First, the unavoidable: River Plate have been crowned champions of Argentina for the first time in four years. A 2-1 win at home to Olimpo de Bahía Blanca on Sunday, combined with Estudiantes’ simultaneous goalless draw against relegation strugglers Colón, was enough to hand the Millonarios the title with a match to spare. Hot young forward Diego Buonanotte was the man-of-the-match, scoring both goals for the hosts (and both very good ones at that), and has in fact been widely hailed, alongside a revitalised Ariel Ortega, as the side’s most important player of the campaign – top scorer, despite not playing as the main striker, and without a doubt the player who’s shown the most improvement under Diego Simeone in the ex-Estudiantes boss’s first six months in charge at River.

The fact that this title has come in Simeone’s first campaign in charge, six months after River were a dismal 14^th in the Apertura under Daniel Passarella, is one of the more interesting points regarding the end to their trophy drought. A six-month turnaround like that would be impressive enough on its own (in fact it mirrors the transformation Ramón Díaz, River’s most successful ever manager, made with San Lorenzo this time last year), but it’s also Simeone’s second league title as a manager – a career he only embarked on two-and-a-half years ago. Having proven that the 2006 Apertura he claimed with Estudiantes was no fluke, he’ll now set about getting River to play the way he wants them to, because in spite of winning the title, he’s still not arrived at his ideal set-up yet. Expect to see the selección‘s second most capped player ever managing in Europe before long.

Getting the title race wrapped up at this stage, one match before the end of the season, could actually have prevented a bit of an anti-climax, because there’s a two-week gap between the most recent round of matches and the final weekend, thanks to the South American qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup taking place this week; Argentina playing Ecuador and Brazil. Whilst the final weekend won’t be too exciting at the top of the table when the club game reconvenes, though, the relegation struggle could scarcely be any tighter.

In the round of matches just passed, both of the title-effecting matches also had a bearing on the other end of the table. Olimpo’s defeat and Colón’s failure to win (after referee Héctor Baldassi failed to award a clear penalty in their favour with five minutes remaining) combined with Racing’s second win of the Clausura, 1-0 over Huracán, to leave the troubled Avellaneda giants safe at last from direct relegation. They’ve got a chance on the last day to avoid even the relegation playoffs. Colón are currently safe, and stand one point above Racing. Colón host Racing on the final day. It’s fair to say a dull encounter isn’t likely.

Racing are also the subject of the third, and perhaps most interesting point of this article. It’s certainly the point which comes closest to the original Pitch Invasion ethos of fan culture. The weekend before last, on the 31^st May, saw Independiente ‘host’ Racing (the match was played in Vélez Sársfield’s ground due to Independiente’s current groundshare with Racing whilst their own stadium is redeveloped) in the clásico de Avellaneda, the country’s second biggest derby behind the super. The match was a fairly uneventful 0-0, but off the pitch something interesting, if under-reported, was going on.

The match saw an experiment with stadium security which could prove either inspired, or the most stupid thing imaginable. After one trial run, nothing can be said for certain. But sit down before you read the next sentence. In the home end, Independiente’s barra brava provided the official security in the stand behind the goal. The product of talks between the Independiente hierarchy and an NGO, the plan saw 65 barras deployed as private security officers, with identifying jackets and walkie-talkies, for the match.

There are advantages: the barras, being recognised by their peers and perhaps feared by other fans, occupy areas of the stands the police simply aren’t safe going into, and they’re a lot cheaper than hiring professional security forces. The move also seems to be further confirmation that Pablo ‘Bebote‘ Alvarez, the capo of the Independiente barra, is indeed going through a process of personal reinvention as a more socially conscientious individual.

The part-time lawkeepers didn’t encounter any problems from other fans and were paid AR$150 (around US$50) for their services for the match, and observers from the authorities of the City of Buenos Aires were reportedly impressed by how the experiment went. But for the Olé article linked to above, it passed almost unremarked in the print press, and may well go no further. If the system gets used again, though, it could either prove a turning-point in Latin America’s struggle against football violence, or just authorise the barras to keep on doing whatever the hell they want. Interesting though the experiment was, one shudders to think what might have happened had it been tried with a more active set of barras such as those of River, Boca or Newell’s…

A title win, a relegation struggle to the wire and a fascinating new take on sporting security in the last week-and-a-half, then. There are still places in the Copas Libertadores and Sudamericana to play for, as well as deciding those relegation slots (Olimpo and Gimnasia de Jujuy to decide whether they go down automatically or go into the playoffs, Racing and Colón’s head-to-head to decide the battle for 16^th spot in the Promedio). For the country’s most domestically successful club, though, the party’s started already. Four years might not be a long gap between title for many sides, but for River Plate, it’s been an eternity. A promising young manager and yet another potential young Argentine attacking phenomenon have helped them to put that right at last.

Finally, be sure to vote in the Hasta El Gol Siempre Award for Best Argentine Footballer in a Foreign League.

Photo credit: juze1980, via the Hasta El Gol Siempre Flickr pool

The match, a week-and-a-half ago now, came in the middle of the lowest week of River’s season so far. After a 2-1 loss in the first leg of their Copa Libertadores last sixteen tie with San Lorenzo, they lost 1-0 in La Bombonera, Sebastián Battaglia scoring the only goal of the game for Boca. The contest improved a fair bit after half time, but was still never up to much, with River’s attacks looking increasingly desperate as the minutes ticked down. Desperation didn’t seem to be on the agenda a few nights later, though, when they took on San Lorenzo in the second leg of the Copa tie.

