mixed with possibly even a tinge of fresh paint. The police hadn’t done much in the way of pre-season training. At the turnstile an officer held us up while he lit a cigarette then leaned on the railing with his belly protruding like a sack of rice hanging on the wall. He kind of half-heartedly raised his free hand and tapped my coat pocket then allowed me through with a barely perceptible nod of his head.

No-one wants to admit that they don’t recognise their own players, but with so many new signings I must confess that I’d scribbled down some notes which I surreptitiously slid in and out of my pocket before announcing boldly to anyone that cared to listen: “He looks useful that Escudero.” Or “Ocampo seems to be settling in nicely.”

Just fourteen seconds after the kickoff I heard my first reference to the referee’s mother’s private parts. In fact, the old guy behind me had obviously been rehearsing his insults during the idle months, abusing the match officials and the away fans with such vigour that at half-time he offered a kind of half-hearted apology to those around him whose eardrums had had to endure his assault. “I’ve had no-one to shout at for two months,” he explained.

And then, in a nightmarish three minutes mid-way through the second half, our dream drooped like a pensioner at an orgy who’s just discovered that he’s mixed his Viagra up with his indigestion tablets.

Firstly, Huracan’s Mariano Martínez blasted the ball home for the equaliser from an almighty bundle in the Argentinos defence. Then, a minute later, Cesar Montiglio put the visitors two-one up after Gustavo Oberman lost the ball in midfield. It couldn’t get much worse. Could it?

There are parts of the Diego Maradona stadium I simply can’t see from where I stand, even with a bit of jigging and jumping about.  Most of the bottom right-hand corner of the pitch, for instance, is obscured by the managers’ dugouts and more metal posts, fencing and barbed wire than you’d find around most prison compounds. So I’m not really sure what happened next. But the result was that another Argentinos Juniors new boy, Gabriel Perez Tarifa, was sent off  just eight minutes after he came on as a substitute in his first ever game for Argentinos Juniors for what the newspapers called ‘excessive abuse.’ Not, I hope, another reference to the referee’s mother’s private parts!

Restricted Vision

One of the reasons that Argentinos Juniors became champions was because they made a habit of carving results out of lost causes. Two-nil down away to Lanus in the second game of last season to win six-three. Three-one down at home to Independiente in the penultimate match to clinch a crucial four-three victory, and more.

But not today. There were a couple of chances and the crowd managed to rally a bit of chanting along the lines of “we may be losing this one but we’re still champions, so there!” But it wasn’t going to be.

Argentinos Juniors were fine champions last season. And modest Banfield worthy winners the season before that. But I can’t help feeling that the planets are being realigned to what are generally perceived to be their rightful places.

Boca Juniors and River Plate don’t win everything all the time. But if two or three seasons go by without at least one of them being the dominant team in Argentina then people start to feel a little uneasy, like things are not quite right. As if Sir Alex were not chewing gum or Alan Shearer were saying something interesting. It’s OK but it’s not quite right.

Boca, of course, have poached Argentinos Junior’s championship-winning manager Claudio Borghi, the backroom staff and one of  his best players, Matias Caruzzo. River, who have been dismal for several seasons now, began to show signs of recovery towards the end of the last campaign and have bought wisely during the close season.

When Boca and River fade it’s usually Independiente or San Lorenzo that pick up the slack and Estudiantes, the best Argentine team in recent years, are still strong, their 103-year-old talisman, Juan Sebastian Veron scoring the penalty today in a 1-0 win over Newell’s Old Boys.

The three promoted teams are Quilmes, who yo-yo between the top two divisions, Olimpo from Bahia Blanca way down south and modest, some might say ramshackle, little Buenos Aires outfit, All Boys.  Since football is very much a man’s game in Argentina, I expect their stay in the top flight to be brief.

The main reason I adopted Argentinos Juniors as the team to write this blog about was that they were crap. I watched them a couple of times a year or so ago and thought their ramshackle ground, their tubby players and their comical goalkeeper would give me plenty of amusing anecdotes to string together.  Their manager had the kind of mullet hair arrangement that didn’t look good when it was fashionable in the nineteen-seventies, let alone on a fifty-something year old man in 2009. They finished last that season and for some reason Nestor Gorosito was poached by River Plate.

