Racing Club de Avellaneda v Arsenal de Sarendi

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Bienvenidos a Buenos Aires! OK enough of the travel stuff. I mentioned to a few of you I was hoping to attend as many football games as possible whilst I'm here and give the blog more of a football slant (which was well recieved). There are six primera division teams in Buenos Aires itself - Boca, River, Argentinos Juniors, Velez Sarsfield, San Lorenzo, All Boys and another six in the Greater Buenos Aires province - Quilmes, Tigre, Independiente, Racing Club, Lanus and Estudiantes - so should be able to get to a few games! In Argentina there are two seasons during the year, the Apertura (final) and the Clausura (inicial). The Apertura season is well underway now with 14 of the 19 rounds completed. Velez Sarsfield currently lead the way.

On Sunday I attended my first game, Racing Club v Arsenal de Serandi in Avellaneda. Avellaneda is immediately to the south of Buenos Aires and contains two top flight teams - Racing and bitter rivals Independiente. Racing was the first ever team to win the Intercontinental club championship in 1967, beating Celtic in a notorious match in Uruguay which became known as the 'battle of Montevideo'. Before the match started they celebrated the 45th anniversary of this match with the surviving members of the team being paraded on to the pitch one by one. The souvenir match programme had an article about the Celtic payers comments on the game, in which they described the match as not football but war!

The match finished 0-0 with the defence of both teams on top. Despite this both teams tried to attack at every opprtunity (like always in Argentina) and put a real shift in. A number of decisions went against the home side near the end and the referee was the focus of most of the fans songs along with Independiente!

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Comments

[Joshua Braggiato]

Awesome, thanks
Thank you for sending me the link David, great post, awesome picks, hope you are enjoying your time there.