The away goal gave River a lifeline, and after an hour, as Sebastián Abreu slotted home a penalty, they were completely in control. Ahead on aggregate, 2-0 up on the night and San Lorenzo, to boot, had had two men sent off. With 30 minutes left, the visitors’ challenge looked as dead in the water as Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic US Presidential nomination. But Ramón Díaz’s men, like Clinton, never quite know when they’re beaten in this Copa, and Gonzalo Bergessio scored twice in five minutes for San Lorenzo, who then hung on for a 2-2 draw on the night and an incredible 4-3 aggregate win. If there was such a thing as a superdelegate in the Copa, it would surely be San Lorenzo boss Ramón Díaz, whose side who could meet Boca in the semi-final, if both sides advance from their quarters, and are dreaming of finally claiming their first Copa.

This weekend just gone, though, saw things get dramatically better for River and the other Argentine side to be eliminated in the last sixteen of the Copa, Estudiantes. Both were still joint leaders of the Torneo Clausura table going into the last round of matches, and Estudiantes beat Boca to open up a gap at the top again – Boca’s win over River the previous week had taken them just a point from the summit. A couple of hours after that match in La Plata, River hosted Estudiantes’ cross-city rivals, Gimnasia. Playing poorly in the first half, they trailed 2-1 at half time, but blew their opponents away in the second period to run out 4-2 winners and return to the top of the table. River and Estudiantes now have 30 points each, Vélez Sársfield and San Lorenzo 27, Independiente and Boca 26. Five matches remain. Are you reading, Mr. Scudamore?

On Sunday, River have another clásico, this time away to fellow high-fliers Independiente, whilst Estudiantes ‘visit’ Gimnasia (they share a stadium at present) in the La Plata clásico. And as if there weren’t enough rivalries to be going on with for a weekend, Boca host Racing – who desperately need points from somewhere, anywhere, to avoid a relegation playoff – and Huracán play San Lorenzo in yet another derby. The super may be the headline-getter, but it’s far from Argentina’s only rivalry.

One of the sides involved in the upcoming ‘weekend of hate’ have been making themselves look a little stupid this week already, though. Regular readers, see if you can guess who. It’ll come as a surprise to no-one who remembers my previous Pitch Invasion columns to hear that the ones being pointed and laughed at by their peers are Racing. Yes, them again. They’ve slipped well and truly into the relegation zone and are now behind Rosario Central in the Promedio, occupying a relegation playoff place. Last weekend they were absolutely pathetic in the second half of their 1-1 draw against Argentinos Juniors, and were met on Monday by a group of unhappy fans at their training session.

So far, so usual for a side who’ve been woeful for a few years now. But this Monday was a little different. One fan, Mauro Paidón, voiced his disgust at the players’ performance more volubly than others. After an exchange of views with a couple of the squad, he returned to his car, Upon which two Lucozade bottles landed close by him having been thrown over the fence from the training pitch. ‘My back was turned, so I didn’t see which players threw them,’ he told the press. It’s a thoroughly embarrassing incident for the Avellaneda club, but it’s also entirely in keeping with the way their season’s going now. One Racing-supporting friend tells me most weeks in emails that the current side are the worst he can ever remember the club having, and that there’s no reason a decent B Nacional side wouldn’t be able to beat them in a promotion playoff if they can’t get out of this mess. With Boca coming up this weekend and the Avellaneda derby against Independiente also still on the agenda, it’s hard to see a way out for La Academia now.

The quarter-finals of the Copa Libertadores are next up, then. Boca take on Atlas on Wednesday evening in Vélez Sársfield’s stadium for the home leg. La Bombonera is closed for the quarters and the semis after a linesman was hit by an ice cube thrown from the VIP section at the tail end of their first leg 2-1 win over Cruzeiro in the last sixteen. San Lorenzo take on LDU Quito, Estudiantes’ second round conquerors, on Thursday evening, and will be looking for a big win in the first – home – leg to give them some cushion before travelling to play at altitude in the Ecuadorian capital. The vanquished parties, River and Estudiantes, now have only the league to concentrate on – but it’s those two who are in the driving seat where that campaign is concerned.

This Sunday, in a city at the centre of a large slice of the world’s footballing history, two sides will come together for one of the most legendary fixtures in the calendar. Both have been champions of their continent, both have provided players who became legends of the game locally and globally. Both, at this stage of the season, are fighting for the title.

‘The Milan derby,’ I hear you say, ‘with both sides fighting for the title?’ Well, no, because although the folk who sell Serie A’s TV rights would love you to think otherwise, the derby della Madonnina will not, in fact, be the fiercest footballing rivalry to take place on Sunday afternoon. Because a couple of hours later, in the docklands of Buenos Aires, Boca Juniors host River Plate.

Italy has its own colourfully-named derbies, and across the Spanish-speaking world there are various clásicos and, in Spain, even el gran clásico between Barcelona and Real Madrid. Only Argentines, though, with their country’s supporters divided roughly one-third to Boca, one-third River, and one-third the rest, have enough nerve (or simply endearing lack of modesty) to label their own great clash the superclásico [Editor's note: MLS has the cheek to do so as well nowadays, as the Galaxy play Chivas USA in the Honda sponsored Super Clasico!].

The 2008 superclásico

This year’s clashes – this weekend’s is the first competitive meeting between the sides in 2008 – will be given a little added historical significance because the super is one-hundred years old in August. Not that any extra spice is needed – over the last century the fixture has seen more than its fair share of action, as well as the worst stadium disaster in the history of Argentine football. After a dreary 0-0 at the Monumental in June 1968, Boca fans began to leave the ground but found their way blocked. Either the doors of Gate 12 were left locked, or the police refused to allow the fans to leave right away, or a combination of the two – to this day the situation’s not entirely clear. Whatever the cause, the result was a mass crush which left 71 people dead. ‘The Tragedy of Gate 12′ has still never been officially investigated.