Gorosito and mullet

Claudio Borghi, who played for Argentinos Juniors during their glory period in the mid-eighties, was lured to the club and has turned a team on a par with Accrington Stanley into one that could hold its own against Chelsea.

They finished sixth last season, losing very few but drawing far too many. But this season, those draws turned into victories, the team never lost its shape or its desire to attack or its character. Borghi sat in his dug-out, rarely expressing any emotion. Argentine football fans all seem to agree that this team are worthy champions — for their stylish football, for their refusal to accept defeat and for their humility.

Humility is not a quality that comes easily to most Argentines. But with the brash arrogance of the big clubs, River Plate and Boca Juniors, and the brash stupidity of the likes of the Diego Maradona infecting the game here, the feet firmly on the ground approach of Claudio Borghi was exactly what was needed.

Nearly twelve thousand of us squidged into the Huracan stadium, a beautiful, nineteen-thirties style structure on the other side of town. It was a crisp, cold winter’s day and we were in fine voice. I’ve always found it a bit of challenge to understand all the lyrics of the Argentine football songs. I’ve got some of the key words but tend to adopt the same practise as when singing Auld Lang Syne at New Year – a lot of enthusiastic but unintelligible burbling.

Like a Huracan

So I had the bright idea of printing some songs off the internet and trying to learn them. But my memory is not what it was. I can’t, for instance, remember all eleven members of the 1980 West Ham FA Cup winning team. So I hide the lyrics inside the match magazine and take sneaky peaks when I falter.

There’s a lot of ‘nobody loves us but we don’t care’ attitude reflected in the lyrics, loyalty in the face of adversity and downright fatalism.

“The day I die, I want my coffin painted red and white like my heart,” sung to a jaunty tune is one of my favourites.

Argentinos Junior’s big rivals, the brown and white-shirted Platense, are nicknamed the calamares or squid and feature a fair amount in the lyrics.

“I don’t care what they say, the squid whores, the journalists, the police – wherever you go, your fans will always be with you, breathing life with lots of alcohol and marijuana.”

Squid whores!!! Try that one as an insult the next time you get really angry and see where it gets you.

The anti-squid taunting has lost a little of its potency since, while Argentinos Juniors bathed themselves in glory, Platense were tumbling into third division obscurity.

“Reds – my great friend, this season we’re back again with you. We’ll support you with our hearts, we’re your fans and want you to be champions.”

Reasons to be Cheerful

And champions we are. Argentinos started brightly against Huracan and mounted several attacks that came to nothing before Juan Mercier got his bald head to a cross and tucked it into the net. This was a game the Red Bugs had to win to clinch the title since Estudiantes, just a point behind, were wiping the floor with Colon up in the north-east of Argentina.

But we were made to sweat. Facundo Coria put us two up ten minutes from the end by tapping in a rebound after Ismael Sosa had blasted against the post. Then three minutes from the end, Alan Sanchez pulled one back for Huracan and we were subjected to several  of those elongated minutes that leave you biting nails, clenching buttocks and glancing at your watch every ten seconds. And in situations like these, the referee will always add about a year of extra time.

With the Huracan fans setting fire to their own stadium, the referee cut short the added time and the celebrations began.

“C’mon Red Bugs, C’mon, Put your balls in place and let’s win this one, we’ll keep on da da de da da, we’ll be champions and not de do du da da, Come on Bugs.”

That might have lost a little something in translation but the spirit, I think, is clear. Argentinos Juniors are champions of Argentina for the first time in twenty five years. I certainly know how to pick a loser!

That’s exactly what we’re doing as Argentinos Juniors sit on the cusp of a verge on the edge of a first championship for twenty-five years. I’ve been measured for my Red Bug t-shirt. Then there remained the no small matter of securing a ticket for that final, crucial game away to Huracan.

Worth the Wait?

The 11,500 available tickets  went on sale to season ticket holders at the Argentinos Juniors ground on Thursday and Friday at 9am. I arrived at 9.30 on Thursday to find a queue stretching right around the ground. Everyone, it seemed, and their grandmother, was now an Argentinos Juniors fan.

“I’ve been supporting them since 1952,” was the gist of the conversation. Yeah! Right! That was probably the last time you went to a game too. The former cabinet minister, Anibal Fernandez was all over the newspapers talking about his love for the club in that slimy politician ‘Look at me. I’m just like you, the common people’ sort of way.

