30/10
2011

Game Thirteen: v Velez Sarsfield

Argentinos Juniors  3  Velez Sarsfield  1

Football,  as I’ve often said,  reflects life. But this was a perfect footballing day and how often in life do we have perfect days?

I was up in time to see the second half of Chelsea versus Arsenal – a sublime game if you have no emotional attachment to either team. The Latin American commentators were salivating over the quality of the football.

Then I nipped around the corner where I was the guest on a Saturday morning football radio chat show. They asked me what on earth I was doing in Buenos Aires supporting Argentinos Juniors. People always ask me that. Why them? Why not Boca Juniors or River Plate? Or at the very least Racing Club or Independiente? It’s like an Argentine landing  in London and spurning Arsenal or Chelsea in favour of Fulham or Queen’s Park Rangers. So I explained that I didn’t choose one of their big clubs for exactly the same reasons that I’m not a fan of either Chelsea or Arsenal.

Fenced In.

Argentinos Juniors I said,  with their homely neighbourhood stadium,  their success in producing fine,  young talent and their fans’ consistent demand for attractive football over a win-at-all-costs philosophy,  made them the nearest Argentine equivalent to West Ham United. Plus I can get there easily on the 113 bus.

We also talked about the differences between the game in England and Argentina. As I rambled on it occurred to me that the only fundamental differences are elements that were introduced in England post Hillsborough. Things like the removal of fencing,  the transformation to all-seater stadiums and better policing. Then there was the fact that English stadiums have beer and betting.  And they were very keen to know about the state of the toilets.

I kept telling them how passionate I found the Argentine fans to be because I suspected that that’s what they wanted to hear. But I’m not sure,  on reflection,  that they’re any more passionate than the Liverpool,  Bristol City or Stoke supporters I’ve come across.

Where Argentina does differ from the English game is in how deeply ingrained the violence perpetrated by their barra brava or hooligan element has become. In some ways it’s reminiscent of the hooliganism that blighted the English game in the nineteen seventies and eighties.

The violence here now differs from that suffered in England then in how closely related the thugs are to the club authorities and sometimes even to the local police forces and politicians. There’s violence,  of course. But there’s also money to be made:  in re-selling tickets,  controlling parking around the ground on match days and dealing drugs on the terraces,  among other illegal activities.

Something to shout about...

There is no political will to change things since plenty of people are doing very nicely thank-you with how things are. There’s an incident pretty much every week,  sometimes resulting in the death of a supporter. This week’s drama was a little different in that a fan ran onto the San Lorenzo training ground and whacked a player,  Jonathan Bottinelli. He’s said he wants to leave the club.

The national security ministry insisted that San Lorenzo’s game this weekend against All Boys be suspended while a full investigation is carried out.  San Lorenzo is one of the biggest clubs in Buenos Aires and it’s in crisis. Its barra brava wander around the club’s facilities at will. The players are in dispute over unpaid wages,  there’s talk of splits between groups of players and in the boardroom where the president,  Carlos Abdo,  has been in office for a chaotic ten months.

I explained about the restructuring in the English game after Hillsborough,  Heysel and Bradford and the lack of political will to do much about the problems in the game until there had been a Hillsborough,  a Heysel and a Bradford.

“And the toilets really are clean?” they asked again.

Then I went home to check on the English league scores in that frantic,  obsessive way that you do as a fan living abroad and disturbed my neighbours with a loud “Yesss!!!” and a rendition of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” as I clocked the result from Upton Park. Even the team I used to watch as a teenager and still retain a soft spot for,  Aldershot Town,  did nothing to ruin my day with a 3-1 win over Crewe in League Two.

But as I waited for my bus to the La Paternal neighbourhood for Argentinos Juniors against Velez Sarsfield on a sunny,  cloudless afternoon,  I asked myself whether I could,  whether I should hope for all three cherries to line up on the same day? Was that just being greedy?

This was the bottom placed team,  with just one win all season,  against the reigning champions.

But as Lou Reed put it:  ‘Oh such a Perfect Day,  I’m glad I spent it at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium…’ Or something like that.

The home side played coherent,  attacking football from the beginning,  their Uruguayan midfielder,  Roberto Brum,  battling for and winning nearly every ball.

They were not rewarded until the cusp of halftime with a strike from Santiago Salcedo. Velez helped things along with an own goal in the second half.

Then to add bring just a slight whiff of Upton Park to the proceedings,  the former West Ham striker,  born in Argentina,  nationalized Mexican and now playing in Argentina,  Guillermo Franco,  pulled one back for the visitors with a headed goal from a free-kick.