The darkest point in the history of the super, then, isn’t in dispute, but the story’s not all so dreary. Both sides were founded in the dockside district of La Boca at the turn of the twentieth century, River a few years before Boca. In the face of the rapid urbanisation Buenos Aires was undergoing at the time, playing space became hard to come by, and the two local clubs played a match to decide which club would stay in the area and which had to move on. That’s the urban legend at least – River did indeed move on after losing the match 2-1, and now play in the northern barrio of Núñez, whilst Boca are still based in the barrio they take their name from today, but the reasons for ‘betting’ the teritory on the match are murky.

With the sides playing in separate leagues for much of the following few years, the first officially-recorded super took place in Racing’s stadium in 1913, with River winning by the same scoreline as their defeat of five years previously.

These days, the two are established as by far the biggest clubs in Argentina, and the match between them gets far and away the most international exposure of any domestic game in the Americas. It’s been good fun for River lately – they’ve not lost to Boca in a competitive match since the 2005 Apertura, although the same time period hasn’t been quite so good trophy-wise; their last title came in the 2004 Clausura, four years ago. To that end, this Sunday’s super is going to feel a little different. River go to La Bombonera joint top of the table with Estudiantes, whilst Boca, in fourth, are four points back. A draw wouldn’t be a disaster for either side but the chances of them playing for that are zero, even with the match sandwiched as it is between the two legs of the Copa Libertadores first knockout round. A win for River would all but end Boca’s league hopes, with five matches left, whilst a home win would get them right back in the hunt.

It’s a sign of just how massive the super is that Argentine papers are already discussing team selection and preparation for it in spite of the fact that both sides have those Libertadores first legs to play first, in midweek. River travel to San Lorenzo in an all-Buenos Aires clash whilst Boca host Brazilian side Cruzeiro in a tie that would seem a lot trickier were it not for the fact that Brazilian clubs universally seem to fear Boca regardless of current form or indeed their own abilities. As well as these big matches, this weekend is also showtime at the bottom of the Argentine first division.

There Are Other Games

Last time I wrote for Pitch Invasion, Racing were having a dire time, but a few weeks ago, to the astonishment of their fans and the joy even of some supporters of the other four of Argentina’s ‘Big Five’, they claimed their first win of 2008, 1-0 against Arsenal de Sarandí. That was the second of what’s now four straight matches without defeat, although the other three have been draws. The run hasn’t yet got Racing out of the relegation zone, although Saturday could help – they visit Rosario Central, with whom they’re currently dead level in the relegation points average table, in what might be termed a six-pointer, if the Argentine league operated a normal relegation system. San Martín also host Olimpo in what’s likely to be a slightly less intense affair; both sides, newly promoted, look doomed, although if the hosts win they can drag Gimnasia de Jujuy into the automatic relegation spots and replace them in the relegation playoff places, at least for the moment.

Whatever else happens, there’s a season-defining week ahead for more than just the most famous two of Argentina’s clubs. Some things will look much clearer in ten days’ time – and on Sunday in La Bombonera, the fireworks will be the least of the entertainment.

You can find the Argentine tables – league, goalscorers and relegation – on this page, whilst all the superclásico buildup, reports and aftermath, as well of course as coverage of Argentina’s Copa Libertadores and relegation struggles, gets top billing on Hasta El Gol Siempre.

Photos by Sam Kelly on Flickr.

During the seventh round of matches (a week and a half ago), Racing were 2-1 down to Estudiantes the break. It was around the hour mark that things really started falling apart for the hosts. Two men were sent off in quick succession, both for second bookable offences and one somewhat harshly, before a ball over the top was knocked down by teenage sensation Maxi Moralez, back on loan after an unhappy first six months at FC Moscow. He put Racing level with thirteen minutes left. Or so it seemed.The officials, though, had seen a handball in Moralez’s control – again somewhat debatably. Not only was the goal disallowed, but Moralez’s booking was his second, leaving his team with only eight men and the fans behind the goal absolutely seething.

Referee Federico Beligoy had little choice, given the increasingly unstable atmosphere inside the stadium, but to call the match off after five minutes of waiting for the home fans to calm down. The AFA have dragged their feet no end about what will happen to the rest of the match and the points, but common practice in Argentina when the losing side’s fans cause the trouble is to simply let the score stand, which was being reported on Tuesday by some as official, despite no announcement either way from the AFA ten days on.

Tragedy and River Plate

Bad though the scenes in Racing’s stadium, El Cilindro, were though, they weren’t on the same scale as the events of this Sunday just gone, when two factions of River Plate’s unstable barra brava clashed in Vélez Sársfield’s stadium, leaving one man in a medically-induced coma and the threat of serious sanctions hanging over the club.

The situation within Los Borrachos del Tablón (‘The Drunks of the Terrace’) has been brewing for a few years and is, in short, a dispute over the running of the gang and therefore the profits of its highly lucrative business dealings, ticketing racket and perhaps ‘protection’ money from club officials. Last August, Gonzalo Acro, the right-hand man of Adrián Rousseau, one of the warring capos, was shot dead and one-off scraps have occurred since.

On Sunday, River were using Vélez’s ground as their home stadium for the visit of Arsenal de Sarandí having allowed their own ground, the Monumental, to be used for an Ozzy Osbourne-led rock festival. Los Borrachos had set this date to settle a few scores in order that any subsequent sanctions not result in the closure of the Monumental, after two such stadium bans were handed out to the club during the Apertura in the first half of this season. Furthermore, the planned scrap was such an open appointment for many of them that more than one journalist went on record as saying it would take place unless the police intervened swiftly and sensibly.

