08/08
2011

Game One: v Union de Santa Fe

Union de Santa Fe  1  Argentinos Juniors  1

We go through the motions, don’t we? It’s the start of the new football season – the 2011 Apertura, the Islas Malvinas Nestor Kirchner Julio Grondona Carlos Gardel Diego Maradona championship and we’re excited, aren’t we?

I mean, we’ve been deprived of our regular diet of thrills and skills, action and excitement, glamour and controversy during the close season and now it’s back. Only the first weekend of the new season was flat, uninteresting, lacking in colour and the Monday after the weekend before, horribly uninspiring. This is due to a number of reasons.

Firstly, River Plate are not there. We know that they deserve to be in the second tier because they simply lost too many games. But there’s no Boca Juniors v River Plate superclasico to look forward to. There’s none of that hope and expectation that the arrogant big city boys will fall to some hard-working but glamorous-less side from the provinces. The absence of the gallinas brings home the fact that however useless River may have been, they were glamour and history and football needs glamour and history.

I revelled as much as anyone in their demise but it is nonetheless sad – a little like seeing the Queen sitting on a park bench eating cold pasta out of a plastic container.

Then there was the bursting of the Copa America bubble. Argentina as hosts and with Leo Messi et al among their ranks were expected to do a little better than fall to tiny Uruguay on penalties in the first knock-out game. Uruguay were worthy winners and Argentina deserved no more than what they got but it’s left the world of Argentine football looking and feeling like a sink of unwashed dishes the morning after a not very good party.

Even without all that, Argentine football is and has been for some years in crisis. I’ve said it before but it needs to be said again and again.

The close season saw the usual exodus of promising young Argentine players abroad. Argentinos Juniors’ own favourites, the folically-challenged Juan Mercier went to Saudi Arabia while the miniature Franco Neill went to Queretero in Mexico. Every top club lost players – to France, Ecuador, Italy, Spain and Greece and the transfer window hasn’t closed yet.

It wasn’t all one-way traffic. Some Argentines came back and a few foreigners signed for Argentine clubs, most notably the Ecuadoran Jefferson Hurtado for Argentinos Juniors.

Mercier - following the money.

Mercier - following the money.

So every team is pretty much a new team. Most are fielding fresh players while many favourites have gone and the fans yet again are spending hours on websites acquainting themselves with unfamiliar team line-ups.

But all this activity again raises the question: where does all the money go? Some goes back into the Argentine game but not enough. Too much is simply unaccounted for.

And a huge chunk of the blame for that state of affairs lies at the sweaty feet of the repugnant, reptilian Godfather of Argentine football, Don Julio Grondona, the head of the Argentine Football Association for the past thirty-two years.

There are rumours that he’s losing his grip. But like with any dictator, it’s always dangerous to underestimate the power and influence of a man who has been cunning and clever enough to ensure that people who count are where they are thanks to him.

Of the nine games played over the weekend, six ended in draws. Argentinos Juniors continued where they left off last season by holding the ball impressively for large parts of the match only to do very little with it when they got within range of the goal.

Santiago Salcedo scored the opener just after half-time then went off injured while Union, back in the top flight after eight years, responded almost immediately.

Boca Juniors played out a painfully dull 0-0 down south at Olimpo. Football’s most miserable player, Juan Roman Riquelme, set the tone by complaining about the pitch and the fans. “It’s logical,” he said, “that on this pitch you play badly.”

Another of the newcomers, Atletico de Rafaela, beat Banfield 2-0, Lanus got off to a flying start by winning 1-0 at San Lorenzo and the only other decisive score came at Arsenal where Colon won 2-1. Reigning champions, Velez, took a point at Godoy Cruz, All Boys held another of the newly-promoted teams, Belgrano, 1-1 and Newell’s and Estudiantes ground out an excrutiating 0-0.

Five players were sent off, including Emilio Hernandez from Argentinos Juniors. There’s still eighteen more games to go. Things must get better. Please tell me they must get better! Please!

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26/06
2011

River Plate v Belgrano de Cordoba

River Plate  1  Belgrano de Cordoba  1

For anyone who believes that football is just a game, you really had to see this match and its grisly aftermath.

River Plate needed to win by two clear goals, after losing the first leg in Cordoba 2-0, to avoid relegation to  “La B,” as the second division here is called, for the first time in their 110 year history.

