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.

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!

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So, I’ve just left one country where those in charge are out of touch with the people they represent, the economic future is bleak, the gap between the haves and those with very little grows ever wider, inflation is an issue and the sun rarely shines to return to one where those in charge are out of touch with the people they represent, the economic future is uncertain, the gap between the haves and those with very little grows ever wider, inflation is a huge issue and the sun shines most  days. Perhaps I’ve got the marginally better deal.

Oooh! Nice Ground.

In one, beer which traditionally drowned sorrows, has become exorbitantly expensive. In the other meat, traditionally eaten to forget ones woes, has become exorbitantly expensive. Could those rumblings in the stomach become rumblings of discontent?

When Argentines moan about how corruption has stifled their development I always say that it’s as bad in Europe only more sophisticated since they’ve been at it longer. They usually think I’m joking. But I now have proof of my wise words as one banker after another rewards himself with multi-million pound bonuses for fucking up the system and our esteemed leaders’ links with despots and murderers come to light. Bob Diamond, Prince Andrew and Tony Blair please come up to the stage to claim your rewards.

Elections are brewing here in Argentina. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner hasn’t confirmed yet whether she’ll stand. She’s not popular and she’s not especially competent but when you look at the bickering, inept and fractious opposition, she looks positively regal.

Cristina or Cameron? Cobos or Clegg? How bad does it have to get before young Brits and Argentines follow the lead of the Egyptians, Tunisians and Libyans to fill Trafalgar Square and the Plaza de Mayo?

While Britain is distracted by a royal wedding and the Olympic Games, we’ve always got football.

It was good to be mingling among the bichos for this fourth game of the season against mighty River Plate in the Monumental stadium. Only they weren’t so mighty. They’d like to be, they pretend they are and there’s no doubt as you emerge at the top of the steps to catch that first glimpse of the pitch that their ground is the best in the land. The fans are many and loud. The view over the Buenos Aires skyline as the summer sun sets is magnificent.

But on the pitch, Argentinos Juniors, who boast a ramshackle ground in a modest neighbourhood with a few noisy fans, more than held their own against the millionarios. The last game here we snuck out with a 1-0 victory. It wasn’t to be this time, with neither side working the goalkeepers particularly hard.

Ooh! What a lot of fans you've got.

The interesting thing about this pitch is that it’s circled by a running track. It works, it’s not a problem. So why all the hoo-haa in England over the Olympic Stadium and whether it could easily be converted into a football stadium? Tottenham’s arguments were spurious. Retractable seating would be a bonus but are not essential. This pitch certainly looked huge from where I stood, especially after a player from each side was sent off in the first half after a bit of Argy-Bargy right in front of the linesman. The atmosphere was electric and no-one was tempted during the game to take to the track and run 100m.

That result leaves us with four draws from the first four games of the season. It’s a little awkward boasting about being unbeaten, which we are, when you sit in thirteenth place with just four points.

Cult hero, Nestor Ortigoza, has gone to San Lorenzo for something above $2m. A bargain if ever I saw one. The future looks bright. There is life beyond Ortigoza. The local heroes in the making are Pablo Hernandez and nineteen-year-old Matias Laba.

While Argentinos Juniors held their own against bigger clubs, Huracan, Independiente, Velez and River, in the Argentine first division, they have taken the Libertadores Cup by storm.

The mighty clubs of Latin America are quaking in their boots as humble Argentinos sit proudly atop what has inevitably been dubbed the Group of Death. A 2-2 draw in Brazil against Fluminense was followed by a 3-1 drubbing of Mexican giants America and then a famous 1-0 win over the Uruguayan team, Nacional, in Montevideo.

Elsewhere, the Boca Juniors crisis continues as they lost 1-0 to Velez with few ideas and little sign of anything better to come. While I was at the only goalless game of the weekend, the balls were bulging the nets at Newells who drew 3-3 with Huracan, at Racing who beat Olimpo 4-3 and at Godoy Cruz who lost 3-2 to Colon. Banfield beat Lanus 2-1, San Lorenzo put three past All Boys and Quilmes were beaten 2-1 at home by Tigre.

The champions, Estudiantes, are sitting pretty on top of the table after winning the La Plata derby against Gimnasia 2-0. Racing also have nine points but if we can beat Arsenal at home next Saturday, then we’ll be breathing down their necks.

I’ve just been watching Arsenal v Everton on the TV in my shorts, no shirt and an ice-cold drink in my hand. There’s nothing quite like seeing those sixty-thousand or so frozen, wool-wrapped fans huddled together like penguins having a bad day while all those  around me are complaining about the excessive southern hemisphere summer heat.

Punta del Este-for those who can afford it

They get so hot and bothered down here in January that all those who can head for the Atlantic beach resorts – those with a few pesos to rub together go to Punte del Este in Uruguay or to Brazil, while the rest head for resorts on the Argentine coast.