The Bichos wrapped things up with a Salcedo penalty and our ramshackle stadium,  possibly the most decrepit in the division,  reacquainted itself with victory – the first home win since April.

I suspect it’ll be some time before I next enjoy a footballing day quite like it.

Meanwhile,  those giants of Argentine football,  River Plate,  suffered a setback in their battle to climb out of the second division with their first defeat of the season,  2-1 against Aldosivi.

Back in the top division,  Newell’s Old Boys and Olimpo drew 2-2 and Independiente and Arsenal dragged out a dull 0-0. Colon won by the single goal at Belgrano and Lanus beat Godoy Cruz 2-1.

But all eyes were at Boca,  both on and off the pitch. Boca increased their lead at the top to nine points with a 3-1 win over their nearest rivals,  Atletico de Rafaela. But the imminent battle is on the terraces where the previous head of the violent barra brava, Rafa Di Zeo, returned to the ground after serving a prison term for violence at the ground. The club authorities hand him his season ticket on a silver platter and Di Zeo arrived in a convoy of cars and vans with his supporters. The stand-in boss of La Doce,  Mauro Martin,  will not stand aside. War is inevitable but it’s a war manufactured by the authorities — the Boca club officials, the police and local politicians. Both shameful and remarkable.

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16/05
2011

Game Fourteen: v San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo  1  Argentinos Juniors  2

This report is late because I’m in mourning, obviously, for the demise of West Ham United football club, relegated to the ignominy of the Championship, the second division of English football, due to a mixture of gross incompetence and bad luck, but mostly gross incompetence.

Inevitably at times like this we all look to where the blame lies. The players must take a huge chunk of responsibility since they simply didn’t score enough goals or win enough games. But when a big club with resources available, good players and enthusiastic fans doesn’t perform, you perhaps have to look a little deeper. Especially when small clubs, with no great individual players, one bus-load of fans and barely enough money for a spare football, performs better than your club.

In the Argentine league I take River Plate and Boca Juniors as my examples of the former. They used to be and should still be the Real Madrid and Barcelona or the Celtic and Rangers of Argentine football. Yet they’re riddled with internal problems. Minnows such as Godoy Cruz and Olimpo are playing decent football and currently sit above the giants. Argentinos Juniors, it must be said, is also a club that punches above its weight. It has a small, tightly run operation with one of the best respected youth schemes in the country on which is built an enterprise that has enjoyed more success than many clubs twice their size.

Avram Grant -- good riddance!

Avram Grant -- good riddance!

Velez Sarsfield is the only big Buenos Aires club not embarrassing itself at the moment. They’re the only Argentine team in the last eight of Latin America’s Libertadores Cup and they’re atop the first division, threatening to pull away from the rest, despite a defeat at the weekend.

My point being that a team will only perform well on the pitch if things are run well off it. West Ham had too many distractions, too much turmoil, not enough focus.

You’re in a sorry situation when you check the half-time score to find your team is two-nil up and you think to yourself: “That’s it. We’re doomed.” West Ham seemed to be at their most vulnerable when they were winning. One goal leads spurred the opposition to inevitable victory, a two-goal margin was a guarantee that complacency and bungling would set in. And so it proved to be.

Two up against mighty Wigan at half-time in a game West Ham had to win. And they lost it 3-2. I was a regular at Upton Park the last time the team were relegated in 2003. I remember with particular pain a 0-0 draw against Walsall. No disrespect intended but they are a small team from an industrial estate on the outskirts of Birmingham, and we couldn’t beat them. We’re going to be proud hosts in the huge Olympic Stadium again playing the likes of Walsall.

Much is made of the corruption in the Argentine game, how presidents run their clubs like personal fiefdoms, manipulating their barra brava fans for their own political ends.

Sullivan and Gold - Porn Kings.

Sullivan and Gold - Porn Kings.

It’s not so different in the English game. It’s just bigger, glitzier and there’s more money involved. West Ham is owned and run by two men, David Gold and David Sullivan, who made their fortunes selling porn magazines. They took over from a rabble of Icelandic businessmen who were partly responsible for taking their country, as well as West Ham United, to the brink of financial ruin.

These people rub shoulders in the directors’ boxes of other English clubs with Arab princes from countries stuck in the Middle Ages and Russian oligarchs so rich and powerful that few dare to investigate the murky manners in which they acquired their wealth.

So it should be no surprise that our clubs, especially my club, is poorly run. Our thankfully departed manager, Avram Grant, took his last club, Portsmouth, down to the second division. That’s hardly an impressive CV but he was hired anyway.

