Argentinos Juniors  1  All Boys  0

If you so wished, you could start your weekend early on Friday evening watching football and, pausing only to eat, sleep and visit the bathroom, continue with back-to-back football matches until late on Sunday night.

Each of the ten Argentine first division matches, thanks to the demands of television, runs consecutively. You can pad out the gaps with some second and third division games and then, gracias a los time differences, spend your mornings wallowing in the best from the English, Italian and Spanish first divisions. Some Saturdays, I’ve got three Premier league games running simultaneously.

Believe it or not, I’ve got a life away from football. But it’s early evening Saturday and I’ve already been to two Argentine games and watched Chelsea beat Wolves 2-0 on the tele.

The clash to watch, the one that no-one should miss, was the top of the table encounter between second placed Velez Sarsfield and top of the table Estudiantes. “It’ll be the game of the season,” at least three people told me.

Of course, it was the dullest 0-0 draw I’ve seen for some time. Neither side managed to string more than two passes together and both goalkeepers were practically redundant. But what I will say about the Velez stadium, built for the 1978 World Cup, is that it’s a proper football ground.

It’s got metal posts, a big screen, the players all wear matching shirts and the seats are made from authentic plastic and are bolted firmly into the concrete. The stands are packed with fervent blue and white clad fans, the red and white adorned Estudiantes supporters were packed neatly into their corner and the ball was well-rounded and fully pumped up.

Argentinos Juniors against near neighbours, All Boys, was a whole other scene, with the home side playing with red shirts. Only the number eight’s mum forgot to put his in the wash after the last game and he had to play in his vest. The number 12 brought the wrong boots and had to borrow a slightly too small pair from the assistant manager.

It was coats for goal posts and they had to make do with a slightly deflated plastic ball with Toy Story characters on.

I’m exagerating here, obviously, to emphasis the huge contrast between the two clubs – Velez huge and glittery, Argentinos Juniors humble and a little ramshackle. But what they have in common is that both represent their barrio or neighbourhood. The other point I’d like to make….pause here for dramatic effect….is that Argentinos Juniors, who cycle to away matches and sometimes play rush goalies when they can’t muster a full eleven, are champions of Argentina and Velez Sarsfield, who have a press room with electric plug sockets and showers with hot running water, are not.

C’mon! Argentinos Juniors are not likely to win the championship for another twenty-five years, if we’re lucky, so a little infantile gloating while we still can is perfectly acceptable.

It was pointed out to me by the Velez fan I went to the game with that Argentina’s immigrants who flooded into the country from the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century were very quickly ‘Argentinianised.’  They blended, they moulded, they integrated.

There are community groups that practise Croatian folk dancing and societies that maintain links with Asturias and the Basque region. Most Argentines know from which region of Italy or Germany their grandparents or great-parents came from.

But there are no Italian or Spanish neighbourhoods or ghettos. There is a small China town and a tiny Korean enclave but they represent more recent immigrants.  The ties and loyalties those immigrants and their children had with the old country soon withered away and were replaced, to a large degree, by an allegiance to the barrio or neighbourhood.

And nothing represents the barrio more than its football team. All Boys in Floresta is just thirty blocks, about 3km, up the road from Argentinos Juniors in the heart of La Paternal. So their fans were many and much of the chanting was dedicated to praising their respective barrios and deriding the opponent’s.

I thought All Boys were taking this neighbourhood thing a little too seriously when near the end they brought on as substitute a player who quite clearly spent most of his time guzzling beer and eating choripans at his local bar.

Christian Fabbiani was the fattest professional footballer I’ve ever seen. He lumbered onto the pitch with the woman behind me yelling: “Fabbiani, your shorts are too small.”

His first touch was with his hand, his second sent an Argentinos defender sprawling and his third contribution was to step on goalkeeper, Christian Navarro’s foot. The referee ran over to the writhing goalkeeper with a yellow card in his hand about to book him for time-wasting. Then he glanced at Fabbiani, who is nicknamed The Ogre, and put the card back in his pocket.

The neighbourhood rivalry and a steadily improving Argentinos Juniors meant that the home fans were out in force and in fine voice on a glorious summer afternoon. But it was the same old story of solid defending, effective and imaginative midfield play only to wilt in front of goal like Wayne Rooney’s sincerity when presented with a £180,000 a week contract.

Then, just seconds after I’d pronounced with great authority: “I can’t see either side scoring in this game, least of all Argentinos,” Nestor Ortigoza picked up the ball in midfield, impatiently bundled it down the middle, paying scant attention to the All Boys defenders, before slipping it to the tiny Franco Niell who slotted home a well deserved winner.

This was a proper match with heart and passion and a delicious choripan from a grill on the pavement outside the ground. Which only goes to prove that you don’t necessarily need a huge ground with shiny executive boxes and a big car park to produce an exciting and entertaining game of football.

In the other Friday night match, Godoy Cruz beat high-flying Arsenal 3-1 and in the clash of the titans – don’t make me laugh – Racing drew 1-1 with River. There were several derbies, known here as clasicos. Huracan beat near neighbours San Lorenzo 3-0, Boca and Independiente played out a painfully dull 0-0 draw and Banfield beat Quilmes 2-0. Lanus lost 2-1 at home to Colon, Tigre beat Olimpo 3-2 and, to round up one hell of a lot of football, Newell’s clinched a 1-0 win over Gimnasia.

If football heaven is to be judged by the quantity rather than the quality of the games you can cram into the weekend, then maybe I’ve found it.