Advertisement
There are differences between cities. But many have more similarities than differences. Buenos Aires is one of those places you expect will stand out a bit, and it does, but perhaps not as much as I thought it might. I am sure that this a function of hearing a lot about this magnificent city. Buenos Aires may not have immediately met all of my expectations but it exceeded them in one area at least. It is the home of a sporting event widely nominated as one of the true greats.
In South America at least Boca vs River is considered to be one of the 5 events you should see before you die - up there with the World Cup Final. The game is really a local derby – a little like Carlton vs Collingwood, Liverpool vs Everton, South Sydney vs St George or Barcelona vs Real Madrid. But here in Buenos Aires, or perhaps in Argentina, it is a whole lot more than that.
Central Atletico Boca Juniors and Central Atletico River Plate have been rivals for over 100 years. Both clubs were formed in the La Boca area of Buenos Aires - although the Boca people will
River fans queue
with mounted police on handtell you that River was really only just on the side. There is one street in La Boca that is considered safe. Venture off this and you are likely to be robbed or worse. It is apparently the same for both tourists and locals. Boca has maintained its poor, working class roots. River went up market. They are known as 'Los Millionares'. I suspect that are more on a par now. As with all clubs they trade players and it is not unknown for Boca players to emerge at River and vice versa.
Players can change about. Fans never. Argentinians generally, but more so in Buenos Aires, people are happy to talk to you. A lot more English is spoken here but, even if people don't speak English they will happily make the effort to communicate using what English they can muster with what Spanish you have. Not one person who was a fan of one of the two sides failed to make it quite clear that they hated the other mob. No middle ground here.
Tickets to the 'super classico' – the game between Boca and River – are sold through the clubs. A member pays $ARS10
For the FERG people in Batchelor
A mural celebrating the history of the volunteer fire brigade per ticket, a nice cheap price. But a lot of members of both clubs are from all over the world and certainly all over South America. Tickets of people who can't make a game are farmed out through agents who put them up for sale to people who get themselves to Buenos Aires for the occasion, or are simply lucky enough to land here at the right time. Finding the available tickets is not easy. You can go to La Bombonera, the Boca stadium, and you may pick up a ticket for around $US100. You may also pick up a dodgy ticket there for the same price and you will have the added value of wandering the streets of La Boca for a few hours which may cost you even more – so they all say. A better way perhaps is to find one of the agencies. That is what we did.
Vamos a la Cancha will sell you tickets - a high price but a bit less in $AUS, nice eh? - which includes a pick up, delivery to the game, shepherding inside and then out again, transport safely back to the centre and a feed of pizza
Boca Bomberos have been around a while
The local volunteer firefighters HQ was in the street we were queued in. and beer at the end of it all. This was the option we took.
The match was to start at 16.00. Our pick up happened at 12.30pm. All well organised. We were in the centre so, along with about 40 other random tourists, both international and regional, we were loaded into vans and set off for La Bombonera – the Chocolate Box – the home ground of Boca. There were two other pick up points. Adam and Klaire were being picked up near their place in Palermo. Each van had a guide who could speak English and Spanish. The vans deposited us at the end of a queue. This queue gave some indication of the level of interest in the game. It seemed to be about 8 blocks – about 800 metres – long and about 6 abreast. In the 15 minutes after we had been deposited it had grown by at least 5 blocks – roughly another 500 meters. All pretty calm. A bit of singing. A lot of discussion of the possibilities of the match. People were pretty happy and relaxed.
After around 30 minutes they opened the gates. They were clearly admitting people in groups
because the queue moved in lumps. At the end of one block where we could look down the street we spotted another queue, just like ours but dressed differently. Red and white rather than our blue and gold. That livened things up. Much singing mixed with more abuse. Some men of mature years near us just bellowed 'Puta' repeatedly. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your desire, there were 3 sets of fences along with police in riot gear between the two queues. It was becoming clear that our care in dressing reasonably neutrally so that we wouldn't be lined up as supporters of either club was unnecessary. We were Boca, we were going into a Boca area and we weren't likely to have to much to do with the River mob for the rest of the day.
There were 3 control points along the queue. At each one tickets were checked and at one most men were carefully patted down. Even old blokes had the pat down, although it wasn't as rigorous as for the younger ones. Women were separated. Everyone lost their plastic water and soft drink bottles and, of course, anything sharp or metallic.
La Bombonera
is called that because it has stands at each end that are simply 3 stands stacked on top of each other. Along one sideline there is general seating, 2 stacks, and on the other there are racks of the private boxes. That is where Maradonna was to be – somewhere. We were advised to pick out a spot well under the stand. Our tickets were for the standing area. There was still some room there so we picked out a place down a few rows but off to one side so we could get out if we needed to. Those in the open would be at severe risk of becoming very wet. No rain about but the River fans would be in the 2 levels of stand above them. They tend to allow a lot of liquid flow down – some might even be water and soft drink.