If I sound bitter it’s because I am. It’s at moments like this, that I’m tempted to turn my back on football and take up making plastic airplane models. Thankfully, Argentinos Juniors saved me from a sad life of sticking stickers on the wings of Spitfires and Stukas and the inevitable sniffing of glue that such a hobby entails.

Here was a fine example of a team learning from its mistakes. Argentinos were dismal last week at home to Boca Juniors. But everything they did wrong last week, they did right this time against San Lorenzo. They battled in midfield, guided and cajoled by an immaculate Juan Mercier. They attacked the opposition goal, Emilio Hernández scoring a beauty early on.

Rather than sit on that lead, they kept attacking. San Lorenzo equalised but there was only ever one team going to win this game. Germán Basualdo made it safe to move the Bichos up to sixth place.

Pedro Troglio -- Well done!

Pedro Troglio -- Well done!

Unlike the embarrassingly clueless West Ham manager, Avram Grant, the Argentinos boss, Pedro Troglio, made changes, he addressed the shortcomings, he took chances and it paid off.

This game was part of a weekend feast of sport served up to relieve me of the stresses of visiting the in-laws out in the countryside. The country air, tinged with the fresh aroma of genetically modified soya, was a welcome relief from the chug of bus and taxi fumes in Buenos Aires.

Firstly, because of the four hour time difference with the UK, I had an 11am serving of FA Cup final fare and Manchester City, a tad luckily I thought, making hard work of beating Stoke City. There was time for lunch and a spot of Andy Murray not quite being good enough to beat Novak Djokovic in Rome before watching San Lorenzo against Argentinos Juniors.

Then on Sunday we were treated to the Wigan v West Ham fiasco, a little bit of Chelsea against Newcastle then the event that dominates the Argentine sporting calendar, the superclasico, the only game that really matters – Boca Juniors versus River Plate.

River, due to the quirky manner in which relegation is decided here, are now at risk of having to fight for their top division status. Boca won this one two-nil with the second goal scored by aging war-horse, Martin Palermo, who’s announced his retirement at the end of the season. This was his final superclasico and what a way to go!

The Monday morning papers dedicated their front pages and more than half their sports sections to this game — the teams now in seventh and eighth place in the table. The top side, Velez lost 3-2 to Lanus, an event that warranted a few feeble paragraphs.

They’re followed by modest Godoy Cruz, who beat Quilmes 2-0 on Friday night and could be the surprise package this season. Another small side making a big noise, Olimpo, lost 2-1 at home to Independiente, Racing beat Newell’s 3-0, Gimnasia were 2-0 winners over Banfield and Estudiantes and Tigre drew 2-2.

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15/11
2010

Game Fourteen: v San Lorenzo

Argentinos Juniors  1  San Lorenzo  0

All is well with the world. How can it not be after three consecutive wins and a climb up the table to a lofty tenth place? It’s a vicarious joy since I’m only a fan and the prosperity, or otherwise, of Argentinos Juniors has no direct bearing on my life.

But to win and to win playing the sublime football they played in the first half left a warm glow in my tummy like that created by a large shot of quality malt whisky. OK, I’ve also just drunk a large shot of quality malt whisky but you get the drift.

Life is tough for most Argentines and they have to find their pleasures where they can. The traffic in Buenos Aires stinks, the bureaucracy niggles away at your patience like a cancerous growth, the economy doesn’t make sense, politicians are spouting bollocks, there’s never enough small change, there’s rising crime and dog shit on the pavements.

San Lorenzo - Disappointed and Disappointing

San Lorenzo - Disappointed and Disappointing

So if you can reach Sunday more or less in one piece, light the coals for the barbeque, invite a few friends over to share a decent bottle of Malbec then head to the cancha to watch your team play the kind of football Argentinos Juniors played today, then much of the week just past and a large chunk of the week ahead might just be erased from your consciousness.

For many, it’s all about making it to the next Sunday. I used to cite that observation as a kind of criticism of Argentine society. Now, after five years here, it’s more of an understanding.

The Bichos played the kind of football today that took them to the championship last season. They still can’t score goals and missed a couple of sitters. They stroked the ball around the pitch to the cries of ‘Ole’ from the home fans. Nestor Ortigoza controlled the ball like a cat with a ball of wool and was so effective that the San Lorenzo players were compelled to hack him down. Nicolas Blandi’s goal twenty-three minutes into the game was well deserved but there should have been more, just to alleviate the pressure on our frayed nerves.

The beguiling football fed the fan’s euphoria which in turn raised the player’s game. It was magical. Like I said, all was well with the world.

