26/10
2011

Game Twelve: v Atletico de Rafaela

Atletico de Rafaela  3  Argentinos Juniors  1 

The front page headline read:  ‘A Machine That Can’t Stop Winning.’ It was referring to Boca Juniors after a 2-0 win at Colon that leaves them six points clear at the top of the table and unbeaten this season.

But it could just have easily have applied to the president,  Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner,  who on Sunday romped to an overwhelming victory in elections to secure a second four year term in office.

Now,  if you’re standing up while reading this I suggest you take a seat. Since I’m going to attempt a delicate feat and compare events in Argentine football with what’s happening in its politics. It’ll be like one of those tricks where I juggle four eggs while removing all my clothing and re-dressing in my wife’s undergarments without dropping a single item. Or maybe not!

The Bombonera -- needs a lick of paint.

President Kirchner took over from her husband,  Nestor,  in 2007. He was supposed to resume the reins in these elections but rather inconsiderately died of a heart attack a year ago. I’m sure there’s something in the Argentine constitution about the deceased not being able to stand for elected office although,  even in his current state,  he’d have stood a good chance since the opposition was so abysmally poor.

The economy is doing OK on the back of shiploads of soya sold to China to fatten their livestock which in turn is feeding an ever more affluent and meat-hungry population.

Boca Juniors is also doing OK after a few lean seasons when they probably weren’t eating enough soya. They also face weak opposition. Their old rivals,  River Plate,  are battling to climb out of the second division after relegation last season for the first time in their history. One fan put it to me that they went down on purpose since the second division championship was the only silverware they’d not won and there was a space in their trophy cabinet.

There’s an even bigger space in the first division where the superclasico,  the twice yearly clash between Boca and River,  used to take place. Meanwhile,  few of the other big clubs have taken advantage of River’s absence,  most of them languishing in the lower half of the table. San Lorenzo,  Independiente and Estudiantes — where are you? Languishing in the lower half of the table,  like I just said.

With 54percent of the vote,  President Kirchner’s win was outstanding. However,  the 46percent of the electorate who don’t much like her split their vote between a sickly-looking socialist,  the grinning idiot son of a former president,  a reptilian former president and a former beauty queen with a decidedly dusty tiara,  among others.

President Cristina -- four more years.

Both winning parties are much softer and gooier on the inside than they appear on the outside. Boca’s iconic Bombonera stadium could do with a lick or two of blue and gold paint,  as could its squad. They can’t keep relying on the fading genius of the most miserable man in football,  Juan Roman Riquelme. The scorer of their two goals against Colon was Nico Blandi,  who last year turned out on loan at Argentinos Juniors and was universally disliked and disparaged.

The club authorities have done nothing to deal with the gangrenous wound that is gnawing at its innards – the barra brava or hard core fans. One former hooligan leader,   Rafa Di Zeo,  was handed his membership card back just days after emerging from prison where he’d served time for violent behaviour on the terraces.

The new government must tackle rampant inflation,  massive capital flight and the fact that its national side, with Messi,  Higuain and Di Maria in its ranks,  lost to Venezuela for the first time ever in a World Cup qualifier. National crises don’t come much bigger.

With Brazil on the up and up,  Argentina doesn’t have the regional clout it once did. It was front page news when it was announced that the president will be granted some brief face time with Barack Obama when their paths cross in Cannes next week. Possibly outside the cloakroom while he’s on his way to take a leak after a long session with President Medvedev and before a serious head to head with Mrs Merkel.

But both the government and Boca Juniors are euphoric for now and who are we to deny them the delight of those champagne bubbles tickling the underside of their noses?

That 3-1 defeat at second-placed Atletico de Rafaela and Banfield’s 3-0 win over Independiente means that Argentinos Juniors are now rooted firmly to the bottom of the table. That’s 20th out of twenty. Our own champagne tickling time as champions less than a year and a half ago is but a distant memory.

Velez beat Estudiantes 1-0 while Arsenal won with the same score at home to San Lorenzo.  Union clinched their own 1-0 victory,  away at Olimpo while All Boys and Newell’s Old Boys drew 1-1. They would share the spoils,  wouldn’t they? The Old Boys network and all that. Or is it the All Boys network?

Belgrano beat Tigre at their place while Godoy Cruz and San Martin shared the spoils 2-2. Racing and Lanus also drew,  one apiece.

 See! I didn’t drop a single egg. And I rather like the silky feel of these stockings. Hey! Whad’ya think you’re looking at?

 

 

 

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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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30/03
2010

Game Eleven: v River Plate

River Plate  0  Argentinos Juniors  1

It’s now been four days since the superclásico, the twice yearly clash between Boca Juniors and River Plate which Boca won 2-0. The newspapers are still full of it. There were front page photos of celebration that might have left a stranger to Argentine football thinking that Boca had just won the South American championship, rather than snuck up to 14th place in the first division table.