The sports pages suddenly noticed Argentinos Juniors after a season talking about how the championship was almost certainly going to end up with Estudiantes or Independiente.

The queue moved ten steps every twenty minutes or so. I counted them. Luckily I’d brought a decent book with me – Philip Kerr’s Dead Meat – a tale of Russian police battling crime in early 1990s St Petersburg. Nine chapters and four hours and ten minutes later I had my tickets in my hand. My two tickets, since that was the strict maximum per person. I had to use one of the tickets, obviously. But I have two sons and thanks to me, they’re both now Argentinos Juniors fans.

It was me that dragged them out for the 0-0 draw against Newell’s Old Boys that was abandoned twenty minutes from the end because of torrential rain. How we laughed as, soaked to the skin, we waded across flooded streets to wait for a bus that never came. Or there was that memorable evening after the 2-1 home defeat by Godoy Cruz when I didn’t have the change for the bus home and every Buenos Aires taxi driver appeared to have taken the day off and we walked half the length of the city. But then who could forget that 2-1 win away to San Lorenzo when we’d been losing 1-0. Or the 6-3 victory at Lanus after going two down in the first ten minutes. Or that game straight out of Roy of the Rovers, last week at home to Independiente when, with five minutes to go, we were 3-2 down and scrambled two goals to clinch it 4-3 and go top of the table.

How do you choose? Which child was it to be? I’m sure you can appreciate my dilemma. I was almost hoping to receive a phone call from the school on Friday telling me that one of my children had taken the head teacher hostage and was barricaded in the canteen. At least that way I’d be able, with a clear conscience, to ground him and take the well behaved son to the match. But of course they both came home boasting about top marks in that week’s tests.

Dressed for the Kill

I woke on Saturday at 5am in a sweat having dreamt that I was Meryl Streep and was stepping up to take a crucial penalty for Argentinos Juniors but couldn’t decide whether to shoot left or right. My sub-conscious, I reasoned as I lay under the warm duvet, was telling me that which son to take to a football match does not even begin to compare with the dilemma faced by the Streep character in Sophie’s Choice when she had to choose which of her children the Nazi concentration camp officer should kill. But let me tell you, that as Streep in a pair of Argentinos Juniors shorts, I didn’t look half bad!

There was really nothing else for it. Even before the newspaper had been slid under the front door, I was up and on my way to the ground to join the queue again. The remaining tickets were on sale to the general public. When I arrived at 6.34, I found a long line of foul-breathed fans, some in sleeping bags while others were slouched in camping chairs.

This was a mere two-and-a-half hour wait but my mission was successful and my dilemma evaporated in the steam from the well-earned coffee I drank afterwards in the cafe opposite the ground.

Argentinos Juniors still have to beat Huracan to lift that trophy. But they might not get this close to winning anything at all for another twenty-five years. And I’m not sure I can wait that long.

I’m not going to say it since when I said it last season after Argentinos Juniors strung a few victories together, they went on to lose and draw their next batch of games. But three wins on the trot and….no! Resist! Resist!

And the winner is....

It’s a week now since the Oscars were handed out but the glitz is still glittering here in Argentina and no-one wants to roll up their red carpets. For an Argentine film, El Secreto de sus Ojos or The Secret In Their Eyes won the best foreign film award. That’s the one they present between the Oscar for Most Comfy Director’s Chair and Best Sandwiches Sold on Set.

Basically, very few people outside of the countries concerned give a toss. Least of all the film critics. Here are a couple of quotes from critics of that reputable British newspaper, The Guardian. These are people paid to do nothing more than sit in a darkened room eating popcorn and commenting on the films they see. I always used to wonder why actors and directors were so disparaging about film critics, talking about them in the same way the rest of us discuss estate agents and football referees. Now I know.

The first nominee out of the envelope is the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw who wrote: “I must now confess that I have not yet seen Juan José Campanella’s The Secret of Their Eyes – it is much liked and admired, but I can’t help feeling that this is a real banana-skin moment. It puts me in mind of Ronald Bergan’s online discussion of how, in the history of world cinema, the Oscar for the best foreign language film is traditionally given to the wrong film.”

His colleague, Xan Brooks, informs us: “OK, so I have yet to see The Secret in Her Eyes and maybe it’s brilliant. Until then, this result strikes me as more than a little perverse.”