But not at Boca Juniors, it’s not. And things are worse still at River Plate. In fact, River is rotten to the core. They’re in danger of being relegated. Not much danger since the system is stacked in their favour. But danger, nonetheless.

While they flounder on the pitch, sacking manager Angel Cappa just a week before the superclasico against Boca Juniors, the situation is much worse off the pitch.

There was, supposedly, a full-scale running battle between rival factions of their barra brava last week. Shots were fired and one man was reportedly wounded. This happened in the affluent neighbourhood near to the River Plate ground as one group of fans marked the killing three years ago of Gonzalo Acro – a leading member of one faction of the River Plate barra brava.

I’m splattering my sentences with the words ‘reportedly’ and ‘supposedly’ since the police have no record of the shooting or the wounded man. But several residents heard shots and many were witnesses to the wounding.

Could this be because the police are working with the gangs? Impossible! The fine, upstanding gentlemen of the Buenos Aires police department, hobnobbing with thugs! I won’t hear of it.

The reason, the newspapers speculate, that the violence has erupted is partly thanks to Paul McCartney and the Jonas Brothers. What a funny old world we live in. You would have thought that if Paul McCartney followed football at all, which I don’t think he does, he’d be a Liverpool or Everton supporter.

A Bicho - More than Skin Deep

A Bicho - More than Skin Deep

Enough of this flippancy. Let me explain. Both Paul McCartney and the Jonas Brothers performed recently at the River Plate stadium. No!! Of course not on the same night.

The barra brava, when they’re not banging drums and singing songs on the terraces, are touts, selling on much sought after tickets to the concerts staged at the Monumental Stadium. How they get the tickets is a mystery since the club authorities are adamant that it’s nothing to do with them. What goes on outside the ground is not their responsibility. Is that clear?

Then, when you’ve paid the vastly inflated price to hear Paul warble through ‘Yesterday’ you’ve then got to fork out up to 150pesos – about 25 quid or $38 – to an unofficial trapito or car-guarder who will ensure that he and his mates won’t slip over and accidently scratch your paintwork while you’re at the concert.

“Can’t do a thing about it,” said the local police chief. “The law doesn’t allow it.” What this all boils down to, as it so often does, is big money. And the different factions of the barra brava all want a piece of the action.

The slipperiness with which the authorities evade any kind of responsibility for dealing with this sorry state of affairs is like a ball gliding through Robert Green’s hands. Sorry Robert. That was a cheap jibe and I really must learn to control myself.

If ever there were a case of football being used to distract attention from deeper-seated problems off the pitch then the superclasico is it. Here are two teams, languishing in lower mid-table with no salvation in sight.

Unless of course, one of them wins by a handsome margin, then all can gather around the barbeque with a glass of Malbec in one hand and a large choripan in the other and all will again be right with the world. Ahh!!

Meanwhile, back to the football. The championship is looking increasingly like a two-horse race. Estudiantes slipped up by losing 2-1 at Tigre. Velez took advantage by beating Lanus 1-0 and now join them at the top, equal with 30 points. Arsenal stay third after a 0-0 draw against All Boys. Colon beat floundering Huracan 2-1, Banfield and Gimnasia played out a dull 0-0. Racing impressed with a 2-0 win at Newell’s, while Independiente came back from the long trip to Olimpo with a 1-1 draw. The happiest chaps in the division though will be Quilmes who marked their first victory of the season – 2-1 against Godoy Cruz. It only took them fourteen attempts.

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02/05
2010

Game Seventeen: v San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo  1  Argentinos Juniors  2

How joyous it must be to have the best player in the world pulling on your club shirt. They had that for a while at Argentinos Juniors when on the 20th October 1976 a stocky, young cherub ambled nervously onto the pitch. Diego Armando Maradona went on to play 166 games and score 115 goals for the club, before moving on to big city rivals, Boca Juniors.

I’ve never met him but by all accounts, Diego is what people here call a boludo. I’m not quite sure how this word translates into English, but it’s not nice. However, Maradona is a legendary boludo, a much-loved boludo, held dear to the hearts of millions of Argentines for the wonderful moments he gave them wearing the shirts of both Argentinos and Boca Juniors. Fans of a certain age talk with tears in their eyes about those golden days when they saw, or claim they saw, the Number 10 perform his magic. It’s something to tell the grandchildren.

