Argentinos Juniors 2 Racing Club 1
Football is a game in which the cliches invariably are true. It’s a game of two halves, the best team wins, the referee’s a moron and I’m either over the moon or as sick as a parrot.
This was a game of two halves. Racing were superior in the first half, scored one goal and really should have gone in at the break 4-0 up. But they squandered their chances. Argentinos Juniors made some much needed changes at half time, came out with some shape and vigour and scored two goals – the first from the worst player on the pitch, Santiago Salcedo, and the second fifteen minutes from time by Gonzalo Prosperi, who’d had a lousy first half.
The referee booked the Racing player, Teofilo Gutierrez for diving when even the Argentinos Juniors fans accepted that it should have been a penalty and he sent off Franco Zuculini for a second yellow card to leave Racing with ten men, their fans as sick as the proverbial parrots and me over the moon.
Over the Moon!
This victory moves Argentinos Juniors up to a remarkable fourth place, just three points behind the leaders, Velez. Remarkable simply because they’ve not been playing very well but have hung in there with grit and determination and a small dose of good luck.
Racing are a huge club with massive and vociferous support who promise much and usually fail to deliver – sometimes in spectacular circumstances. To my mind they’re the Argentine Manchester City. They’ve even got the same colours. This was only one game but it was a game there for the taking and through a mixture of nerves, incompetence and bad luck, they didn’t take it.
Argentinos Juniors were sluggish and out of sorts, probably as a result of being dumped out of the Copa Libertadores on Wednesday night by Fluminense of Brazil.
Argentinos had been sitting pretty in their group after kicking off with two wins and a draw in a tough group that also included Nacional of Uruguay and America from Mexico. But they then lost their final three games when all they probably needed was a draw to progress into the next round.
The Wednesday night game had it all. There was a penalty for each side, the ball smacked against the woodwork, there was passion, tension and when the final whistle went, with Fluminense 4-2 winners, an almighty punch-up. Argentinos players chased the Brazilians around the pitch, riot police stepped in, fists were flailing, boots were flying. It looked at times like something out of an old Keystones Cops movie.
The papers the next day talked of national shame which I thought was a bit strong. To me it looked like a bit of hot-headed Argy-Bargy in the heat and frustration of the moment. No long-term harm done.
The football’s not been providing me with much succour these days, what with the Fluminense debacle and West Ham’s 3-0 drubbing at the hands of Chelsea. So I’ve been going to the cinema where at least you can do a bit of research beforehand about the kind of result you’re likely to get.
The unexpected though comes from the cinema audience. I saw the excellent ‘Revolution’ – an epic Argentine film about the liberator from Spanish rule, Jose de San Martin.
He’s famous for many things and his statue adorns pretty much every plaza in Argentina and many in Chile. However, perhaps his most dramatic act was taking an army across the Andes mountains to defeat the Spanish troops in the Battle of Chacabuco.
At the football, you expect those around you to talk and shout, rustle paper, send text messages on the latest scores, jump and fart and generally make noise and commotion. If they didn’t, it’d be like watching Chelsea.
But we shouldn’t be expected to tolerate that kind of behaviour from middle-aged women sitting behind me in the cinema. I stood up as the credits rolled to castigate them with the words: “San Martin didn’t march through the Andes to create a country which breeds people who talk in the cinema.”
Over the Andes.
A bit over the top, I agree. I’m also aware that there was no cinema in 1817. They looked at me as though I were the weirdo for protesting.
One of the points of the film was that sometimes we have to attempt the difficult and unexpected, then overcome huge odds to achieve great things. Another was to choose your seat carefully and avoid groups of middle-aged women with horn-rimmed spectacles who have gone to the cinema on a Saturday night for a good natter.
After liberating huge tracts of South America from the Spaniards, San Martin then went into voluntary exile, ending his days in Boulogne-sur-Mer on the north coast of France. Yes! That Boulogne. The place many of us English school kids went to on our first trip abroad – a day-trip on a vomit bedecked ferry when on the way back Katy Higgins would snog anyone prepared to cough up 20p. I’d spent mine on a Boulogne sticker so missed out.
San Martin upped and left after a meeting in Guayaquil, in what is now Ecuador, with the other great liberator, the one who freed the northern parts, Simon Bolivar. What they spoke about and what agreements or agreements to disagree they arrived at, we don’t know. It’s one of the great mysteries of South American history.
A lesser mystery is what happened in the Argentine first division this weekend. Nearly all the teams expected to win, lost. Top team Velez, went down 3-2 at home to lowly Quilmes. Title contenders Estudiantes lost 2-0 at home to Colon. River, also with championship hopes, were defeated by modest Godoy Cruz and San Lorenzo lost 1-0 to Tigre. Boca Juniors, who’ve not been able to get anything right this season, beat Huracan 3-0 with Martin Palermo ending his goal drought.
Newell’s remain rooted to the foot of the table after losing 1-0 to Banfield and Independiente and All Boys drew 2-2 while Arsenal and Gimnasia tied at 1-1.
