Читать книгу Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries - Andy Mitten - Страница 8

They know each other as ‘the chickens’ and ‘the shits’. Seventy-nine arrests is considered a quiet day at the office. River Plate v Boca Juniors is more than just another game…

Autumn in Argentina and it’s warm and sunny without being uncomfortably hot, but in Buenos Aires the mercury is beginning to rise. It’s midday and around 2,000 fans are gathered outside El Monumental (‘the Monument’), the 70,000 capacity home of reigning Argentine champions River Plate, and the stadium which witnessed Argentina lifting the World Cup in 1978 beneath a shower of ticker tape and toilet roll. Suited and booted middle-aged men, briefcases in hand, stand toe to toe with the young, replica shirt-wearing riffraff, a stark contrast in their scuffed trainers and ripped jeans as they queue along the edge of the stadium’s perimeter fence.

As the queue bottlenecks towards the pitifully inadequate number of open ticket booths, the crowd surges forward en masse, forcing dozens of armed police into action with their shields. As the jubilant River fans emerge from the scrum, one by one they kiss their tickets before holding them aloft like trophies and exchanging high fives and celebratory hugs with others. It’s as though they’ve already won the match in question, even though it’s still two days away and it’s not being played here but at on the other side of town at La Bombonera (‘the Chocolate Box’), home of River’s bitter rivals Boca Juniors. But this, you see, is no ordinary match. This is El Superclassico (‘the super derby’) and River’s allocation of 11,000 tickets will be snapped up in next to no time.

So big is El Superclassico that to the media this week’s anti-capitalist demonstrations in Buenos Aires, sparked by an impending free-trade convention in the city, is a mere side show in comparison to the main event. Television chat shows and radio phone-ins are dominated by Boca-River this week and for the next few days, Argentina’s top sports newspaper Olé will dedicate ten pages of editorial to the clash each day. Also, on every wall around the city is a poster published by Argentina’s weekly football magazine El Graphico bearing the red and white shirt of River, the yellow and blue shirt of Boca, and the words Se Viene – ‘It’s Coming.’

Argentina’s two biggest and most successful clubs have met 166 times before this week – Boca winning sixty-one, River fifty-five – and have been fierce rivals since 1923 when River moved from La Boca, a cosmopolitan, working-class neighbourhood where both teams then resided. Since 1944, River have played in Nuñez, also known as Barrio River (‘Neighbourhood River’), a middle-class neighbourhood some ten kilometres north west of La Boca, up the River Plate from which the club takes its name. They have since been dubbed the middle-class team.

Although most people will tell you this class divide no longer applies, the rivalry remains just as intense. For example, River’s kit manufacturers are sportswear giants Adidas, with their biggest rivals Nike doing the honours for Boca, so you’ll rarely see River fans wearing Nike gear, nor Boca fans donning the Adidas logo. As for wearing the colours of your rival team, well that’s totally out of the question. The only apparent contradiction in the rivalry is the fact that both teams are sponsored by Quilmes, Argentina’s most popular beer.

So deep do emotions run between these two that we’ve barely stepped off the plane when my translator Pablo, an ardent River fan, greets us with some words of warning: ‘Get ready for a war.’ Sadly, ‘war’ is an all too accurate description of some of the scenes that have marred Boca–River fixtures in the past. In June 1968, seventy-four fans were killed at El Monumental when Boca supporters caused panic by throwing burning paper onto the home fans beneath them. More recently, in 1994, a busload of River fans was ambushed several miles away from the ground, resulting in two of them being shot dead. River had won the game 2–0 and for days afterwards graffiti appeared around Buenos Aires reading ‘River 2 Boca 2.’

These crimes of passion are committed by the Barra Bravas (‘tough gangs’), Argentina’s notorious hooligan groups. River’s Barras, Los Borrachos del Tablón (‘The Drunks from the Board,’ a name derived from the days when the terraces were wooden planks on which the fans bounced up and down), have succeeded the Boca hooligans, La Doce (‘The Twelve’, so called because the fans believe they are the team’s 12th player), as Argentina’s most feared gang.

For both sets of Barras, El Superclassico is the season’s most important game. ‘On balance, most fans would rather beat La Boca than win the championship,’ says Matias, a 24-year-old River Barra, motorcycle courier, and trainee lawyer, who was brought up in Palermo, a middle-class neighbourhood not far from El Monumental. ‘It is more important to beat Boca on their own turf,’ he explains. And this week, they’ll get the chance.