But this is Argentina, and the police are rarely swift and never sensible, least of all where footballing matters are under discussion. Comments about the exact police presence range from the seven hundred reported in the press to a River vice-president’s subsequent declaration that the club had paid for ‘eight hundred-odd’ uniformed officers for security, but two things are for sure: there were a lot of them, and somehow none to be seen in the right location when the fighting broke out in the popular, the name given in Argentina to the stand behind the goal at the home end – where the barras always congregate. In a battle that saw numerous barras tumbling down the steep terrace and many more innocent fans running for their lives and having to shield their children from the fight, there were seven injuries, one of which may yet prove critical.

The TV pictures showed the fight and (1:25 into the video) one man slipping in and out of consciousness. That man, 39-year-old Juan José Paz, whose picture had been shown across Argentina with a face entirely covered in blood, was eventually transferred to a nearby hospital, where he was put into a medically-induced coma with a fracture to the back of his skull – on Tuesday he was still in a serious condition but with ‘some signs of development’, according to the public statement from the hospital. The police claimed that Paz was injured before entering the stand when he suffered an epileptic fit and banged his head on the floor after falling. Some TV pictures reportedly showed him very definitely already inside the stadium being viciously hit on the back of a head by a barra brava. Police brutality was also mentioned – an inevitable result of suspicion towards police authority across Latin America, but in this case at least one that can probably be dismissed.

The police version seems a very peculiar one, partly because the attack by another ticket-holder whom the police had let into the ground seems to have pretty solid foundations, and partly because the authorities are surely opening themselves up to another accusation just by suggesting what they have done; if Paz had an epileptic fit and received a violent blow on the head after falling backwards onto a concrete floor, why on earth was he allowed to continue into the stadium to watch the match?

River’s directors have publicly spoken out in newspapers and on the radio to distance themselves from the brawl, but the fact that they even have to speaks volumes for the barras’ influence in Argentina. The current board have been accused more than once of turning a blind eye to the barra’s actions, and it was no real surprise to anyone when club president José María Aguilar indulged in a bit of doublethink on Tuesday, telling the press, ‘In the past I’ve said I knew the barras at River; from the stands, the club, our social venues… but I don’t know [the ones whose pictures appeared in Monday's papers].’ The attitude of many fans towards Aguilar’s comments will be: well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

The blame should clearly be shared. River’s board, having paid for the security operation, could have given the police a rather better idea of who to deny access to, given that the fight was public knowledge among even many non-barras before it took place. The police for their part could have had a presence in the stand behind the goal – this would have been breaking with normal practice, which dictates that they’re often too afraid (or, perhaps, corrupt) to properly police the popular, but is still surely a sensible idea for all matches. The barras, of course, could have refrained from smuggling knives, chains and other weapons into the stand and attacking one another – and seemingly some innocent fans – with them. Apparently, though, asking for even one of these things to pass is simply too optimistic.

At the end of the video linked to above, there’s a short piece of footage which is revealing of the wider consensus in the country. As the fight continued in full view of the fans in the rest of the stadium, a chant rose up normally reserved for hated rivals or particularly unlucky (or incompetent) referees: ‘¡A la puta que te parió!’ (‘[Get back] to the whore who gave birth to you!’) ‘No son de River’ (‘You’re not River fans’) was another with which the assembled crowd disowned the barra, who normally instigate the chants in a rather different way. It sounds like nothing special, but it’s the first time a barra with the influence of Los Borrachos has been the object of such vitriol from fans of their own team. The majority, as if it weren’t already clear enough, have voiced their displeasure. If only that was going to be enough to put a stop to the madness.

But none of that made the headlines in Argentina. Instead, Olé’s front page on Monday morning read: ‘Collective Bad Conscience’. Friday evening saw the start of it, with a lower division derby in the country’s Andean northwest between Gimnasia y Tiro and Central Norte, both in the city of Salta. The match went ahead (Central Norte won 2-0), but had a tragic prefix when a 17-year-old girl walking to the stadium with her boyfriend was shot in the head on a street corner. There was a late-night medical centre on the same corner, whose staff tried to help, but they could do nothing to prevent her death. The bullet was fired by another minor walking with the pair, but reports are confused as to the circumstances – a tragic accident seems most likely.

In Argentina, whose media, like its football, is dominated by the ‘giant’s head on a dwarf’s body’ of Buenos Aires, the news barely registered, until, on Saturday afternoon, another fan was killed. Emanuel Alvarez was on a coach carrying fans of his team, Vélez Sársfield, to their match at San Lorenzo. The convoy was passing close to the stadium of San Lorenzo’s local rivals Huracán when a gun was let off which went directly into the 21-year-old’s heart.

Again, the circumstances were confusing, not least because of the location – which Vélez’s chief of security later said wasn’t significant.’[The bullet] didn’t come from La Quemita [Huracán's social complex],’ Eduardo Capucheti told reporters, contrary to initial reports that the coach had been ambushed by a gang linked to Huracán. ‘It was an extraordinary piece of bad luck.’ Some fans in the coach convoy disagreed with the ‘bad luck’ part of this version of events, but one thing that’s clear is that a gun was used, and another is that – like the incident in Salta the previous night – this wasn’t a clash between barras.

The match was called off, as was the Gimnasia de Jujuy vs. Lanús clash. That second, mercifully, was for non-football related matters linked with an ongoing industrial action by workers in the state government, which used up police resources for the afternoon. On Sunday afternoon, though, violence was back in the headlines thanks to – and those who’ve only heard of two Argentine sides before coming across this article will be on firmer ground here – Boca Juniors.

We’ve looked before at the ‘civil war’ going on inside River Plate’s barra brava, but on Sunday there was the first major fight in a while between two factions of Boca’s gang, La Doce [open to a few interpretations, this title, but it's normally translated as 'The Twelfth Man']. The gang’s hierarchy were sentenced to varying jail sentences last March, and now a struggle is brewing to see who will take control in the interim – and possibly beyond.