Have they no shame? They don’t make films, they don’t write films and they don’t even watch the films they criticise. In what other job can you do that? “I didn’t see the game since I was painting the bathroom at the time. But I thought the United midfield was crap and the referee, when will he get his eyes tested? In my informed opinion, City are dead certs for the title but I’ll let you know more when I finally get to see them play.”

OK, you may say, it’s only the foreign language film. But what First World arrogance! Neither even bothered to get the English translation of the title right. Would they treat a US or a British film with such lazy contempt?

Now that I’ve got that off my chest I can tell you that I have seen the film. Pretty much everyone in Argentina has and those who haven’t will be queuing up outside their nearest cinema as we speak.

It’s a very good rather than a great movie. I’ve not seen the other Oscar nominees so I wouldn’t dare to hazard an opinion on whether it was the best of the batch in the foreign language section.

Film Star - the Huracan stadium

It’s a thriller, a murder hunt set in both the nineteen-seventies during Argentina’s military dictatorship and in the present day. It beautifully evokes both eras, is wonderfully acted and football plays a key role in the story.

That’s no surprise when you consider that the Oscar winning director, Juan José Campanella is a River Plate fan and the original story writer and script editor, Eduardo Sacheri, follows Independiente.

But it’s Racing Club, Independiente’s rivals, which have the starring role and Sacheri admits that he found it uncomfortable to have to talk to their fans during the course of his research.

An obsession with football plays a big part in solving the mystery although I obviously can’t reveal more since I’m recommending that you see the film. There is also a great chase scene set in the Huracan stadium in a supposed game between Huracan and Racing.

http://www.ole.clarin.com/notas/2010/03/08/informaciongeneral/02154969.html

“And the Oscar for Best Football Stadium….wait for it…goes to Huracan’s Tomás Adolfo Ducó stadium in The Secret In Their Eyes.”

The other element which stuck in my mind long after I left the cinema was the way Campanella illustrated how dictatorships encourage the pathetic little people to emerge and rise to positions of prominence. Once there, they’re able to wreak their revenge on a society they feel has slighted them. We all know who they are. How many assistant tax inspectors, estate agents and film critics rose to positions of prominence in Germany’s Nazi Party? Slugs, who in normal society would have been ignored or treated with the contempt they deserved, revelled in and abused their authority. The Secret In Their Eyes shows the same kind of people thriving in an Argentine system that was rotten to the core.

Campanella - River Plate fan

Argentina has only ever won the Oscar once before, in 1985 for The Official Story, again about the military dictatorship that terrorised the country between 1976 and 1983. These winners are an important advert for the Argentine film industry and for the country itself since most foreigners might never see another film from this part of the world.

Argentina simply doesn’t have the money to make many films but it nonetheless has an enthusiastic and knowledgeable cinema-going public and a small but talented movie industry. The same few actors tend to crop up in almost every production because the money-men can’t afford to gamble on the untried and the un-trusted – so you can bet the price of a bag of popcorn that if Ricardo Darin isn’t in the Argentine film you’re about to watch, then Gaston Pauls will be.

There’s a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires that’s been dubbed Palermo Hollywood simply because so many film directors and students from across Latin America have congregated there to discuss the finer points of Buñuel and Bergman…and to make the odd film.

Of course, Hollywood dominates like it does in much of the rest of the world. But the cinemas in Buenos Aires are generally packed, especially for the weekend late-night screenings.

This game didn’t deserve much in the way of prizes, not even a nomination. The only drama came late in the second half. Nicholas Pavlovich scored the winner after a neat move by the visitors. Racing then managed to fluff a penalty which would have given them an ill-deserved draw. It was still more entertaining than an Oscar acceptance speech and the good guys won in the end.

And so ends this journey through an Argentine first division football season.  But my word, what a way to end it! The sun was shining, the Argentinos Juniors fans were in fine voice, Huracan supporters had travelled in numbers and there were goals galore. The home side went ahead after just eight minutes with a debatable penalty slotted home with confidence by the consistently impressive, Nestor Ortigoza. The Bichos were two up by half time thanks to a Juan Mercier strike from the middle of the penalty area. In the second half they passed the ball exquisitely to shouts of ‘Ole’ from the home supporters. Gabriel Hauche notched up a hat-trick.

I shall miss you....

