La Bombonera - a ground of three thirds

Boca Juniors 2  Argentinos Juniors 2

Well, I thought it was worth waiting the extra week for the Argentine football season to begin. The players were fitter, leaner and hungrier. Not a single nil-nil draw and plenty of surprises.

The Argentine season is very short, just nineteen games. So if you get off to a poor start that’s it, no time for a late surge or any chance to emerge refreshed from the Christmas break.

We start the 2009 Apertura season with the last chill of the southern hemisphere winter and will end it in late December with the Christmas tinsel wilting in the early summer sun.

I went to the Bombonera, the home of Boca Juniors for the visit of Argentinos Juniors.  It’s an imposing yellow and blue concrete hulk which sits on the edge of the working class dock area of La Boca. It’s a shrine, an icon, a Mecca in a country where football is pretty much a religion. It’s also bloody difficult to get into, even if you’ve got a ticket.

And the reason is the abundance at every turn of pompous, officious, uniformed bastards whose sole aim in life is to make things difficult for the paying customer.

Life in Latin America can be sweet. A little money helps but the key to long life and happiness is to stay clear, whenever and wherever possible, of anyone in a position of authority. Latin Americas’ many military dictatorships and oppressive police forces speak for themselves.

Foreigners will tell-tales of hours lost in cavernous government buildings in the search for official residency papers. Locals talk through gritted teeth about epic visits to the cable TV, telephone or electricity companies to get things repaired or to correct wildly outrageous bills. No-one that I know has ever spent less than an hour in the bank or post office. I once paid a two-hundred dollar bribe and spent six hours at the customs office to retrieve something that was mine and they had no right to be holding in the first place.  And I was shushed and then ignored for a good ten minutes by staff at the place where they issue ID documents because they wanted to watch the end of the local Big Brother.

My generously sympathetic theory is that these poorly-paid, ill-trained staff are treated abysmally by their superiors and the only joy they can retrieve from an otherwise dismal life is to be obnoxious to defenceless punters like myself for the short time they have us at their mercy.

I was polite and respectful to all of the fifteen or so policemen, women and ground stewards I asked directions from outside the Boca ground. They sent me in at least fifteen different directions. And it was only when I’d returned to the same one for the third time that their veneer of pure spite began to crack and they showed me a modicum of sympathy. Or it might have been when I slumped to the ground sobbing in anger and frustration.

I made it to my seat about two minutes before kick-off by which time I didn’t much care about the football. Or global warming, the dry rot in the living room or anything else for that matter.

But there’s nothing like a good game of football to take your mind off of your problems. And this was a good game of football. Boca Juniors looked tired and disjointed. They are back under the command of Alfio ‘Coco’ Basile, a man with a voice so deep and gravelly the ground shakes when he speaks. The last time he was in charge, Boca simply couldn’t stop winning. He had to go because the carpenters couldn’t build new trophy cabinets quickly enough. But he didn’t do so well as the national team coach and Boca didn’t do so well without him. So he’s back.

The visitors, Argentinos Juniors, who last season finished last, were sprightly and imaginative. They had a goal disallowed for handball. That only works if your name is Diego Maradona and you have a special relationship with the Almighty!

But then Gabriel Hauche on the half-hour and Nicolas Gianni on the stroke of half-time put Argentinos two up. This looked like being a shock of shockingly shocking proportions.

Marino Boy

Taking a leak at half-time, the old fellow mopping the floor told me that Boca had made a couple of changes. He mopped with one hand while holding a radio to his ear with the other and spoke with authority. I imagine that a man with a keen ear who mops the floors at Boca Juniors must learn a thing or two and is worth listening to. He may have just cleaned the Boca changing room floor or emptied Coco Basile’s spit bucket for all I knew.

And so it came to pass. There was a strange rumbling in the concrete structure which I put down to the half-time dressing down that Basile gave to his lacklustre players. One of the new men he put on was Guillermo Marino who neatly put the ball into the visitor’s net twice in five minutes to level the score.

That’s the way it stayed. A fair result in a game of two halves and one that Argentinos Juniors will be more pleased with than Boca.

The big shock came elsewhere with humble Banfield beating Boca’s big rival, River Plate 2-0. The current champions, Velez Sarsfield, won their opening fixture 1-0 away at Colon and lumbering, slumbering giants, Independiente lost at home to Newell’s Old Boys.

Football is back as an intrinsic part of the fabric of Argentine life. She’d been gone for far too long.