As Boca’s fans gathered to board the coaches which would take them to Huracán’s stadium a fight broke out and the police, it seems, were slow to react. When the backup forces arrived they were approached by a 40-year-old man, still unnamed in the press, with a deep knife wound in his abdomen. He was rushed to hospital and pronounced ‘out of danger’ before the match had even got underway, but in total there were 183 arrests. I’ll repeat that: one hundred and eighty-three arrests. This wasn’t some small school playground scrap (although worryingly, nine of the detained were minors).

The occurences are likely to re-open a few debates in the coming weeks. First, there’s the question of whether matches in the Primera A should take place from now on without away fans present, as has happened since the start of this season in the lower divisions. This doesn’t seem ideal from the point of view of the majority of fans who are innocent, of course, but if it could have prevented Emanuel Alvarez’s death, it would surely have been worthwhile.

Secondly, to my mind, it should also raise questions as to how much longer the Government of the City of Buenos Aires can retain control over matchday security within the bounds of Buenos Aires’ Capital Federal region. The central areas of the city are marked off as an autonomous area of Argentina, subject to certain different laws, and included in these are issues of football security. In the Province of Buenos Aires, the awkwardly-monikered CoProSeDe (Comisión Provincial de Seguridad Deportiva, or Provincial Commission of Sporting Security) are in charge of match-day operations. They’re clamped down in a major way in the last couple of seasons, and the result has been notably fewer headlines regarding the barras of clubs like Racing and Independiente (not that I want to leave anyone under the illusion that these clubs are squeaky clean), whose stadia are outside Capital Federal and thus under the jurisdiction of the province’s force.

For those clubs inside Capital Federal, though – which includes Vélez, Huracán, San Lorenzo, Boca and River, as well as clubs notorious for their barra bravas such as Chacarita Juniors (currently in Primera B Nacional) – the story is different. CoProSeDe has no power in the autonomous district, and security is laxer. It’s a point that much of the Argentine press – again, it bears repeating, based exclusively in the central districts of Buenos Aires – don’t seem to be talking about much. But surely, a unified security operation for the whole of the Province and the Capital district would make sense, given that this would cover all of the six most-supported clubs in the country as well as the two La Plata sides, Estudiantes and Gimnasia.

That’s not going to happen, though. And pipe dreams on the author’s part about streamlined security measures aside, the sad fact remains that another weekend of largely entertaining football has been overshadowed in Argentina by the actions of an idiot minority. And however much Argentines – and those of us who love the country and its football so dearly – cry ‘¡Basta!‘, it’s unlikely to be the last time.

Vélez Sársfield and Estudiantes share the summit after three matches of the Clausura, but it’s Racing, one of Argentina’s ‘Big Five’ and still as useless as they’ve been for a couple of seasons now, who were making the headlines. Micó, the manager, had to call off the post-match press conference after being confronted by a group of angry fans whilst on his way to deliver his piece into the microphones. Racing’s poor performance in the last few seasons has lead to a low points average, which in turn gives a low standing in the Promedio, the table – based on the previous three seasons’ results – used to work out relegation places in Argentina (it’s at the bottom).

Micó isn’t to blame for that – he only came in after Gustavo Costas left in December – and nor are most of his players. Aside from the return on loan of Maxi Moralez, who only left the club for Russia six months ago, Micó has had to bring a few other youngsters into the first team from the reserves and youth divisions, and doesn’t think they should have to bear the brunt of the previous teams’ mistakes in getting them into this mess.

“The idea is to find the [correct] team as soon as possible,” Micó said after being asked when Racing were finally going to win a match in 2008. So far they’ve drawn with relegation-bound Olimpo, lost to Banfield and, on Saturday, drew 0-0 with Gimnasia de Jujuy.

Racing to Oblivion

So why are Racing so useless? Institutional instability. As I wrote previously, Racing’s current ruling regime are seriously at odds with the fans. The club went bankrupt in 1998, and was taken over by holding company Blanquiceleste in 2001. During 2007, Blanquiceleste came under even more pressure than ever before to relinquish control of the club, with many fans suspicious of how much money the directors were making for themselves (the enterprise isn’t supposed to be profit-making), and angered at the lack of elections to decide the president.

Over the December-January summer break, things came to a head as seven first-team players left the club in a row over unpaid wages. Under pressure from fan protests and an unstable working environment, the previous lot hadn’t been doing very well – but the squad who’ve got to get through this Clausura have been thrown together at short notice and that’s not going to make it easy to perform.

One thing their fans might want to bear in mind, though, is that Racing have at least scored. Another of the ‘Big Five’, San Lorenzo, can’t even boast a goal yet in this year’s championship – or a point. A remarkable turnaround for a side who won the corresponding championship last year.

San Lorenzo’s Misery

Their season got worse after an already underwhelming start, when they travelled to the Monumental to take on River Plate in the year’s first big clásico (derby). It was a bit of a reunion day as well, since Los Santos’ manager Ramón Díaz and playmaker Andrés D’Alessandro, recently signed from Real Zaragoza of Spain, were both returning for the first time to their former club. It didn’t go well for either of them. D’Alessandro had to leave the field in the 23rd minute after suffering a muscle pain that will keep him out for a couple of weeks, and just minutes later River’s Colombian star striker Radamel Falcao García headed them into the lead. Matías Abelairas, the latest in their seemingly never-ending production line of really bloody good attacking-midfielder-cum-forwards, doubled the lead eight minutes into the second half and the hosts never looked back.