River started well, Mariano Pavone, scoring after just five minutes when the visiting defence made itself scarce. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of nervousness, play was sloppy and the fouls came in thick and fast.

The TV cameras seemed to spend almost as much time focussing on fans biting their nails, gripping their neighbour and praying to whichever god they thought might be listening as on the football.

You couldn’t fault the home side for commitment but the Belgrano goalkeeper, Juan Carlos Olave, was playing a blinder and there were plenty of examples to show why River Plate, despite being one of the richest, best supported and prestigious clubs in Argentina, are in this dire situation.

Belgrano made the task almost impossible seventeen minutes into the second half when Guillermo Farre took advantage of two River defenders doing an impression of the Keystone Kops and slipped the ball between the goalkeeper’s legs.

Grisly aftermath...

Grisly aftermath...

But it wasn’t over yet. The script writers were busy with more nail-biting drama. The referee, Sergio Pezzotta, handed River what I thought was a dubious penalty. Pavone hit it low and hard to the goalkeeper’s right but this was always going to be his afternoon and he saved it.

That miss seemed to knock the wind out of River. They ran and they scraped but they never again looked like scoring. In the final minute of the game River fans began ripping their stadium apart and throwing chunks onto the pitch.

The game was abandoned with just seconds left to play but the result was irreversible. Belgrano were up. But the real news is that River Plate are down.

The violence continued. River fans turned on one another. They tried to find their own players, presumably for a ritual lynching. The police fired water cannons, the fans broke windows. The police fired tear gas, the fans hit them with sticks. The police charged them with batons, the fans smashed up a TV van. It wasn’t pretty.

These are simply fans not accustomed to failure. They’ve been national champions 33 times and won the Libertadores cup twice. Even when they don’t win, they reach finals, they challenge for top honours. Not any more, they don’t.

This being Argentina, the psychologists had already been called on to analyse the trauma the River fans were going through. They reported an increase in the amount of anti-depressants being asked for.

One said that some fans identified with the club as a kind of substitute parent. They idolised it but when that idolatry goes into reverse, when the club lets them down, they’re likely to turn nasty, to express a comparative amount of anger and violence.

That’s exactly what happened, even before the final whistle was blown. And it’s likely to get worse for River fans.

After years of gloating about their success to friends and colleagues, they’re going to have to suffer a fair amount of reciprocal taunting, especially from Boca fans.

Unlike in the English league, there’s no umbrella payment to soften their fall into the lower echelons.

The 28million pesos (about US$6million) they get in television money each year will be reduced to just four million. Their entrance fees, set by the Argentine football association, will be cut, the value of their players will diminish and they’re going to have to pay for the damage caused to their own stadium by their angry fans.

The footballing authorities do all they can to ensure that the big clubs don’t get relegated. They have to perform consistently poorly over three years to be relegated or be forced into a play-off against a team aspiring to rise from the B. River were that bad.

It’s been a long and slow decline. The way back up may be equally as tortuous. This may be the time to do something about losing that nickname…Las Gallinas – the Chickens.

* Just to round up the season. Another big club, but not as big as River Plate, Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata, also went down after 26 years in the top flight. They lost their two-leg play-off against San Martin from San Juan province who replace them in the first division. The two clubs winning automatic promotion were Atletico Rafaela and Union, both from the north-eastern province of Santa Fe.

That signifies a radical shift in balance away from Buenos Aires. Three of the four relegated clubs — River Plate, Huracan and Quilmes — are from in or near the capital. All four promoted clubs are from distant parts of what residents of Buenos Aires, los portenos, often refer to disparagingly as ‘la interior.’

Meanwhile, River Plate continue some deep soul searching about where it all went wrong. Several club officials are being investigated over how far they were responsible for allowing some of the barrabrava into the referee’s dressing room at half-time. They threatened to kill him unless he gave River a penalty. He did but River missed it. Their president, Daniel Passarella, wants an interview with the president of the nation no less to discuss what he claims is a conspiracy against the club.

** And if you’ve got time on your hands and want to be informed and titilated in equal measure, take a peek at the European Football Weekends blog where you’ll find me, the handofdan and Argentinos Juniors featured. http://europeanfootballweekends.blogspot.com/

Hasta la vista amigos.