Down at La Bombonera in the newly opened Boca Juniors museum I ask an assistant whether Boca fans share the same sentiments when it comes to beating River. ‘Are you kidding?’ he replies. ‘There was a party round here when River lost on Wednesday [in the Copa de Libertores to Uruguayan side The Strongest]. I’d rather Boca beat River and ruin their chances of winning the championship than Boca lose to River and win the championship ourselves.’ With River five points clear at the top of the table and Boca loitering near the bottom, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

As the fans gear themselves up for what is their cup final the players are trying to keep some sense of perspective. The River players, in particular, are doing their level best not to get caught up in the hysteria. ‘I know this game means a lot to both the fans and the players,’ says River’s diminutive playmaker Ariel Ortega, known as El Burrito (‘the Little Donkey, because he hails from Ledesma in the north of Argentina where there are no horses, only donkeys). ‘But I want to make it clear that I would never trade a championship for a single victory against Boca.’

With only a day to go, the whole of Buenos Aires is consumed by the game, which is staggering given that twelve of Argentina’s nineteen top division clubs play in the capital and its surrounding area. ‘River-Boca is a national derby, there are fans of both clubs all over the country,’ explains Juan Sasturain, a journalist and author – Argentina’s answer to Nick Hornby, according to Pablo. ‘When River play Boca you can bet your life there will be a fan of each team, up in the north of Argentina near the Bolivian border, stood in their replica shirts fighting,’ adds Sasturain.

‘In general, if you are not a Boca fan, you are anti-Boca. Boca have something socially irritating about them, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they have fans from so far and wide.’ A bit like Manchester United then.

So, Boca are widely recognised as the country’s best supported club. But which of the two clubs is the biggest? ‘I cannot say because they’re both very different in terms of history and image,’ says Sasturain. ‘Historically, River is stylish and offensive; Boca is the opposite – heart and strength. River is money and the middle classes; Boca is popularity and the working classes.’

As the game draws ever closer even Ortega, who was admirably circumspect only yesterday, gets caught up in the media hyperbole. In a bet with celebrity broadcaster and Boca fan Alejandro Fantino, Ortega has agreed to dye his hair green if River lose. In turn, Fantino will dye his hair bright red if Boca lose. Worried he might lose the bet, Fantino asks Boca midfielder Antonio Barijho, who regularly dyes his hair (blond being the current colour of choice), which brand of dye he should buy. ‘Don’t bother buying any, you won’t need it,’ says a confident Barijho, who instead insists Fantino should tell Ortega to dye his hair in the blue and yellow of Boca if River lose.

‘Ortega would have no hair left if he’d made the same bet over the past few seasons,’ says Barijho, and it’s a valid point. River have lost six of the previous ten meetings between the two, winning only one. Has Ortega bitten off more than he can chew?

Certainly Boca’s is the more relaxed camp on the eve of the game. Whereas their training sessions at La Bombonera are open to both press and public, up at El Monumental we have to rely on sneaking through an unguarded gate to watch the River players being put through their paces. That is until an angry security guard boots us out.

On leaving La Bombonera the evening before the game, having collected our tickets, a security guard calls us over; our pale skin, short trousers, and cameras are dead give-aways that we are not from round these parts. ‘Tell them to be careful,’ he says to Pablo. ‘There is a strange atmosphere around this week.’

So tense is the mood now that with the game imminent, Pablo says he feels uncomfortable being in enemy territory, even though he’s not wearing River colours. He’s in far less danger than one misfit we see ducking into a house, wearing River’s red and white replica shirt. ‘He’s a brave man,’ says Pablo, who has thus far been ferrying me around in his wife’s car. ‘Tomorrow I will bring my car to the game. It is not so good so it doesn’t matter as much if it gets vandalised.’

As we drive through the dusty streets of La Boca, with its mixture of crumbling, derelict buildings and bright pastel-coloured houses, we pull up outside San Salessiano, a Catholic school. On the wall outside is a magnificent mural, painted in 1969, depicting Buenos Aires at the time. On the left of the picture some workers stand beneath the industrial backdrop of La Boca and on the right stands a businessman and a tango dancer depicting the city’s middle classes. In the middle is a priest, stood next to two children, one wearing a Boca shirt, the other wearing a River shirt. This is the church’s ideal of Buenos Aires: harmonious. Tomorrow’s game will be anything but.

Within minutes of arriving at La Bombonera news filters through that the River team bus has been ambushed by Boca fans on the way to the ground. The windows were stoned, River’s club president took a blow to the head and two others were injured. At the ground a 1,200 strong, armed police unit (three times the usual size) prepare themselves for more outbreaks of violence. But security is tight, with every fan being searched and stripped of anything that might be deemed offensive, even empty plastic bottles. Apart from ticket-less fans trying to storm the gates there are few signs of serious trouble, but as an outsider, you still fear for your safety.

