I’d like to be more positive about Argentine football.  I realised looking back over recent posts that I’m starting to sound like a whingeing,  whining local.

After several years here I noticed that the porteños are happiest when they’re complaining. In fact,  having nothing to complain about often makes them uneasy. Certain inflexions in the regional accent even make them sound like they’re complaining when they’re not.

Here’s an example. I once approached a group of acquaintances waiting for their children outside the school gates. In true British fashion I entered the conversation with a less than profound observation on what a lovely spring morning it was.

Complaining? You bet we are!

“Oh,  but weather like this brings all sorts of allergies with it,” replied one.

“So you suffer from allergies?” I said. “Hay fever perhaps?”

“No,  not me,” she said. “But you know. It’s not nice.”

That’ll give you locals something to gripe about. “These bloody foreigners…they come to Buenos Aires,  they marry our women,  they buy our best players and then they have the audacity,  the downright cheek to complain about the amount of dog shit on our pavements and our rising prices.”

Argentina,  in very general terms,  relatively speaking,  if you look at the big picture is doing alright. It is politically and economically stable,  at least if you compare it with how things have been here in recent years or with the turmoil being suffered in parts of Europe and North America. So not much to complain about there.

Boca Juniors are joint leaders of the top division after a 1-0 win over San Martin so normality reigns there too. It’s off the pitch where football is giving us plenty of concern,  although there are signs of improvement.

The former leaders of the River Plate barra brava,  Alan and William Schlenker,  were sentenced to life in prison last week for ordering the killing in 2007 of rival River Plate fan,  Gonzalo Acro. Until the sentences are confirmed and they’ve run the full gamut of appeals,  they and three others are still roaming the streets professing their innocence.

It’s reassuring that measures are being taken against these thugs who previously enjoyed immunity and sometimes even the unashamed protection of the football and political authorities.

Crying? Of course I am!

I for one might even raise a whimper of protest if a Schlenker pushes in front of me in the hot dog queue.

That change in attitude only happens because the people,  the fans demand it. Independiente supporters,  the proper fans,  are fighting back against their thuggish element. A whole bunch of them at a game last week moved to the other side of the ground to leave the barra brava isolated,  so everyone could see who they were.

The team’s manager,  Antonio Mohamed,  had resigned after a bad run of results but saying that the barra brava forced him to go. The thuggish element reacted in the only way they know how,  with violence – attacking those who had bravely dared to challenge them.

The off-field drama is obviously affecting the Independiente players who lost 2-0 to Belgrano. The tension is sprung tighter than the straps on AFA president Julio Grondona’s wallet. It’s a good old-fashioned battle between the forces of good and evil. May the good prevail! But not too much or we’ll have nothing to complain about.

Back on the pitch,  Lanus nudged their buttocks onto the top chair alongside Boca after this 4-0 drubbing of Argentinos Juniors,  I think the heaviest defeat I’ve seen the Bichos suffer,  home or away,  since I started watching them two years ago.

Permanent? I doubt it.

The home side weren’t that bad in the first half,  ending it one-nil down. But everything they tried came to nothing,  especially if it landed at the two left feet of our often lone attacker,  JJ Morales. And the few times that Lanus deigned to put some effort into it and venture into Argentinos Juniors territory they came away with a bag of goodies.

The players and the president,  Luis Segura,  have expressed their support in his time of great difficulty for manager,  Pedro Troglio,  so I expect he’ll be clearing out his desk fairly soon. He has the team playing some attractive passing football but it nearly always comes to nothing,  especially where it counts,  in front of goal.

For that reason,  I wouldn’t be sorry to see him take the 113 out of the La Paternal neighbourhood. And call me fickle and superficial if you like,  but nineteen-seventies style perm hairdos have no place in the twenty-first century. “Troglio. Get your hair cut or get out!”

Racing continued their good form with a 1-0 win over Olimpo. Rafaela keep up the pressure on the top after a 0-0 draw against Newell’s and Colon looked impressive in a 3-1 pounding of the declining San Lorenzo. The result of the weekend was Godoy Cruz’s 6-1 drubbing of All Boys. Estudiantes continue to be one of the few teams performing worse than Argentinos Juniors – they lost 3-1 at home to Tigre.

Champions Velez,  despite a constant pounding of the Union goal,  lost 1-0 at home but it’s Banfield and their fans we should be feeling sorry for. They lost 1-0 at home to Arsenal to leave them after six games without a goal,  without a point and without much hope.

