Argentinos Juniors  2  Boca Juniors  2

It’s not my fault that the Argentine Football Association scheduled the start of the season smack-bang in the middle of the summer holidays. That’s why I found myself in Bolivia when Argentinos Juniors kicked off possibly the biggest game they’ll play all season against the always glamorous but not always convincing Boca Juniors.

Bolivia is a country of humid, tropical lowlands in the east and high, cold mountains, with limited supplies of oxygen, in the west and south. The Bolivians are also passionate about football – from President Evo Morales down to the smallest child in the most remote indigenous community high in the Andes mountains.

Too high?!

The national team has not exactly set the world alight. But it’s still got plenty to shout about. They finished second from bottom in the South America World Cup qualifying group. But along the way beat three of the top four qualifiers Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The trouble is those, and a victory over bottom team Peru, were the only games that Bolivia won and they were all at home.

Bolivia plays its home games in the capital, La Paz at 3,600 metres above sea level. Getting out of my chair at that altitude left me gasping for breath. An hour after arriving, I felt nauseous, had a headache and felt an uncomfortable tingling in my fingers and toes. The locals recommend copious amounts of coca-leaf tea but that only left me stumbling towards the toilet and unable to sleep.

The Argentine team arrived in La Paz, displaying their stars like an array of Inca treasures, just hours before the kick-off. And were thumped 6-1.  The Argentine manager, Diego Maradona, to his credit, didn’t blame the altitude.

Some of the La Paz streets are steeper and scarier than a fair-ground ride. And one of the problems, I imagine, in developing football there is that if one attacker belts the ball over the bar and into the street it can bounce and roll down the mountain and end up six neighbourhoods away. By the time Juan has fetched the ball, the sun’s gone down and llamas are nibbling the grass in the goalmouth.

But despite those steep streets, football has developed in Bolivia and their championship boasts some fierce rivalries. Bolivar have in recent years lauded it over The Strongest in La Paz. Wilstermann and Aurora do battle in Cochabamba and Oriente Petrolero and Blooming divide the eastern oil and gas city of Santa Cruz.

Bolivia and The Strongest

But Bolivia’s biggest battle in recent years has been with the world footballing authorities. After a whingey, whiney protest from Brazil  that its players were left panting for breath and in need of oxygen after playing in Bolivia, FIFA imposed a ban on any competitive game being played at more than 2,500metres above sea level. They said medical evidence showed that running around at altitude was bad for players’ health and that Bolivia, and other mountainous countries, had an unfair advantage since their players were accustomed to the altitude.

That immediately swiped La Paz, Quito, Cuzco and Potosi off the world footballing map. President Evo Morales, never slow to pull on the green Bolivian national shirt, led the campaign against the ban, playing games of football as far up as he could get. He took his team, a ball and a pair of ponchos as goalposts to places where normally only llama herders and mountain climbers roam.

I always thought that Fifa had a weak case. When teams from sunny southern Europe have to play the Faroe Islands they simply pull on a pair of gloves and tights and get on with it, even if the wind messes with their hair.

Fifa did lower the altitude limit, leaving just La Paz out of bounds to weak-lunged opposition. Then they relented again and said the ban had been suspended to allow for more investigation.

Rational thinking prevailed. Or perhaps something more mysterious had a bearing on the outcome? Bolivia is officially a Roman Catholic country. But you don’t have to look very far to find evidence of pre-Spanish indigenous rituals and customs.

The entrances to the silver mines of Potosi are smeared with llama blood to ensure the miners’ safety. Dried llama foetuses (or should that be ‘foeti?’) are on open sale in the markets of La Paz. And with time to kill while waiting for a bus in the small village of Vista Mar in the middle of some Bolivian wilderness, my wife and I walked across the football pitch and found llama bones scattered in one of the goalmouths.

Perhaps, I thought, a disoriented animal had simply strolled onto the pitch as the away side was attacking and clashed with a chunky centre-forward and died.

Llama Power

“No,” explained our driver. “The home side makes a ritual sacrifice at the beginning of every season to bring good fortune.”  Then he muttered something in Quechua which I took to mean: “With Sullivan and Gold at the helm West Ham can now put their troubles behind them and hopefully go from strength to strength.”  However, with hindsight, I suspect it was more along the lines of: “These idiot gringos will believe any old shite we throw at them.”

On my return to Buenos Aires I’ve scanned the world-wide-web for information on how Vista Mar United, with the aid of llama sacrifice, are doing, but so far I’ve found nothing.

I did consider carrying out my own llama sacrifice to play my part in curtailing the number of injuries in the West Ham squad. But as I opened my Swiss Army knife and I looked into the big, doleful eyes of that fluffy white llama with pink ribbons in its ears, I just couldn’t do it. I only hope the immigration papers come through quickly and Mimi can join me in Buenos Aires as soon as possible. The Hammers meanwhile will have to sort out their own injury problems.

Argentinos Juniors held their own on the first game of the season without the aid of animal sacrifice.  Boca, with goals from their stalwarts, Juan Roman Riquelme and Martin Palermo, twice took the lead. First Ezequiel Munoz then Ismael Sosa in injury time pulled the game level for the home side. It’s Lanus away on Saturday and I hope to be there with a full supply of oxygen in my lungs to cheer them on – and, I must confess, just one small llama bone that I picked up from the Vista Mar pitch — just in case.