And the defeat left River Plate in the depths of a crisis that makes the current Middle Eastern situation look like a minor tiff. In fact, the Argentine media carries far more coverage and analysis of the River Plate crisis than it does of the rift between Israel and the United States and Britain.

I think it’s fair to say that it’s a very self-indulgent media, pandering to the interests and the prejudices of its staff rather than the readership. There are two major newspapers. La Nacion, which is a conservative broadsheet aimed at those who own and run Argentina – the farmers and businessmen, the politicians, judges and football club owners. It’s the River Plate of the newspaper world.

Rivals - Clarin and La Nacion

Rivals - Clarin and La Nacion

Then there’s Clarin, the Boca Juniors of newspapers, which pretty much serves everyone else – it’s comprehensive, bulky, poorly designed and, at the moment, involved in a bitter dispute with the government which has skewed any objectivity it may previously have had in its political reporting.

There are other papers – Pagina12 which caters for the left-leaning intelligentsia, full of wordy, barely comprehensible, navel-gazing articles about human rights and the environment. Then there’s the tabloid Cronica which is wall-to-wall tits, bums, soap opera gossip, football and gory crime and car crash details. And there’re a couple of sensible, serious business newspapers, Ambito Financiero and El Cronista, which is printed on pink paper. Now where have I seen that before?

Then, of course, there’s Olé, a daily sports newspaper which mostly covers football but sometimes recognises that other sports exist. Now what’s that called? When you get those five tall blokes running around a small indoor pitch, trying to lob a ball through a hoop? And that other one where two people who grunt a lot hit a small ball over a net hoping the other one won’t hit it back. Both are sports which Argentina often does quite well at. The names will come to me in a minute, but probably not to Olé.

Argentines like nothing more than to sit in pavement cafes, their half-moon glasses perched intellectually on the end of their noses, reading newspapers and magazines.  An intrinsic part of the urban landscape is the kiosco or newspaper kiosk which you find on many street corners and often in between. They’re draped in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines. These metal boxes are often social centres where dog walkers, commuters and joggers stop to buy their paper and catch up on the neighbourhood gossip.

Source of all Knowledge

Source of all Knowledge

Because the canillitos, as the owners are known, know everything. They’re often a better source of information than the newspapers they sell, whose reporters rarely seem to stray far from Buenos Aires. And even in the city, they’re usually found lurking around government buildings, hunting in packs or sitting in cafes competing to see who can concoct the most convoluted opening sentences.

I know a couple of ex-journalists who said they left the profession since their bosses restricted what they could report and many of their colleagues were collecting envelopes stuffed with cash from their political or business ‘contacts.’

But there is also a fine tradition of investigative journalism in Argentina, most notably during the military dictatorship in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. And many reporters suffered for their integrity.  Among those on the roll of honour is the English-language Buenos Aires Herald which fearlessly reported on the human rights abuses being committed by the regime, until several of its leading lights were forced into exile. I worked there for a few months during more tranquil times and am not sure if I contributed to its decline, but unfortunately the paper is now languishing in the third division.

Another newspaper hero was Jacobo Timerman, the editor of La Opinion newspaper, who later wrote extensively about the kidnap and torture he suffered at the hands of the dictatorship. There were many others.

And it wasn’t all easy after the military stepped down either. One of the most notorious murders in later years was that of Noticias magazine photographer, José Luis Cabezas. In 1997, he managed to snap the dodgy businessman, Alfredo Yabrán, a man who prided himself on never having had his picture taken, ‘not even by the secret services.’

True Fan

True Fan

Cabazas had also been investigating the protection afforded to a number of brothels by the notoriously corrupt Buenos Aires provincial police force. He was handcuffed, beaten and then taken to a remote spot where he was killed with two shots to the head.

Some of the usual suspects were rounded up and sentenced to prison but most in Argentina suspect that those who were really behind the killing got away with it. A campaign for justice, with the slogan ‘Don’t forget Cabezas’ continues to this day.

There seems to be little room in today’s daily newspapers for original, investigative reporting. But it does go on and usually reaches the kiosks and bookshops in the form of books written by high-profile journalists. The one at the top of the current bestseller list is El Dueño or ‘The Owner’ by Luis Majul – an expose of the dodgy dealings carried out, allegedly, by the former president Nestor Kirchner. Or Gustavo Grabia’s La Doce or ‘The Twelve’ about the Boca Juniors barra brava and its links to politicians. Like I said, you just can’t get away from Boca and River.

Argentinos Juniors caught River on the rebound from the Boca game, in the depths of a crisis when they had much to prove. But all that River managed to prove in this game is that they’re not very good. Argentinos really should have won by more but a fine goal by Ismael Sosa after twenty minutes was enough and a victory is a victory. This one leaves them in fourth place, five points behind the leaders, Independiente.

After their victory in the superclasico, Boca crashed 4-1 to lowly Chacarita Juniors. Both the giants of Argentine football now find themselves in deep turmoil. Life in the Middle East will go on. But the problem here in Argentina is really, really serious.

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