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19/06
2011

Game Nineteen: v Tigre

Argentinos Juniors  1  Tigre  1

With hindsight, this game was only ever going to end in a draw. There have been so many this season. But let’s be thankful for small mercies. At least there were a couple of goals and it didn’t start raining, despite threatening to throughout the game, until we were scurrying out of the stadium after we’d applauded our boys off the pitch and on their way to their winter holidays in a kind of semi-enthusiastic , mas o menos, sort of way.

As the final whistle blew, the Tigre fans and players leapt about and on top of one another as though they’d just won the championship and the lottery at the same time. Word had obviously just filtered through that results from the other four games being played simultaneously had gone their way and their place in the top division was safe.

Limited Action

Limited Action

But the news that in Argentina pretty much knocks the world off its axis is that River Plate lost at home to Lanus and must now play a couple of matches against a low-life from a lower division – in this case Belgrano of Cordoba – to retain their place in the top division and avoid relegation for the first time in their history.

As one who’s just lived through the trauma of relegation with West Ham I can assure River Plate supporters that, while it seems at times to be the worst thing that can happen to you, up there with having your house repossessed or your children confessing that they don’t much like football and only accompanied you to games for the burgers, life does go on and there is hope of a better future.

Argentine writer and River fan, Quino, wrote an excellent piece in the Perfil newspaper, for which his fellow fans will brand him a blasphemer, saying he wanted River to go down.

“Bit by bit, year after year,” he wrote, “River have turned into a team without a soul, without football, without goals, without respect for their tradition, with dull footballers and cowardly coaches. And now we’ve reached rock bottom.”

Relegation, he predicts, will deliver them a radical solution that he hopes will allow them to escape from what he calls interminable suffering.

So Long, Farewell.

So Long, Farewell.

Quilmes are down, for sure, after losing 1-0 to Olimpo. Huracan, who lost 5-1 to Independiente, must play Gimnasia, who squandered a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 with Boca, in what promise to be a couple of tense matches. The loser will go down, the winner will have another chance and will battle it out with a team from the lower echelon for a place in the top flight.

I personally witnessed most of Argentinos Juniors’ home games, a couple of away matches and the rest on tele and never have I spent so long watching football for so little reward. The football was often ineffective and the goals sparse. The Bichos were often the better team but in nineteen games they managed just 16 goals and most of them were scored away from home. That is not entertaining football by anyone’s standards.

They finished a very respectable fifth simply by having the best defence in the division, letting in just 11 goals. The champions, Velez, conceded 16 but managed to score more than twice as many as Argentinos Juniors. The point being, if you can’t score goals all our cheering and all the players’ huffing and puffing and running around amounts to very little and frustration will inevitably set in.

I hope the manager, Pedro Troglio, stays and manages to convince key players to remain with him since there’s the foundations of a decent team here. A couple of players who can tuck the ball in the net will make all the difference.

The truth is that none of the other teams I saw at the Diego Maradona stadium this season impressed me. I missed the Velez visit since I was at Upton Park watching West Ham lose to Birmingham City in the poorest exhibition of football at inflated prices that I’ve probably ever seen. May The Blues linger in the lower divisions for a long time and Aston Villa fans, you have my sympathy.

So, I’ll take a break now. I may return for the Copa America that kicks off on July 1. All the games, apart from the final, are being played in cities distant from Buenos Aires.  Since I’ve put my money on Argentina winning every major tournament for the last eight years or so, I’m going to continue in the same vein – Argentina to beat Brazil in the final. Not especially adventurous, I know. Paraguay and Uruguay are good outside bets and could provide an upset or two.

I’m putting my Argentinos Junior’s shirt in the wash now so it’s clean and ironed for next season. Hasta la vista chicos.

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30/04
2011

Game Twelve: v All Boys

All Boys  0  Argentinos Juniors  0

I didn’t go to this game although I very much wanted to. It’s the nearest thing Argentinos Juniors has to a local derby since All Boys is just 3km or so up the road and it’s a stadium I’ve never been to. But the local authorities, in their wisdom, decided to ban visiting fans. What did we ever do to upset them?

