Interlude 9: Champions

After my week away in the south, I'm back in BA - just in time to be invited by some mates from work to the championship match in the Argentinian top league. Here we have Velez, top of the league with 2 games left, 1 win away from the title, against Union - bottom of the pile with 6 points ALL SEASON. They haven´t won in 21 games, and seeing as here the seasons work in two halves of 19 games (meaning you end up with two champions each year), they haven´t won since early 2012.

Anyway, so that's the backdrop. I was with the away fans - but the story starts even before we get to the stadium. Security is so tight here (because riots/football related deaths have been so common) that as an away fan you have to approach the stadium from a completely different part of town to the home fans, with entire streets blockaded and an enormous police presence - we had to be patted down on 4 separate occasions! Into the stadium (with it´s caged sides for the away fans) we go - and about 10 minutes later, in come the 'hooligans'. Every team has them, apparently, and a special part of the main stand was conspicuously empty before they got there. Not a single one was wearing a shirt, all carrying huge flags and drums - enough to make even the hardest West Ham fan quake in his replica Lonsdale boots.

Got to get myself a coke bottle like that...

Fast forward to kick off and we get showered with confetti - apart from its not real confetti, its thousands of little bits of ripped up magazine. Did someone sit there and do that?? The sound was amazing - as a big football fan back in the UK I've been to a lot of matches, and I've never seen or heard anything like it.There we were, sat on our giant stairs (no seats, obviously. Probably because the fans I was with would have either tried to throw them on the pitch or take them home!), seeing the home fans getting soaked by giant hoses at half time because its so hot, singing the whole game. Even when Union finally conceded two late goals to hand Velez the title, the away fans were still singing - because for them, its not about the football. If it were, then no one would ever show up.

For them, and for most football fans here, I think it's about escape. Escape from the often tough life of big socioeconomic troubles, escape from the difficulties of life - for when you are watching your team everything goes away, if only for 90 minutes.

And that's the beauty of the sport out here. Not as pleasing on the eye, not as much money, but lots of colour with passionate fans who don´t even know the definition of fickle.

That, and giant water hoses.

Pitch Invasion

Episode 12: Health and saf...what?