Those of us who have stayed behind in Buenos Aires can enjoy emptier streets and plazas and shorter queues at the ice-cream parlours.  We’re also being treated to a spectacular political drama.

President Cristina Kirchner wanted six-and-a-half billion dollars from the national reserve to pay off a chunk of Argentina’s huge foreign debt which is due later this year. But the head of the central bank, Martin Redrado, told her to keep her hands to herself.

She stormed off in a huff and announced that Mr Redrado had resigned – only he hadn’t. “It’s my job,” he said, “and I’m keeping it.”

So the president signed a special decree to have him removed. But she needed the signatures of her cabinet to make it valid. However, they were at the beach, working on their tans, making sand-castles, sipping cocktails etc and had to be dragged back to Buenos Aires, sand between their toes, sun-cream on their noses and tans less than complete.

Then a judge nullified the decree and Mr Redrado went back to work. It’s not over yet and as we count the days until the start of the new football season, it’s keeping us amused.

Redrado-should he stay or should he go?

Those players not captured by the European club nets that trawl Argentina at this time of the year are back in training. Running through Bosque de Palermo the other day, I saw the River Plate squad going through their paces. I know it’s early, but I think I’m in better condition than most of them.

You probably think I’m making this up, but as I stood at the edge of the lake recovering from my run I saw two turtles having sex in the water. At least I think they were. How do you know they’re not fighting, one on the other’s back applying the turtle equivalent of a half-nelson? Or were they dancing a slow, slow tango? On reflection, it was definitely sex, proof that there’s still plenty of fun to be had in a half-empty, football-free, hot and humid Buenos Aires, for the turtles at least.

The extreme heat is punctuated by thunder storms which, as well as relieving the humidity, wash away the dog shit which has become one of the most irritating aspects of life in Buenos Aires.

Much of the population lives in apartment blocks, highly inappropriate for keeping dogs, often big, hairy ones totally unsuited to the heat.  Crime is an issue but it’s not nearly as bad as some porteños, as the residents of Buenos Aires call themselves, will tell you it is. Plenty of the more paranoid residents buy their pets as guard-dogs. Others love their pooches dearly. But they’re often too lazy, busy or scared to walk them, so will hire a professional dog walker to do it for them.

It’s a common sight in Buenos Aires to see a walker with up to fifteen assorted poodles, Labradors, Chihuahuas, Great Danes and terriers straining at their leashes and dumping all over the pavements. Of course, the walkers are supposed to clean up but they rarely do.

Dogs' Life

This business has become so lucrative that many walkers now use vans to pick up their charges and drive them to the park. There, they’re tied up to trees while the walkers chat with fellow walkers, drink mate tea and perhaps kick a ball around. I know this because they gather in the park where I run. Overnight the area is used by prostitutes who discard the used condoms among the trees and by day by the dog-walkers who don’t walk. Runners are advised to tread very carefully.

The park cleaners have a tough job, but so too do the journalists who have to fill the sports pages during the summer months. There’s no cricket here, so they cover the pointless triangular pre-season tournaments being played at the beach resorts or tell tales of new shirt designs or who is joining the annual exodus to Europe.

The football may be taking a break but the battle between rival fans never rests. If you saw the World Club championship final between Barcelona and Argentina’s Estudiantes last month you may have wondered why some of the fans had banners with a simple 7-0 on them.

Estudiantes may have won the South American Libertadores cup and reached the pinnacle of world football with a final against Barcelona, but a game their fans revel in more than any other was the 7-0 victory in 2006 over their rivals in the city of La Plata, Gimnasia y Esgrima.

A young Gimnasia fan, Maxi Vazquez, sent a photo of himself wearing the club shirt to get his national identity card renewed. But his new card was processed by an Estudiantes fan who scrawled 7-0 on the photo before stamping and coating it with plastic. Maxi was livid. The offending official was tracked down and fired, despite a support campaign on Facebook that attracted more than eight-hundred and fifty fans.

I don’t know whether there’s a park in La Plata where turtles have sex but that former official now has plenty of time on his hands to investigate while he waits for the referee to blow that first whistle of the season.

I, meanwhile, think I’ll plop another ice-cube in my glass. Que calor!

This was the worst I’ve seen Argentinos Juniors play this season. Their passing, usually so precise, was all over the place, more often than not at the feet of their opponents. River, who have had a terrible season so far, played with spirit and came away with a victory that could turn their campaign around. Their goals came from Diego Buonanotte in the first half and Mauro Rosales in the second. Argentinos pulled one back when Néstor Ortigoza slotted home a penalty right at the end – but it was too little, too late and the large River contingent celebrated late into the night.

River Plate is in the midst of an election campaign for a new president, with all the wild promises, sordid accusations and macho threats that make up an intrinsic part of any Latin American election. But fundamentally, this campaign is about how this once mighty club, still with a huge fan base and the best stadium in Argentina, has become mediocre, bordering on crap.