It’s two unexpected teams who are top, though, just ahead of River and fellow giants Boca Juniors, both on seven points. Estudiantes have started life under Roberto Sensini well, pouring forward at every opportunity, and whilst their Copa Libertadores opener might have gone better than a narrow loss in Cuenca, they’re starting to look devastating in the league, as Newell’s Old Boys will attest after the 5-2 pasting they found themselves on the wrong end of on Friday evening. Juan Sebastián Verón is pulling the strings like a man ten years younger in central midfield, but if you want one name to try and kid your friends you knew all about in a few years time, remember Pablo Piatti, a fast, 18-year-old wide-man who broke into the first team with a late winner in a crucial match of Estudiantes’ title-winning campaign in the 2006 Apertura and is now scoring and setting goals up regularly.

Vélez head the table nominally, though given their identical goals scored and conceded record with Estudiantes it’s presumably only so that the stat-counters can stick someone different up there now and then – even alphabetical order doesn’t hold much sway in Argentina. They saw off Banfield, who are themselves no slouches, 3-0 in Liniers on Saturday, and Sergio Sena, one of their goalscorers in that match, insists they’ve not yet hit their stride. Hugo Tocalli’s young side perhaps lack the bit of experience Verón lends to Estudiantes, but it’ll be interesting to see how far they can go, unencumbered by a Copa Libertadores challenge.

Finally, an honourable mention for Martín Palermo, who scored twice at the weekend. The Argentine press are now salivating over the fact that his next goal will draw him level with Francisco Varallo, and the one after that will make him Boca Juniors’ all-time highest goalscorer. It’s not actually true, as I explained on Hasta El Gol Siempre in September, but still, a headline’s a headline, so you can guarantee every news agency going will be telling you about it next week if he does score against Gimnasia on Sunday. And if Palermo decided to defect to San Lorenzo or Racing in the meantime, Ramón Díaz or Miguel Micó surely wouldn’t mind…

Photo credits: erdo-sain, via the Hasta El Gol Siempre Flickr photo pool.

The history of Argentine football has been dominated from the outset by the Buenos Aires clubs, as is obvious from the geographical layout of the championship winners on the map. Bill and I have attempted between us to address a couple of historical errors that have tended to creep into English-language writing about those clubs (explained later), but even allowing for that the place of the capital in the game’s development in Argentina is formidable.

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are a lot of current top flight sides in the Greater Buenos Aires area. This proportion isn’t confined by any means to the top division, and simple saying that BA has ‘a lot’ of clubs is an understatement in the extreme: Gran Buenos Aires has more football stadia than any other metropolitan conglomeration on earth, from couple-of-hundred-seater amateur league grounds to the 75,000-capacity Estadio Monumental, home of River Plate and the national team. For the football enthusiast, there are few better cities to visit, if any.

The reason for the dominance of the capital city in both club numbers and titles won is twofold. First, sheer size: of Argentina’s 38 million people, around 13 million live in and around the metropolis. The next biggest city, Rosario, has one-tenth of the population. Secondly, arising from both the size and the economic dominance of the port city at the end of the nineteenth century when football was introduced, the Argentine league was for its first few decades essentially a Greater Buenos Aires league (plus, after a while, La Plata). Due to the country’s vast size and the difficulty at the time of transportation between cities, a national league simply wasn’t viable. So for a long time, the Argentine football league was in essence played by clubs concentrated in just one or two cities.

The Argentine championship is one of the world’s oldest, and in the early years it was dominated by sides who no longer exist — most famously Lomas Athletic and Alumni, who between them won sixteen of the first twenty titles contested. The name under which Alumni won their first title, in 1900, sheds some light on the origins of these clubs: they were originally called English High School. Following the early dominance of the British clubs, however, local sides sprung up and began to become more competitive. In 1912, the colonial strangehold was broken as Quilmes (presently in the second division having been relegated from Primera A in 2007) became the first ‘local’ club to win the league title — the break was complete, and no side of sizeable British demographic won the title thereafter.

Racing Club of Avellaneda were the first dominant club in this new era, claiming seven consecutive titles between 1913 and 1919, at the end of which run the amateur league system in Argentina split into two competing associations with their own championships. In 1919, Boca Juniors won the Asociación Argentina de Football title, Racing having won the Asociación Amateurs de Football trophy, and the following year Racing’s title was taken by the other party in the capital’s world-famous rivalry, River Plate. The two-FAs system continued with its side-by-side championships until 1931, when one merged association was formed and the league turned professional.

From 1931 to 1966, the national championship was won by only five different clubs: River Plate, Boca Juniors, Racing, Independiente (also of Avellaneda) and San Lorenzo de Almagro (who today actually play in Boedo). As a result of this dominance, these clubs became known as the ‘Five Big Clubs’, or ‘Big Five’, of Argentine football.

In 1967, when another system of joint championships was introduced – the Torneo Metropolitano and the Torneo Nacional, played by essentially the same clubs in different halves of the season – Estudiantes de La Plata became the first side from outside Buenos Aires to claim a pro title, and it would take until 1974, when Rosario duo Newell’s Old Boys and Central finished first and second respectively in the Metropolitano, before a club from outside Buenos Aires Province won a title.

Today, the championship is more geographically diverse than ever, having become truly national at last in 1985 with the abolition of the Metropolitano and Nacional, but is still inevitably dominated by the weight of fanbase, history and population present in Buenos Aires.

The map and the accompanying list of club title wins aims to correct a discrepancy which has long existed in English-language accounts of Argentine football. Whilst everyone across the world, regardless of language, is aware that River Plate have 32 league titles and Boca Juniors 22, it’s often claimed that (for example) Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, the oldest surviving club in the country and probably in all of South America, have never won a championship. In fact, they won one in 1929, before the league turned professional. Estudiantes, their city rivals, are often credited with four league titles, but also won one in the amateur era – yet bizarrely, the totals of 32 and 22 for River and Boca do include all of these two clubs’ amateur titles. This map includes all league titles, amateur and professional, in an effort to correct such errors.