It’s long been my ill-researched theory that football in so many ways is a reflexion of real-life – all contained within the confines of the stadium. You experience all the hopes, the anger, the expectation, the exhilaration, the disappointment and the unpleasant smells of life on the outside. Only you do it vicariously, safely, through the actions of the players and the officials and that obnoxious bloke with the huge belly who keeps shouting the same insult at the referee throughout the game.

It therefore follows, in my malt-whisky addled mind, that a league will reflect the characteristics of the country in which it’s played.

The English premiership, with its dodgy club owners, glitzy corporate executive boxes, expensive foreign imports and greasy cuisine, I think sustains my theory.

The Argentine league, like the country itself, should be up there with the big boys, but isn’t. It’s become a seedbed for foreign clubs to come in and exploit. A few clubs thrive but the majority are victims of their owners’ greed and ineptitude, further weakened by their rotten barrabrava, the organised, hardcore fans.

Grounds are decrepit and no-one ever adequately explains where all the transfer money goes, however politely you ask them. But the depth of player talent is awesome, the atmosphere on match-days is never less than interesting and the passion for and knowledge of football is second to none.

The weekend newspapers said that this season’s climax was more exciting than ever. They always say that. For some weeks there had been a two-horse race for the title between Newell’s Old Boys and humble Banfield, with Newell’s going into their final game two points adrift.

Playing at home, they had to beat San Lorenzo and hope that Banfield wouldn’t get a result away to Boca Juniors. Both lost their games 2-0 and Banfield, for the first time in their history, were crowned Argentine champions. Buenos Aires was awash in a sea of green and white.

Huracan - Glowing like a soggy sparkler

The season was marked by the big clubs, Boca Juniors, River Plate, Racing Club and Independiente, all failing to challenge at the top and all bobbing about in mid-table. An Argentine side, Estudiantes, did win the South American club championship, the Copa Libertadores, and the national team snuck into the World Cup with a less-than impressive fourth automatic qualifying place. But with Dumpy Diego at the helm the journey to South Africa was always going to be a strain on the suspension.

Argentinos Juniors, after finishing in last place last season, could only get better and they did so in style, finally resting in sixth place. For one brief moment, halfway through the season after a win against Estudiantes, the Bichos fans even whispered about perhaps, just maybe, you never know, winning their first silverware in more than twenty years. But then, like a Maradona diet, it all came to nothing, with a rash of draws against teams from the soggy section of the table.

The man I mocked at the beginning of the season, the lumbering awkward Number 5, Nestor Ortigoza, has become my favourite player for his precision, intelligent passing and willingness to battle for every ball. I shall follow him with interest in the Paraguay squad in South Africa.

The little goalscorer, Gabriel Hauche, was also impressive – too impressive, I fear, to linger for long at Argentinos Juniors. I’ll be surprised if he pulls on a Bichos shirt next season. The other man unlikely to be stretching the red and white shirt over his expansive belly is the manager, Claudio Borghi, who I suspect will be plucked from his dugout by one of the vultures from Argentina’s big, underachieving clubs.

There was much less crowd violence this season. And all the matches finished on time, despite a delayed start to the season because of a crisis over television rights and coverage.

Argentina is a bit like that. Things rarely progress as you would like them to. But after false starts and prophesies of doom, gloom and corruption, everything tends to work out alright in the end.

This is the end

In the week the season ended, the trial finally began of one of the most hated figures from Argentina’s military dictatorship, Alfredo Astiz, a former naval commander, known as the ‘Blond Angel of Death.’  He operated at the Naval Mechanics School, the biggest and most gruesome detention centre where he’s accused of killing, among others, two French nuns.

He also led an elite squadron during the Falklands War. He surrendered without firing a shot to British troops in South Georgia. It’s taken more than thirty years to bring him and his cohorts to trial. But after sustained pressure from the families of the victims and human rights groups, and some help from the government, it finally happened.

I went to fourteen of the nineteen games this season. There was some fine football, just one 0-0 draw in the rain, a few appalling refereeing decisions and a fair number of chorizo sausages which make me wince to think about them even now.

It was a respectable season for Argentinos Juniors that, with a little more luck and self-belief could have been a much better one. They drew against the eventual champions, Banfield, 1-1 and beat the runners-up, Newell’s Old Boys 1-0 away.

I shall be retiring to my hammock for the summer break but I hope to return early next year, rested and rejuvenated, for another season and a preview of the World Cup from the terraces of the Diego Armando Maradona stadium.