If I wanted to stretch a point, and I do, I would argue that River Plate could be a metaphor for Argentina – once great, bursting with promise but now among the also-rans.

At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, millions of Europeans flocked here, tempted by the wide-open spaces, modern, bustling cities and the promise of good things to come. The British brought the railways and football. Thanks lads!

French-style architecture lined wide boulevards. Italians, Spaniards, Russians, Croats and Germans discarded their lederhosen, furry hats, and castanets to forge a new Argentine identity to the beat of the tango and the smell of steaks sizzling on the barbeque.

Then, somewhere along the way, like a River Plate game-plan, it all went horribly wrong. The first military coup was in 1930 at the height of the world economic crisis – the original pre-internet, black and white crisis when, however poor and downtrodden the men were, they still wore a hat.

The military stepped in again in 1943. Three years later Juan Domingo Perón, an admirer of Mussolini and himself admired by the masses, won elections. He softened his hard-man image by placing a glamorous wife, Evita, at his side. She stood on the balcony of the presidential palace, entertaining the crowds by singing Andrew Lloyd Webber songs.

Juan Domingo and Evita

Today’s game didn’t kick off until well after 9pm and I rolled home in the early hours of the day after the night before. So I may be mixing things a little here. But the truth is that in the late 1940s and early 1950s there really was no need to cry for Argentina.

They didn’t join the Second World War until the Allies were 5-2 up and deep into injury time. So without a bead of sweat on its brow, Argentina was well placed to sell its abundant wheat and meat to a hungry, war-weary world. Perón was convinced that World War Three between the United States and the Soviet Union was imminent and that Argentina would emerge from the debris as a new superpower. He opened his doors to fleeing Nazis. Then in 1952, Evita died a premature death. If only those tunes had died with her!

Perón lost his way and in 1955 was turfed out. He left a legacy, some would say, of a confident, well organised workforce. Others would argue that the union movement was, and still is, riddled with corruption and Perón created more divisions than he healed.

Civilian governments took office, only to be thrown out by the military – in 1962, 1966 and then the murderous junta in 1976.

The Argentine economy has enjoyed a few blips of success. But they’ve usually been followed by spectacular crashes. There are many theories, usually involving mention of corruption and mis-management. The fact that the country is on its fifty-fifth economy minister in almost as many years can’t help. The fifty-second had to go when she was found to be hiding large sums of cash in the toilet cistern in her office.

Hyper-inflation in 1989 saw prices rise almost by the hour. Diners paid for their meals before eating in case the restaurant put the prices up before the coffee arrived. The provinces printed their own money.

I was working in Buenos Aires at the time and the pesos paid to me on the first of the month were worthless by the tenth. We had to negotiate a mid-month bonus to see us through to the end.

Throughout the nineteen-nineties, Argentina was governed by Carlos Menem, the president with the largest side-burns in modern world history. He sold the trains, telephones, water industry and pretty much anything else he could lay his hands on to foreign investors. A common topic of dinner-table conversation nowadays is whether the governments he headed were more corrupt than the husband and wife Kirchner team running the country at the moment.

Carlos Menem

At the end of 2001 Argentina defaulted on the biggest international debt in history – something around $95billion, give or take a peso or two. Transit vans full of undeclared and ill-gotten cash sped to the border with Uruguay to be stashed in foreign accounts. The banks pulled down their shutters and savers were denied access to their own deposits. They took to the streets in protest, bashing pots and pans. The then president, Fernando de la Rúa, fled the presidential palace in a helicopter.

Businesses collapsed. Millions fell below the poverty line. One Buenos Aires shanty town is reported to have erected a banner reading ‘Welcome to the Middle-Classes.’

Things have picked up a bit since then on the back of massive soya exports and a booming tourism industry. I like to think I’ve played my part by investing heavily in Argentine wine, although my only return so far has been in liquid assets.

Argentina still has the best education system in South America. But it continues to lose its best and brightest to well-paid jobs in Europe and North America, where there’s also the added attraction of better security and less corruption and bureaucracy.

The sad irony of course is that these emigrants have gone back to the lands their grandparents and great-grandparents fled a century or so ago in search of a better life in Argentina.

Argentina, like River Plate, still has plenty to offer. But I can’t help feeling that with all the talent they’ve had and with all the money that’s flowed in their direction from the sale of top quality players to Europe, the club should be on a par with AC Milan, Manchester United and Real Madrid. What we’ve got is Leeds United with a diagonal red stripe across the chest.

A rather disappointing draw for Argentinos Juniors against the bottom team, but they’re still up there with the title contenders. However, all eyes today were on the big local derby, the Superclásico between Buenos Aires rivals River Plate and Boca Juniors, which also ended 1-1. This one always steals the limelight. This is not just any derby. This is United v City, Red v Blue, Rangers v Celtic, Barça v Madrid, rich against poor, all rolled into one.