I’m back in Buenos Aires after a long trek back from Cancun where the climate change talks were finally hailed as a success. A lot depends though on how you define success.

When you’ve brought together the best players in the world – you might have Messi, Rooney and Ronaldo up front, then throw in, if you like, a Ribery and a Robben. Why not some Fabregas or a touch of Iniesta? Then stock up your defence with Ferdinand, when fit, and Lucio. And in goal? I don’t know. Van der Sar? Buffon? Joe Hart? With a team like this, you might not need a goalkeeper.

Then you’re playing Blackpool and you manage a goal, the only goal of the game, late in injury time. It just bobbles over the line after a goalmouth scramble and may well have involved a handball and an offside. But the officials didn’t see it and you clinch a 1-0 win to stave off relegation, by goal difference. If that’s the kind of victory you’re talking about, then Cancun was it.

Small nations

No-one committed to anything substantial and no-one is bound by much, except the limits of their own greed and stupidity and the whims of the electorate in the run-up to the next elections. In the meantime, we’re all free to continue pumping as much crap as we like into the air, tipping our waste into the seas and rivers and exploiting carbon reserves wherever we may find them.

But the positive side is that we’re all still talking, the process is still alive, just, and all will gather again next year in Durban, South Africa, to do much the same again.

I interviewed a lot of people in Cancun from all sides of the debate. But the one that sticks in my mind was a young woman from Kiribati in the South Pacific.

Quite why it’s spelt Kiribati yet pronounced Kiribess, I’m not sure. But that might not matter since the island and its 100,000 or so population may well not exist fairly soon. The reason this interview with this woman stayed with me was not because her argument was scientifically, ecologically or politically impressive, but because she was scared and emotional.

Imagine asking a resident of Austria, Ecuador or the United States, for that matter: “So your country may well be submerged under seawater fairly soon. How do you feel about that?”

The only reason we don’t take much notice of Kiribati, Vanuatu or Nauru is because they are small and distant. The woman from Kiribati told me that they’re already making contingency plans for a future in which they simply don’t have dry land anymore because we’ve not stopped sea levels rising, because we’ve not stopped global warming, even though we had the economic capacity, the scientific knowhow and enough time to do so. What we lack is the political will.

I turn my back on Argentina for two weeks and the place falls apart. Argentinos Juniors lost their last home game of the season against an average Lanus. This was really a game of one half. Lanus were two up in the first fifteen minutes. Argentinos Juniors finally turned up and managed to pull one back just before the break. Then, despite a constant barrage in the second half, they couldn’t pull it level.

There have also been pitched battles in the poor neighbourhood of Villa Soldati to the south of Buenos Aires which have left three people dead and many injured. Heavily armed police have moved in to take control, backed by armoured vehicles and helicopters.

Several hundred families, many of them immigrants from Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia, had taken possession of land in the neighbourhood. The existing residents tried to turf them out. What came as little surprise was the involvement of those delightful fellows, the barra brava.

It’s still not clear who is paying them or exactly why. Many of those photographed, some wielding pistols, are known thugs with well-documented links to some of the shadowy elements of the governing Peronist party. Some were in South Africa earlier this year supporting Argentina at the World Cup.

In the face of the usual accusations that the government is not doing enough to tackle rising crime and that the police were noticeably absent from the proceedings, President Cristina on Friday set up a new ministry for security. It’s to be headed by the defence chief, Nilda Garre.

Meanwhile, Argentinos Juniors wrap things up on Monday night with a visit to Tigre in a mid-table clash of no importance whatsoever. And the title will be decided between Estudiantes, who need to win at home to Arsenal, and Velez who, as they have been for much of season, are snapping at their heels waiting for a slip up.

Both Boca Juniors and River Plate are still tying themselves in knots over yet another disappointing season. Much the same is true of Independiente and San Lorenzo.  I’m going now to check that all the lights are turned off and indulge in a spot of recycling.

It’s quite a trek to reach the southern suburb of Lanus. First I had to take the 113 bus to the Argentinos Juniors ground in La Paternal to buy my away ticket, then a half an hour walk to La Paternal station for the train to Retiro, one of the main terminals in Buenos Aires, then the whole length of Line C on the underground to Plaza Constitucion and from there four stops to Lanus. I then had a another half hour walk to the ground and arrived about two minutes before the kick-off.

