Last night I watched my first, hopefully not last, Argentine soccer (fútbol) game. During the match I realized that I actually had never seen a professional game before! What better place to start than in Argentina!! I can say without hesitation that it was one of the coolest experiences of my life! I'm going to describe it in detail.. so bear with me.. I have to do it justice.
Buenos Aires has two main teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate, who are also of course arch rivals. [Apparently, they both used to have stadiums in the Boca neighborhood of South BA, but the rivalry grew so intense, that River decided to move their stadium to the complete opposite northern end of BA!]
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be given a free ticket by a new friend, whom I met through Katina, one of the two year long JDC JSC fellows here. The match, incredibly enough, was with River, who was playing Godoy Cruz from the Mendoza region of Argentina. Although THE game to watch is with the BA rivals, last night's game, for me at least, was quite enough to give me a taste of what fútbol's really like here.
First of all, I had to be quite careful about what colors I wore. The only viable colors were white and red, the colors of River. Neutrals like brown or black are of course alright. Anything blue or even yellow would have secured my getting haggled a ton if not out right hurt, since these are the colors of Bocca and Godoy Cruz.
My new friend Avi and I took the subte to the last stop of the green line. We easily followed the red and white jerseys to the huge stadium about 15 blocks away. The security was incredibly tight, as we wound our way to the first barricade, passing a bunch of scalpers on the way. Realizing we had actually gone to the wrong side of the stadium we attempted to convince the police to let us cross the barricade to the other side... But this was not allowed. The barricade was one side of a sort of canal made for the fans of the opposing team. It was meant to protect them from River fans, and if we walked through it to get out on the opposite wall, we might have gotten hurt. Thus, we took the long way round, and passing through the checkpoint on the other side. Going through, I saw random people getting selected to have their finger prints taken. In the event that they turned out to be criminals, they wouldn't be let in to the stadium. Everyone is patted down after, guys and girls separately. Once we got through, our ticket was finally scanned and we entered the stadium.
To say the least, it was enormous, and the tickets, being a gift from a police officer, were really great. We were under shelter, (sitting on the bottom floor, shaded by the top tier of the stadium) with the middle class people, just to the right of one of the goals. Above us were seats for Godoy Cruz, and although it was raining a bit, I was informed that if I saw heavy rain.. it was probably them trying to pee on us. Luckily, we were sheltered either way! To my right were the expensive seats, and straight across on the top level were the 'locos,' the crazy fans, who file in at the last moment with drums, and who determine what chants to sing and when. No one starts a cheer until the locos do.
It is easy to say that the crowd was just as much fun to watch as the game. People went crazy, and even more so since River was able to win with a 5-0 victory! Everyone was jumping and singing River songs. I could see, even all away across the entire field, the locos, tiny specks to me, jumping up and down. Granted there was a ton of 'puta,' 'mierda,' and some other curses that I don't even know being thrown around by everyone, kids who were probably just about 6 included, but that just made the experience even better!
Although I have a few pictures, unfortunately taken by my phone since I was nervous about having a camera, they won't do the experience justice. Nothing can really show the enormity of the stadium or emit the intense passion and energy of the crowd.
I really hope I can go to another game, but tickets are hard to come by. I saved my ticket as a souvenir, but I'm going to have to hide it from Roberto... he's a Boca fan, and I haven't had the heart to tell him yet that not only did I go to a River game, but by the end I was cheering and yelling 'mierda' as loud as everyone else!!
Buenos Aires has two main teams, Boca Juniors and River Plate, who are also of course arch rivals. [Apparently, they both used to have stadiums in the Boca neighborhood of South BA, but the rivalry grew so intense, that River decided to move their stadium to the complete opposite northern end of BA!]
Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be given a free ticket by a new friend, whom I met through Katina, one of the two year long JDC JSC fellows here. The match, incredibly enough, was with River, who was playing Godoy Cruz from the Mendoza region of Argentina. Although THE game to watch is with the BA rivals, last night's game, for me at least, was quite enough to give me a taste of what fútbol's really like here.
First of all, I had to be quite careful about what colors I wore. The only viable colors were white and red, the colors of River. Neutrals like brown or black are of course alright. Anything blue or even yellow would have secured my getting haggled a ton if not out right hurt, since these are the colors of Bocca and Godoy Cruz.
My new friend Avi and I took the subte to the last stop of the green line. We easily followed the red and white jerseys to the huge stadium about 15 blocks away. The security was incredibly tight, as we wound our way to the first barricade, passing a bunch of scalpers on the way. Realizing we had actually gone to the wrong side of the stadium we attempted to convince the police to let us cross the barricade to the other side... But this was not allowed. The barricade was one side of a sort of canal made for the fans of the opposing team. It was meant to protect them from River fans, and if we walked through it to get out on the opposite wall, we might have gotten hurt. Thus, we took the long way round, and passing through the checkpoint on the other side. Going through, I saw random people getting selected to have their finger prints taken. In the event that they turned out to be criminals, they wouldn't be let in to the stadium. Everyone is patted down after, guys and girls separately. Once we got through, our ticket was finally scanned and we entered the stadium.
To say the least, it was enormous, and the tickets, being a gift from a police officer, were really great. We were under shelter, (sitting on the bottom floor, shaded by the top tier of the stadium) with the middle class people, just to the right of one of the goals. Above us were seats for Godoy Cruz, and although it was raining a bit, I was informed that if I saw heavy rain.. it was probably them trying to pee on us. Luckily, we were sheltered either way! To my right were the expensive seats, and straight across on the top level were the 'locos,' the crazy fans, who file in at the last moment with drums, and who determine what chants to sing and when. No one starts a cheer until the locos do.
It is easy to say that the crowd was just as much fun to watch as the game. People went crazy, and even more so since River was able to win with a 5-0 victory! Everyone was jumping and singing River songs. I could see, even all away across the entire field, the locos, tiny specks to me, jumping up and down. Granted there was a ton of 'puta,' 'mierda,' and some other curses that I don't even know being thrown around by everyone, kids who were probably just about 6 included, but that just made the experience even better!
Although I have a few pictures, unfortunately taken by my phone since I was nervous about having a camera, they won't do the experience justice. Nothing can really show the enormity of the stadium or emit the intense passion and energy of the crowd.
Cool - do they still do that thing where they make one team's fans wait until 15 minutes after the other team's fans leave the stadium - to avoid fights?
ReplyDeleteHAHA yes they do indeed! We waited for about a half hour before we were safe to exit! :P
ReplyDelete