At the other end of the ground – the River end – however, there are knife fights breaking out and one Barra completely loses it with a concrete paving slab when it refuses to break under the pressure of him stamping on it (he wants to throw the broken pieces at Boca fans). Twice we hear the sound of gunfire. Whether the police or the fans are responsible nobody knows.

La Bombonera is a purpose-built football stadium – no athletics or dog-racing tracks here – so the crowd are very close to the pitch and almost on top of it. Three sides of the ground (one side and two ends) form an extremely steep concrete, three-tiered C-shape, with the area behind each goal standing only.

Away to our right, anything from coins to urine rains down on the Boca fans as River’s travelling support, fuelled by alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and pure adrenalin, make their presence felt from the two tiers above. Strangest of all though, amid the sea of red and white many of the River mob are wearing handkerchiefs and surgical masks over their faces. This, Pablo informs me, is because River’s nickname for Boca and their fans is El Bosteros, roughly translated into English as ‘The Shits’, in reference to the unpleasant smell that wafts over La Boca, a remnant of the area’s industrial past. If you go down to the port and smell the water you’ll know what they’re on about.

To Boca’s fans, River are know as Las Gallinas (‘The Chickens’). This goes back to 1966 when River played Penarol of Uruguay in the final of the Intercontinental Cup in Montevideo. River were 2–0 up and cruising in the second half when their keeper caught the ball on his chest – puffed out like a chicken’s if you will – and proceeded to mock the opposition, who became so enraged that they lifted their game and ended up winning 4–2 after extra time. Boca have never let the River fans live it down.

Inside the ground the only people missing from the 52,000 crowds are the two sets of Barras. They prefer to make a late entrance so the other fans reserve a space for them at the centre of the middle tier. Once inside, the two sets of fans exchange taunts and sing songs – nothing new there then – but the real craze in Argentina is to jump up and down on the spot. And I mean everybody. Both sets of fans at the same time. Now Boca’s is not the most state-of-the-art ground and as the stadium shakes under the weight on 52,000 lunatics pogoing simultaneously, you wonder if it’s going to crash to the ground.

Amid the sea of yellow and blue away to our left are a surprising number of women and children, some of whom are so young they nestle in their dad’s arms as he screams his support, blood-vessels near to bursting in his forehead. As if the crowd is not fired up enough, the reserve teams of both clubs play their fixture immediately prior to the first team game. It keeps everybody entertained at least. Not that they need it.

When the fist teams finally appear they do so through an inflated tunnel, which stretches out into the centre of the pitch to prevent the players, especially those of River, being pelted with whatever the fans can get their hands on. A few bottles make their way over the tall perimeter fencing but all of them miss their targets.

As ticker tape pours down from the sky, children appear on the pitch carrying two giant flags bearing the words no mas violencia: un mensaje de Dios (‘no more violence: a message from God’). ‘It won’t be enough,’ says Pablo, as the ‘boos’ reverberate around the ground, drowning out the sound of ‘We are the World’ and ‘Imagine’, which are playing over the stadium’s public address system.

An appalling, goalless first half is lifted only by the appearance of Maradona, a former Boca star, of course, who emerges on the balcony of his box to the delight of Boca’s fans and the derision of River’s. At half time he even puts on a juggling show using a ball thrown up to him by one of the cheerleaders.

In the second half the referee, who was the best performer on the pitch in the first half, loses control of the game under intense pressure from the home crowd. He’d agreed to meet me for an interview over breakfast tomorrow morning, depending on how the game went. Needless to say, we never get the phone call. Boca, who are the better side anyway, win 3–0 after River have two men sent off. After each goal, the Boca fans, Maradona included, take off their shirts and lasso them round their heads. They’ll be going home happy and will be able to hold their heads high. At least until the two teams meet again.

In the back of Pablo’s car another River fan – also called Pablo – and a friend of Los Barrochos (though not one himself) is inconsolable. ‘I am always without hope when I come to see River play Boca, because I always feel like we’re gonna get fucked,’ he says, unable to comprehend River’s recent poor record against Boca. ‘I don’t understand it. Against teams who play good football we play beautifully and win. Then we go and lose to Boca and their shitty, ugly football.’

Still, at least nobody was killed. And with only seventy-nine arrests at the stadium, today’s Buenos Aires derby was one of the quietest.