They cited previous unpleasantness for their decision. OK, I’ve seen a few boggled-eyed angry fans kicking walls and smashing their palms against walls but the only damage they generally do is to themselves.

Shout louder! He can't hear you.

Shout louder! He can't hear you.

The Bichos are a motley collection of boisterous youngsters, grandads wallowing in nostalgia, proud mums and dads with toddlers on their shoulders and enthusiastic footie fans like myself. No harm to no-one.

The decision was met with rightful indignation – of Mourinho-like proportions – by the club authorities. They refused to attend the game in protest. “It’s because we’re a small club,” they bleated, which is probably true. The police fancied a day off and wouldn’t have taken the same decision if they were dealing with a Boca Juniors, say, or a River Plate.

I got to see the game in a dark, cavernous sports hall at the Argentinos Juniors complex where the club had erected a big screen. Entrance was free. We clapped and cheered and abused the referee which was an odd sensation since, obviously, they couldn’t hear us.

Yet another draw in a game Argentinos Juniors really should have won simply because they were the better side. But they couldn’t put away their chances and therein lies one of the fundamental truths of football. If you don’t score more goals than your opponents, you don’t win. I’ve often thought that a career in philosophy would have suited me.

There’s no doubt that the whole system is stacked in favour of the big boys. Relegation is decided on the average results over three seasons. So a big club that finds it is sliding down the rankings can generally reorganise itself and buy its way out of trouble.

That is more or less what River Plate are in the process of doing. They’ve had a few, by their standards, dismal seasons and their average was looking about as healthy as Diego Maradona the morning after the night before.

Sitting comfortably.

Sitting comfortably.

The president, Daniel Passarella, brought in a new manager in JJ Lopez, they’ve kept their disruptive barra brava in check and pretty much turned things around. They might not win the title this season but they’ll stay in the top division. Of that, there is no doubt.

As fans, we know it’s not really fair. We know that the game is riddled with vested interests, bags of money and, sometimes, corruption. Jose Mourinho knows what he’s talking about. OK, we’re aware that he’s only whinging to divert attention from his players in their moment of misery.

But mostly, we’d rather not think about it. Those who run football, like those who run most money-spinning sports, simply cannot afford to admit that their administrations are rotten to the core, that drugs are rife, that they’d bend over and pull their trousers down themselves to satisfy the sponsors. They could but they never will since too many vested interests are served.

And where do we, the fans, fit into all this. We’d rather not rock the boat either. We have also invested time, money, emotion, hopes and expectations into our teams, our sport. To come clean with ourselves and admit that we’ve been had, that we continue to be duped, makes us look pretty dumb. We need our sport, our team, our hopes and expectations.

I still vividly remember the 1988 Olympic 100m final between Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson. It was one of the best sub-ten second chunks of sporting history ever, an event that surpassed the hype that had preceded it. Then, a couple of days later, Ben Johnson, who’d won, was tested positive for steroids and his gold medal was taken from him and awarded to second-placed Carl Lewis. Like millions of others, I felt cheated, duped.

I was living in Madrid when it became known that Real Madrid had a debt the size of a small country. But to many, Real Madrid is more important than most small countries and, like a small country, couldn’t be allowed to go out of business. A company that did something meaningless like build housing for the underprivileged, maybe. But Real Madrid? Never!

Spectating - but not as we know it.

Spectating - but not as we know it.

The city authorities conjured up a deal where they bought the club’s training ground for an inflated sum and rented it back to them for a pittance. The local tax payers paid, Atletico Madrid fans included. There should have been a furore but there wasn’t.

Few were surprised when Diego Maradona was sent home from the 1994 World Cup after failing a drugs test. But c’mon! Was he the only one? I don’t think so. He maintains that he was targeted for openly and loudly criticising the footballing authorities, which I think is likely. They need to show that they care every now and then by making an example of someone and who better than the loud-mouthed number 10?

But to put their house in order, to really put their house in order would mean lancing a very big boil and that would hurt. It would hurt the Grondonas and the Blatters, it would hurt the corporate sponsors and it would hurt us, the fans. So they’ll pick the odd scab occasionally. But that’s all they’ll ever do.

A big moan, I know, for a relatively small injustice. But sometimes these things have simply got to be said. Then not said for a long time while we immerse ourselves again in the drama, the controversy, the hype and escapism that is football.

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