The What

It’s rarely been easy to be a fan of Argentine first division side, Argentinos Juniors. They’ve long lived in the shadow of bigger Buenos Aires-based clubs such as Boca Juniors, River Plate, Independiente and Racing Club.

Some might argue that they never really recovered from a disorganised foundation in 1904 – inspired by anarchists. A band of young socialists in the central Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Villa Crespo formed a club named in honour of the Chicago Martyrs – a group of American anarchists, wrongly convicted and hanged twenty years previously during protests in the United States for an eight-hour working day.

It was one such protest that led to May the first being declared the day of the worker. The four hanged men and their imprisoned comrades became heroes to workers around the world, and struck a chord among the large groups of European immigrants flocking to Argentina at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

Los Martires de Chicago, always struggling to find a permanent ground, decided to merge with another club, El Sol de la Victoria or the Victory Sun, perhaps hoping that a mixture of working class grit and looking to the sky might inspire success on the football pitch.

What resulted was the Asociacion Atletica y Futbolistica Argentinos Unidos de Villa Crespo. Try squeezing that into a terrace chant! The first complaint came from the man contracted to make the new kit. “The name won’t fit on the badge,” he whined. So Argentinos Juniors it became. And while they were at it, the directors ditched their green and white striped shirts and adopted the red more representative of their socialist roots.

And then, inexplicably, the designer came up with something that looks like the international diving flag. Perhaps he wore flippers and a snorkel as he worked. But then he incorporated into the club emblem the Latin phrase Mens Sana in Corpore Sano – a sound mind in a healthy body – just to prove he was sane!

And so it went on. Argentinos Juniors pretty much making up the numbers. After several ground changes they finally landed on the edge of La Paternal, a kind of non-descript, nothing special sort of lower middle-class neighbourhood more or less in the north-west of Buenos Aires, just behind the huge Chacarita cemetery. The ground, modest by anyone’s standards, looks like it was never really finished, despite now being in urgent need of a makeover. It has terracing on three sides, with a big net behind one of the goals, a little reminiscent, for anyone who knows it, of Aldershot’s Recreation Ground.

There was a little blip of hope in 1960 when the Bichos Colorados, or Red Bugs, as they’re affectionately known, finished third in the top flight.

Then in the mid-seventies – October 20^th 1976 to be precise – huge shoots of expectation burst forth  with the debut of a stocky, tousle-haired sprite just short of his sixteenth birthday. Diego Armando Maradona.

He’d risen through the ranks of the Argentinos Juniors junior teams…the Junior juniors, more formally known as Los Cebollitas – the Little Onions. Over the next four years he went on to play one-hundred and sixty-six times and score one-hundred and fifteen goals. And with a fit, young, cocaine-free Diego in the ranks, Argentinos Juniors won sod all. Nada. Not a sausage. The real glory years were just around the corner.

Diego went on to big city rivals, Boca Juniors and well, you know the rest. The real joy, the hard silver, perhaps inspired by the Number Ten, perhaps not, came with two league titles in 1984 and 1985. But the cherry on the cake, the jam in the doughnut, the ketchup on the chips came in 1985 when they lifted the South American club championship, the Copa de Libertadores. It was won on penalties after a one-nil home victory, a one-nil away defeat and a one-one play-off draw against the then dominant Colombian side, America de Cali.

This was an achievement of Nottingham Forest-like proportions, not since repeated. Not even close. In fact, to stretch the Forest comparison still further, relegation followed soon after but, unlike Forest, the Bichos Colorados bounced straight back.

It’s hard to follow Maradona. They named their stadium after him, of course. Quite what he feels about being named after such a crumbling wreck has never been recorded. Don’t tell him I said so, but perhaps it’s apt. Not surprisingly, with a sparkling past in living memory, that’s where many fans choose to live.

They call their club the Seedbed or Nursery of the World. Braggers, every last one of them. But if you were the first to see, in all his youthful glory, the player every Argentine will tell you was the best ever, then perhaps they’ve got a case. And they back their claim with an illustrious list of other lesser, but nonetheless impressive, men who have pulled on the red shirt, with a kind of moveable white stripe, of Argentinos Juniors.

They include Juan Román Riquelme, Juan Pablo Sorín, Esteban Cambiasso, Fabricio Coloccini, Fernando Redondo, Claudio Borghi and 1986 World Cup winner, Sergio Batista.

The positive thing about finishing twentieth last season – yes, that twentieth out of twenty with just two victories from nineteen games and nine draws – is that this season things can’t get much worse. Or maybe they can.

The Argentine system, designed to protect the big clubs, means that relegation is determined by the average number of points over three seasons. Another season like the last one and that average will start to look decidedly unpleasant. So C’mon you Red Bugs!! Let’s see what you can do.