A final note: Notable former champions not featuring on the map – which only includes clubs in the Primera División A during the 2007-2008 season – include Ferro Carril Oeste, winners of two championships in the mid-1980s and the only side in Gran Buenos Aires whose modern stadium is still on the same site as their original ground (just outside the boundary of the Capital Federal region, a little to the west of Vélez Sársfield’s stadium), and the first-ever ‘non British’ champions, Quilmes, who play in the district of Gran Buenos Aires from which they take their name, just to the south of Avellaneda.

For more beautiful maps of the world of sports, be sure to check out Bill’s Sports Maps. And for more insight on Argentinian football, read Sam at Hasta El Gol Siempre

Friday saw the culmination of a legal case that had been ongoing for exactly twenty-two months in Santa Fe, the capital city of the province of the same name in Argentina. For a change, in spite of the time taken to reach a conclusion, the final judgement just might be a step forward in the Argentine authorities’ battle against violence in the country’s stadia.

José Gastón Mendoza was convicted of the attempted murder of a fellow Colón fan during the buildup to his side’s 2-2 draw against River Plate on the 19th February, 2006, and sent down for six years. Before the match began, Mendoza, who was already wanted by police for questioning over a murder in the city days beforehand, moved through the stadium looking for a member of a rival faction of the club’s barra brava, and found him on the main terrace behind the home goal, which astonishingly was not, at that point in the afternoon, being policed by any officers.

Mendoza attacked with a blade, giving the other man cuts on his back, chest, arms and right wrist, before being apprehended –- not by any police officers as might reasonably be expected, but by his own friends, who’d seen what was going on and didn’t want him (or by extension themselves) getting into any more trouble than he was already in. They gave him a change of clothes and helped him escape for the moment, but he was eventually tracked down by the police and arrested during the second half of the match.

My initial reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see Argentine justice continue a recent trend of actually punishing the barras for the crimes they’ve committed — 2007 has also seen several senior Boca hooligans go down for a few years each for their parts in a riot against Chacarita’s barra a few years ago, and the fallout from Gonzalo Acro’s murder could yet see River’s head hooligan jailed as well. On the other, due to the match in question being televised, the court were actually able to watch the whole incident on video — the entire thing was caught by the cameras. In spite of this they’ve still taken nearly two years to come to a judgement. And that’s rather a hard situation to get excited about.

Yet something, it is clear, has been done this year to change mindsets in Argentina, however slowly, following the universally deplored violence which marred the 2006 Torneo Apertura. For this, if nothing else, we should applaud and continue to encourage the relevant authorities. But if a little of the bureaucracy and paperwork could be dispensed with, if cases with such conclusive and obvious evidence could be resolved in a few weeks rather than two years, it could be an even bigger step forward. Perhaps that’s asking too much. . .

Read more from Sam on the game on and off the pitch at Hasta El Gol Siempre’s.

Wednesday marked forty years since Racing became champions of South America by winning the Copa Libertadores, but the anniversary went all but unnoticed in the shadow of events the previous evening.

This week saw a round of matches played in midweek for the 2007 Torneo Apertura in the Argentine first division. On Tuesday, Racing visited San Lorenzo for the first clásico of the season played between two of the ‘Big Five’, and, well, raced into the lead, finding themselves 3-0 up after just half an hour against the champions.

What followed was possibly the most spectacular capitulation in Racing’s history. First San Lorenzo got a goal back, then two minutes later Racing ‘keeper Gustavo Campagnuolo panicked, handled the ball outside his area and saw red. Final score: San Lorenzo 4-3 Racing.

Of course, such a result would normally draw criticism from fan groups. But Argentina has a deeper tradition than most –- certainly than most English-speaking countries –- when it comes to allowing the fans a say in the running of their clubs. I’ve already discussed the intrusive influence of the barra brava hooligan gangs on the running of both clubs and football as a whole on this site, but at Racing things work slightly differently, and perhaps not entirely for the good. Because at Racing, the fans don’t have a say in who runs the club.

In 1999 Racing were declared bankrupt. One of Argentina’s biggest clubs was in serious danger of having to cease trading. Into the helm in 2001 stepped Blanquiceleste (‘sky-blue-and-white’, a reference to Racing’s shirt colours) an enterprise set up specifically for the purpose of saving the club, run by wealthy businessmen who were fans, and headed by Fernando De Tomaso. Since that point, Racing have been the only sizable club in Argentina who are privately owned, and whose fans have no say in who exactly runs the day-to-day business of the club.

Every other club holds elections for their president -– River Plate’s fans, for instance, are currently deeply angry at president José María Aguilar for, among other things, his perceived closeness to certain heads of River’s barra brava. The result? He’ll almost certainly find himself voted out in River’s next presidential elections, next year. But if Racing’s fans are unhappy with De Tomaso -– and they are -– they can do nothing about it. They have to like him or lump him.

This week, patience has run out and they’ve decided to take neither of those options. Fan forums have been discussing plans to protest, first on Friday evening outside the stadium, and then for Sunday’s match against big rivals River Plate, again at El Cilindro. They’ll be handing out pamphlets explaining their aims -– put bluntly, to force Blanquiceleste to reveal more about the club’s finances (the group are suspected by many fans of creaming off some of the club’s profits), and to force De Tomaso to call an election for the presidency.

Under Blanquiceleste, Racing haven’t had it all bad. In particular, they made a crucial point in the authorities’ recent stand against violence in football. The board’s lack of accountability to fans enabled Racing to be the only club in Argentina to officially ban their own barra brava from home games, and the result was that without losing any of its atmosphere, El Cilindro was perhaps the most secure stadium in the country.