The place filled up very quickly. After about 15 minutes there was no chance to sit and fairly soon after that the late arrivals had to push their way through to get to spots where they might find a place to stand. By now the singing was starting and things were
starting to liven up and things were becoming enthusiastic. The late arrivals became more desperate. Some of the early arrivals were holding their ground keeping areas where they, and their children, could sit. It became apparent that those of us in our spot were in the wrong spot. Large blokes were at first leaning, then shoving and then actively leaping against the wall of people. There was actually no room in front they obviously believed that there must be some there.
It came to a point where my relatively small lady was unable to cope with the pushing, shoving, gouging and being buried under a pile of much larger people, and so decided to get out to the back where there would be less people. She is a senora, probably older than a lot of the crowd and thus received some consideration. She was also making one space for someone so she was able to move up through the stand without too much trouble. When I realised that she had gone, some ancient protective instinct – perhaps not present when I convinced her to come to the football – kicked in and I headed for the back as well.
People were not particularly accommodating at first but after some very loud 'Permiso', perhaps mixed with some explicit Anglo-Saxon words, and the crowd parted nicely. The result of all of this was that Pat saw very little of the football and a lot of the excited crowd. For my part, I was quite pleased that Argentinians are often a little shorter than me. I had a pretty good view of most of the game most of the time.
The game had not started yet, of course. There was still an hour to go but the singing was in full voice. We had been told that there would be singing about 10 minutes before the game but a full two hours was pretty special. We couldn't pick up too many of the words but the tunes were well known so we could do our bit and hum along and do a bit of arm waving along with everyone else.
Every now and then the River fans above us in our stand would burst into song or some other chant but they were generally ignored unless they started to rattle a metal grate through which it was just possible for
them to see us. They could pour liquid through too but not enough to cause any issues and anyway they needed to conserve their supplies to maintain the waterfall out the front.
The crowd celebrated good play and the 2 Boca goals by singing and leaping about – as you would expect, and certainly as we expected. A little less expected was the effect this had on the stadium, or at least the part that we were in. The place rocked, literally. The floor moved up and down. The ceiling moved up and down. Both moved much more substantially than I have ever seen concrete move. And you could see the joins between the sections change position. The only people who paid any attention were the tourists. Locals were obviously used to all of this. After a while we became used to it as well. It has been there for a while and there were reasonable odds that it would hold up through one more 'super classico' so we were reasonably calm. I do expect one day to hear of a tragedy in Buenos Aires, probably during a super classico, when 10,000 fans are crushed as one of the
Just in case
Just two of a lot more on the field Chocolate Box stands comes down.
The game. Well the game is really played just to give the fans the chance to cheer, sing and celebrate. Luckily, Boca won and won well (in this match, the commentators were not able to yell out gooo-o-o-l for River). Boca was the best team on the day. River was a good team and had a couple of players who were excellent. But Boca could not afford to lose. Their players were desperate, noticeably running harder, tackling more ferociously and never ever giving up. All understandable. You wouldn't want to let fans like this down.
At the end of the match there was much singing and for a long time. No one left the stadium except the River fans. Because no one could. The police did not allow any Boca fan out until the River fans had left the building and had been escorted, not just out of the stadium but, out of the barrio. This took between 40 minutes and an hour.
Eventually, we were let out and made our way back with our Vamos a La Cancha guide to a van and then to a pizza place near where we
River stadium
Taken from the bus a day or two later were living. There we caught up with Adam and Klaire. We hadn't seen them at all during the game. We had visions of them nicely positioned down the front but it turned out that they were up the back with us.
A great experience and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who likes any sport at all and who doesn't mind a crowd.
We enjoyed the rest of the week in Buenos Aires as well. A couple of walking tours. A good apartment in a great location, much looking around the key parts of the city and some shopping.
From here it is to San Antonio de Areco for a couple of days then on to Mendoza, Salta and then to Bolivia.
Whoops! No, there will be a post on BA. I am advised that the city was more important than just a football game. More to come.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.074s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0494s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Alex
non-member comment
Football derbies
Did I tell you about the time I was in Istanbul in 2006 and went to the Fenebache Galetasary game. Like you the fans were kept well apart by policemen with the biggest machine guns Ive ever seen. but they allowed fans with machetes into the ground where a sheep was slaughtered in the stands for fans to dip their hands into for good luck! It worked though, Fenebache won 4-0... Alex