Stan Bowles - Magic Moments

Stan Bowles - Magic Moments

I was never a QPR fan and can’t quite remember why I was at Loftus Road on a wet Wednesday night in November some time in the nineteen-seventies. I don’t remember the team they were playing or the score or, for that matter, where I’ve put my coffee cup. But firmly etched on my obviously soddled brain are a couple of moments of exquisite play by QPR’s Stan Bowles. I was close to the touchline, so was he. It’s moments like those that restore and maintain your faith in football, especially when you’re waiting at a bus-stop in the rain after a one-nil home defeat.

You tell yourself that you’re giving up football, that you’re not wasting your money on any more games, that next time you’ll stay at home and find spiritual enlightenment by baking bread, or something. Only you do go, always hoping for a Stan Bowles moment.

But you don’t get any of that with Lionel Messi, at least not in Argentina. He may turn out to be better than Diego, he may be the best the world has ever seen. He might even achieve legendary status if he can help Argentina to lift the World Cup. But he’ll never have the same place in Argentine hearts as the podgy, obnoxious Maradona.

And that’s because almost no-one here witnessed his early days. No-one can tell their grandchildren about the magic he weaved in the last minute against Independiente to clinch the title for Newell’s, or how he humiliated River Plate with three goals in ten minutes, leaving their defenders dizzy and bumping into one another. Because he was gone, out the door before his voice had broken, him and his family whisked away from the poor neighbourhood he’d grown up in in the city of Rosario and installed on the other side of the globe in Barcelona.

Sid Lowe, in an excellent article in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/mar/22/leo-messi-barcelona-la-liga-spain), recently wrote how they’d run out of superlatives in Spain to describe Messi’s awesome performances. We catch all of that second hand here in the newspapers and on the tele. But the real dilemma in Argentina is why young Leo can’t reproduce his club form at national level.

Best of Legends

Best of Legends

One theory is that the team coach, that very same Diego Maradona, the man with an ego bursting out of his belly, deliberately plays him out of position and ensures that he doesn’t get the service he requires so that, at international level at least, Messi will never overtake him on the road to footballing sainthood.

Another theory, recently explained in the newspaper, Pagina12, is that having gone to Spain so young, Leo doesn’t have any affinity for the sky blue and white of Argentina and can’t really be bothered to break sweat for the national cause. So he employs his unknown twin brother, Jose Messi, to play in his place. Only Jose is no good.

A far more plausible, but much less entertaining theory, suggests that Pep Guardiola simply understands how best to play Messi and ensures he gets adequate service from his teammates. And Diego doesn’t.

In the run-up to the World Cup, foreign film crews are flocking to Rosario to tell the world where this footballing prodigy came from. You may not know this, but the collective term for a pack of journalists is a ‘shitload,’ as in ‘there’s a shitload of journalists heading to Rosario to do the Messi story.’

They’re interviewing his former teachers, neighbours, distant relatives, football coaches, the owner of the shop where he bought his first football boots, pencil case, socks etc. in the search for something, anything, that might point to what made Messi Messi.

They won’t find much among the fans of Newell’s Old Boys, the club where he played his way through the junior ranks. Because they didn’t realise they’d had him until he’d gone.

Foreign scouts roam along the touchlines of pitches in the shanty-towns and clubs of Argentina, like paedophiles in the park, looking for the next Messi, their sweaty hands firmly grasping the binding contract that will whisk little Jorge or Claudio and his wide-eyed parents across the Atlantic in search of a dream.

Argentines will get behind their national team more passionately than most during the World Cup, they always do. And if Messi produces the goods, then he’ll be hailed as a hero. No-one doubts his nationalism.

But I suspect that in years to come, they won’t be naming football stadiums after him, or hanging his picture on the greasy walls of bars and cafes in the far-flung corners of Argentina, as they do with Maradona’s.

Messi - Gone too Soon!

Messi - Gone too Soon!

Because Argentines have never really seen him close up. He’s never given them stories to tell or dreams to dream.

And talking of dreams…ours is still well and truly alive after a 2-1 victory at San Lorenzo in a game that Argentinos Juniors didn’t really deserve to win. Thousands of Argentinos fans trekked across Buenos Aires to see San Lorenzo take the lead in the first half after some defensive chaos from the visitors.

The good players, especially Nestor Ortigoza, did not play their best, passes went astray and there was confusion in defence. But champions win the games in which they play badly. And if Argentinos Juniors do emerge as champions then they may look back on this game as a crucial one. Two goals from Ismael Sosa in the second half making the difference.

This is now a two-horse race. Godoy Cruz lost to Rosario Central and Independiente were beaten 3-2 at home by Boca Juniors. Estudiantes are still leaders after beating relegated Chacarita 2-1 and Argentinos sit just a point behind them with two games to go.

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