But many other points -– notably the team’s dreadful performances on the pitch for a good while now –- have angered the fans, and it’s for this reason that Blanquiceleste may be about to discover that you can own a club’s stadium, team and social facilities, but you can never buy its soul.

For more on Argentinian football, visit Sam Kelly’s blog Hasta El Gol Siempre.

Photo by travellingspamela on Flickr.

It was, perhaps, an inevitable end to the season in Argentina. The Apertura – that is, the championship held during the opening half of the season – had been blighted by violence in the stands and ocassionally the streets around the stadia. Something, evidently, had to be done.

Hope that the Clausura (season-closing) championship would be ‘cleaner’ of such problems went out the window on the first day, when two factions of River Plate’s main barra brava (hooligan gang), Los Borrachos del Tablón, fought a battle for supremacy at one of the club’s social venues, hours before the first match of the season at home to Lanús. Yes, you read that correctly: in Argentina hooligans from the same team fight each other.

River were banned from playing in their stadium, El Monumental, for five matches. They would later receive another such ban, and ended up playing more home matches in Vélez Sarsfield’s ground than in their own during the Clausura. Three weeks after these first incidents, they travelled to Rosario to play Newell’s Old Boys. With River winning and the match drawing to a close, Newell’s fans began throwing rocks in the direction of the away support, and the referee ended proceedings early. For this, Newell’s were handed a punishment unprecedented in Argentine footballing history – they were deducted three points! Everyone gasped. The authorities meant business.

Or rather, they wanted to look like they did. There are reasons this is a continuing problem in Argentina, and they’re a little ironic in light of what many northern European (particularly British) fans feel about the increasing distance between fan and club. Because in Argentina many would say some fans have too much of a say.

The situation is this: The Argentine FA hardly disciplines the top clubs because they know which side their bread is buttered. Between them, River and Boca Juniors claim two thirds of the fans in the entire country. The other three of the ‘Big Five’ – Independiente, Racing and newly crowned champions San Lorenzo – share a sizeable chunk of the remaining third. The AFA have often told referees to go easy on these teams, along with Arsenal de Sarandí, whose founding president, back in 1957, was one Julio Grondona – the current head of the AFA. These clubs, then, have a massive amount of control over the running of the game, and their fans – and most particularly the barras bravas – have a big say in the running of the clubs.

Go to La Bombonera, Boca’s stadium, and you’ll see a lot of stars laid into the pavement outside the museum entrance with players’ footprints and names, ‘walk of fame’ style. One reads simply ‘La Doce’. This is the star reserved – by club officials – for Boca’s barra. A few months ago, Rafael Di Zeo, head of La Doce, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for his part in a mass brawl between fans of Boca and Chacarita Juniors in 1999. One Chacarita fan was killed, and it was his death which Di Zeo and five others were sent down for – eight years later. Now, listen to this: some of Boca’s senior players visited these guys in jail, taking them gifts including signed shirts, shortly after their incarcerations. Di Zeo has been called one of the most powerful men in Argentine football. I’ll repeat for those who missed it the first time: he’s the head of a hooligan gang.

It must be said that the violence of the Clausura hasn’t been on the same level that so severely marred the Apertura. Yet there’s still a lot to do. Still clubs – with the exception of Racing, who since bankruptcy in 2001 have been owned by a private company and thus whose fans are more cut off from the running of the club – are reluctant to ban the barras from their stadia, being as they are the main cheerleaders, most reliable form of away support (free tickets and even coaches are often arranged – and the barras never pay to enter home matches) and, quite frankly, not a gang of people you’d want to mess with in any case. But by and large, during the Clausura, with lamentable exceptions, they got by.

The third from last round of the season saw a tragedy which was entirely avoidable, as a young River fan climbed to a better vantage point in Vélez’s stadium during his side’s match against Godoy Cruz. He fell from the back of the stand to the car park, and was killed. It wasn’t an act of violence, of course – but had the security been tighter, he wouldn’t have been doing it (and it’s not as if he’s the only one who’s ever tried it in an Argentine stadium).

Then came Monday night’s relegation playoff second leg.

Nueva Chicago fans aren’t the worst in Argentina – that title probably goes to Chacarita – but they’re pretty bad (I witnessed them first hand on my first visit to an Argentine stadium, which incidentally was also Javier Mascherano’s professional debut for River). On Monday night, their side played at home against second division side Tigre. The situation: the second leg of a playoff. Tigre had won the first leg 1-0 and Chicago needed an aggregate draw – or victory, of course – to defend their place in the First Division.

They lost. Tigre were 2-1 up on the night when, in the 90th minute, they were awarded a penalty and the Chicago fans swamped the pitch, tearing players’ shirts off and attacking whatever they could. A stone was thrown into the away section. A 41-year-old man was hit on the head by it, and later pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. The riots continued for hours, and there were a total of 14 injuries, not counting that death. Seventy-eight arrests were made, which I suppose is encouraging. It’s certainly more than I’d have expected.

In the aftermath, CoProSeDe, the awkwardly-acronymed sporting security authority in the Province of Buenos Aires, has announced that the remaining promotion / relegation playoffs under its jurisdiction – which covers most of the urban area of Greater Buenos Aires as well as the rest of the province – will be played behind closed doors. They’ve then got the winter break to take a long hard look at things before the Apertura begins in August. It looked like they were doing a better (still hardly brilliant, mind) job in the Clausura. But two deaths are two too many.

Sam Kelly runs the English-language Argentine football site Hasta El Gol Siempre and will be writing periodically on Argentina for pitchinvasion.net

Photo credits: (1) blmurch on flickr; (2) silent_|_gustavo on flickr, from the Pitch Invasion photo pool.