In a nation that breathes and sleeps fútbol, having produced
the likes of Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, watching a football was high on our Buenos
Aires to-do list.
We managed to get tickets for our local club Quilmes,
incidentally also set up by the very priest who set up St George’s College. Ok it wasn’t quite Boca vs River, but both Quilmes and Vélez are
in Argentina’s Primera División (equivalent to England's Premiership) – in 19th and 11th place respectively of a league
of 30 teams.
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| Quilmes vs Velez, we're in! |
We had already broken Rule # 1. For the first football match
you should be accompanied by a local. Oooops
Rule # 2 - If you don’t know where you’re going, take a taxi
(We did and it hit a moving car... only here)
Rule # 3 - If you can’t speak pretty much perfect Argentino/Castellano, keep
your mouth shut and smile.
Vamo(s) Quilmes
The stadium was tiny compared with some of the more well-known
stadiums, with capacity of about 20,000 people. Away fans have been banned from football matches in Argentina since mid-2013 in an attempt to curb violence, so the entire
stand opposite us was empty.
As we entered the stadium there was a full police presence,
including riot police. While this was similar to England it somehow felt more
ominous. Every man (and even a dog) had come to watch Quilmes play – men with
young children, mothers with babies, teenagers and their grandparents alike.
You could hear drums beating left, right and centre; it felt like we were still
in Carnival season. I was in Latin America all right!
The match was unseated so we could sit anywhere on the white-washed concrete steps. People were up on their feet before the match had even
started and were already chanting the Quilmes songs (I understood about two
words, including the ref is a son of a b**** song).
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| The Aftermath: match summary in Clarin |
Football amiss
I’m hardly a football expert, but even I can tell when a
game isn’t great. The actual play looked more like a Sunday morning
kick-around. Nonetheless, Quilmes won 2-1, having scored in the first half and
was then awarded a penalty in the second half with minutes to spare. Vélez was
given a penalty soon after the start of the second half, but none of their fans were there to
cheer them on.
While the quality of play was unconvincing, the experience
was amazing. Passions were running high, but unfortunately the mood of the crowd
also reflected the uglier side of football. In the second half, all eyes turned
to the lower stands. A fight had broken out among home fans. Minutes later the ref stopped play as fans charged each
other on the other side of the stadium.
Violence is undoubtedly still a problem in Argentina (a subject for another time perhaps). However, a couple of days after the match it was interesting to see an interview with Gustavo Grabia, a journalist specialising in soccer violence, in the Buenos Aires Herald, an English publication. "Only in a country plagued by endemic violence in soccer can a journalist specialize in this issue," he says.
Quilmes’ unspectacular victory was met with muted
responses. “Questionable penalties, protests, friction and serious fights in
the stands,” was how Clarín, a national Argentine newspaper summed up the match.
While not quite up to the flair and skill we had expected,
the experience more than made up for the lack of play. The boys done good.
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