Argentinos Juniors 1 River Plate 2

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.