Sunset over Tigre.

The media starts talking about this one weeks in advance. This is one important game. Or at least it used to be. Boca are languishing in mid-table which, by their standards is not good enough. River’s feathers are even more bedraggled. They won their last title in early 2008 then the following season finished in last place. They’ve never really recovered.

There are many reasons for this decline. But the main one is that both clubs simply lose their best players much earlier than they used to – or they never get their hands on them in the first place. In the old days, if a smaller club did well – maybe had the audacity to win a piece of silverware or two – Boca and River would wade in with sacks of cash and buy up the cream. The status quo would be restored.

But now the big European clubs are practically detecting Argentina’s footballing talent in the womb. And they’re descending on the humble homes of the future Messis and Tevezes with offers of gold, frankincense, myrrh, penthouse apartments and more. Who can resist?

But they – and I’m not really sure who ‘they’ are or how they could possibly know with any certainty – say that seventy-three percent of the Argentine population still supports either Boca or River.

Over the years the big two have won more than their fair share of silverware. Between them, they’ve picked up fifty-six championship titles – 33 for River and 23 for Boca. So that makes River the better team, obviously. But hold on a minute! Boca have won more international trophies, including six Libertadores Cups, than River. So that makes them top dog.  Surely!!?

It all began in the flat cap and baggy shorts days when both Boca and River were neighbours, and fairly friendly neighbours at that, in the working class dock area of La Boca. River won the first clash 2-1 in 1913. Then River had the audacity to move house and in 1923 settled in the much posher Núñez neighbourhood in the north of Buenos Aires. It’s a mere 7km but a whole other world away. They’ve now played each other one-hundred and eighty-five times in proper competitions, with Boca having the slight edge.

These days La Boca is, in parts, a picturesque touristy area. But the Riachuelo river that runs alongside it stinks, a pungent souvenir of the neighbourhood’s industrial past. The fans are known as Los Bosteros, politely translated as The Shovellers of Pig Excrement. The site of the club’s Bombonera stadium was once a factory which used pig manure in the manufacture of bricks.

La Boca’s corrugated-iron houses were painted different colours, from whatever was left in the tins after coating the ships that stopped there. A necessity then, quaint now. The immigrants, mostly Italian, were crammed into narrow ramshackle homes, tighter than an Inter Milan defence.

Today’s Boca shirt bears testimony to their roots with the word Xeneizes – Genoan dialect for Genoese – on the back. The story goes that the club administrators, trying to decide which colours to adopt, said they’d pick the flag of the next ship to dock. It was Swedish and blue and yellow it became.

The Núñez neighbourhood, which is dominated by River’s stadium, doesn’t smell, unless your nose is attuned to the aroma of money. The residents of Núñez and the barrios to the north are rolling in it, hence the club’s nickname, Los Millonarios or The Millionaires. They’re also known as Las Gallinas or the chickens, after bottling it in a couple of key games way back when.

Boca 'til you Die...and Beyond!

So this rivalry is about rich versus poor and middle and upper class versus working class. In Argentina the team you support plays a big part in defining who you are. Most fans support their neighbourhood team – that would be Argentinos Juniors if you live in or have some connection with La Paternal. Vélez Sarsfield if you’re from Liniers. The city of Rosario is split down the middle between Newell’s Old Boys and Rosario Central and La Plata between Estudiantes and Gimnasia. But that means that the vast majority of Argentines simply don’t have a first or second division team in their neighbourhood. And so they’ll pick either Boca or River, depending on their political inclination or their family allegiance.

All the women in my wife’s family support Boca. That’s never been a problem for me since I don’t think they’ve ever met West Ham. And I can say with some certainty that if they ever did, the Hammers would teach them a footballing lesson or two!. But my sister-in-law has foolishly married a River Plate fan. Their battleground is in the bringing-up of their two sons. The oldest has sided with his dad, all white with a red diagonal stripe down the middle. The youngest is still undecided but the trauma is such that I suspect he may opt for a life in ballet.

The bosteros can even remain fans after they’re dead. There’s a nifty line in yellow and blue coffins, with a very tasteful yellow and blue silk lining and the club crest on the lid. There’s also an urn version for those more inclined towards cremation. And there’s a Boca Juniors cemetery south of Buenos Aires, decorated with yellow and blue flowers.

Having spent a lifetime in conflict with River fans, imagine the ignominy of having to spend eternity lying side-by-side with one of them!

All of this attention focussed on the big two, of course causes a certain amount of resentment among fans of the smaller clubs. So a little dash of gloating I think is in order as Argentinos Juniors look down the table from our lofty championship-contending place on Boca and River in the lower echelons. Can you hear us down there?