After twelve minutes, I was wondering why I’d bothered. Lanus were two up and Argentinos Juniors were struggling to string two passes together. I don’t know about the team, but I was missing the nippy, little attacker Gabriel Hauche and the goalkeeper Sebastian Torrico, both of whom were sold during the close season. Torrico was always hesitant coming off his line but was a quality ball-stopper.

But if ever there was a day when football, pure, quality passing, skilful football had to win the day, then this was it. And Argentinos Juniors delivered with a couple of goals before half-time to level the score and then four in the second half, including a penalty from my favourite player, Nestor Ortigoza and a peach from the Chilean, Emilio Hernandez. For the record, Nicolas Pavlovich scored two, there was an own goal from Rodrigo Erramuspe and one from Ismael Sosa.

Pavlovich nets two

That quality football was necessary to help disperse the dark cloud hanging over the Argentine game. Just a few hours earlier the 244^th victim of football violence in Argentina died in hospital in the city of Rosario.

Fourteen-year-old Newell’s Old Boys fan, Walter Caceres, had been shot on his way home from a mid-week game in Buenos Aires. The bus he was travelling in was, it seems, ambushed by a rival faction from the same club.

They managed to puncture the tyres and while the passengers waited for a replacement bus in the early hours of the morning, the vehicle was sprayed with machine-gun bullets. Walter took three bullets in his head and one in his back. Two other fans were wounded but are likely to recover. The nation watched and waited. The police announced that the young fan had died then said: “Oops, sorry! He’s still alive.” But he died a day later. As I write this, no-one has been detained in connection with the murder.

Before the Lanus game, the players and crowd were asked to observe a minute’s silence which was not respected by a contingent of home fans who bashed their drums throughout. A hefty defeat for their team was the least they deserved.

But the Lanus fans’ behaviour was not the most sickening aspect of this tragedy. That accolade might be given to the president of Newell’s Old Boys, Guillermo Lorente, who was quick to tell the media that “this incident in no way stains Newell’s but is related to a problem beyond the club and has to do with all the problems of insecurity suffered in Argentina. Newell’s is the obvious reference point in this case but Newell’s has nothing to do with it.”

Thanks for your sympathy, Mr Lorente. The dead boy’s father, Carlos, had a different point of view. “These people, the police, the bosses, the judges, know perfectly well who was responsible. They’ve all washed their hands and are looking the other way.”

In 2003, two Newell’s fans died after a clash with River Plate fans involving guns and stones on a main road to the north of Buenos Aires. In 2005 a 21-year-old Newell’s fan, Gonzalo Ferraro, died after receiving a bullet in the belly in the local derby with Rosario Central. Last year, Newell’s fans Martin Gomez and Maximiliano Sanchez died in an internal club feud. Nothing whatsoever to do with Newell’s Old Boys, eh, Mr Lorente?

Pancho Varallo - a goalscorer and a gentleman

But the club owners throughout Argentina work with local politicians who work with the barra brava, or organised hard-core fans, who collaborate with the police. They’re all in it together, lining their own pockets at the expense of the loyal fans and are rarely brought to account, except on the handful of occasions each season when fans are killed. And there are a handful of occasions each season when fans are killed and I suspect that won’t change until Argentina suffers a tragedy of Heysel or Hillsborough-like proportions.

You have to wonder what Francisco ‘Pancho’ Varallo makes of it all, although I’ve no doubt he would have revelled in the game I’ve just seen. He is the last survivor of the first ever World Cup final played in 1930 in which Uruguay beat Argentina to lift the trophy. Mr Varallo was on the losing side on that occasion but went on to win plenty of other silverware, including three Argentine championships with Boca Juniors (1931/34/35) and the South American nations cup, the Copa America, with Argentina in 1937. He was a ruthless goalscorer, netting 181 times in 210 games for Boca, but always was and still is a gentleman.

Last week he celebrated his 100^th birthday, telling the local media that that 1930 defeat to Uruguay still hurts.

Walter Caceres only lived fourteen years and he missed his team’s thumping 4-2 victory over Boca Juniors. Newell’s Old Boys next game is against Argentinos Juniors on Monday. I suspect several fans will stay away. All we can hope is that it’s a game played how Mr Varallo would have played it and not in the spirit encouraged by the likes of Mr Lorente.