Two small islands and one world cup

Those who know me will know I’m not a great football fan. Rare is the Monday morning when I’ve turned up at work to discuss the thrilling victory of Wembley Rovers over Blackburn Wanderers in the second round of the Burpagain Cup, when Igor Staxacashovic scored with a glorious curling left foot strike in the dying moments of the game.

And when I see some irritatingly pretty, over paid, over oiled, theatrical southern European plunge to the floor in transports of agony when some defender presumes to come within a foot of his bootlace, I get frankly very irate. You are being paid US$150,000 a week to generate static electricity for three hours: get off the bloody floor. As do many of those of whom proper fans despair, I’ll only really pay attention to England in the World Cup. And over the last 20 years that has hardly been an experience likely to create a die hard new fan, let’s face it.

But even I know that Latin America takes its football Very Seriously Indeed. So when I saw a notice in our hostel advertising tickets to River Plate’s first game of the season (against Banfield), I immediately roped in Doug, who happened to be passing, and bought two.

Doug is a chap for whom football is a game where two gents the size of Challenger tanks, and clad in a very similar amount of armour, will run head first into each other at a combined speed of 25mph for the great amusement of the crowd. Now I am no critic of American football. Yes, admittedly a game tends to last an entire geological era, and a few of these fellas might struggle to keep trotting round the field for more than ten minutes at a time. But I doubt any of the British carpers who say the armour makes the players wusses would dare say that to their faces. They put their bodies on the line, unlike the aforementioned perfumed Portuguese, and all that sumo slapping that happens in lines after the man shouts “hup” is highly entertaining.

Anyhow, all this means neither of us is entirely sure what to expect.

The answer was, for the first 90 minutes at least, not a lot. After a security check pretty similar to a Tel Aviv flight, we file into the red and white stadium to discover it’s really rather empty. It’s just after 3pm and kick off is at four isn’t it? Nope, five. We’re in the women-and-children, safety-first, clean-language-please stand by the looks of it, which is aimed at stopping idiot tourists like us getting ourselves murdered. Which is fine by me. But it does mean we’re shepherded in extremely early to keep us out of the press of the proper fans. We spend four to five pm watching them fill up their stand opposite, pictured at the top of this page.

There’s a curious empty space in the middle under those streaking banners till just minutes before the game. Then a band of brass and drums marches in to fill it, sparking the stand – and whole stadium – into song. 50,000 people and a few million tons of concrete throbbing with the sound of it. Quite something. The band is the hard core of the fans, musical hooligans. Nobody takes their seats because he’d find himself wearing a bass drum as a hat in very short order. I’m impressed by the stamina too. The thumping and roaring begin now and are still going 45 minutes after the final whistle, having scarcely stopped throughout.

The players run on through an inflatable tube so they can’t be bombarded with coins. The opposition fans are barricaded in the stand above us behind an 8ft high cage topped with reels of barbed wire. That’s because, by minute ten, even the mother with her boys of four and six behind me would gladly pull the head off any one of them who fancied it. This is Not. Just. A game.

Football stands the world over are home to a robust and lively nationalism. I’ve never watched an England-Germany game without some wag sniggering about two World Wars and one World Cup. “Hey, Ali,” says Doug under his breath, “isn’t that the Falklands?”

Now I assume, even though his corrective eye surgery went very well, that he can’t actually see over a mass of concrete and several thousand miles of land and sea, so following his pointed finger I see – yes, indeed, a big banner of the Falklands, painted in pale blue and white stripes. An odd and not entirely pleasant sensation, I have to say; it’s still an extremely sore point here, as much graffiti and many public memorials and protests have made clear to us. (Curiously, Argentina’s railways were built with British capital. And the hawk eyed among you will notice that our two teams today, River Plate and Banfield, sound a tad less Spanish than Real Madreeth and Barthelona. Even if you pronounce it “Ree-vairrr Playeet”, as we cognoscenti do.)

Just as I’m no great football fan, so I also tend to the last-refuge-of-scoundrels school of thought on patriotism. I think the issue should be put to a referendum among the sheep of the Falklands, who are in a pretty hefty majority there after all, and both sides should honour the outcome. But I saw Hugo Chavez on the news yesterday talking about oil drilling off the islands (quite what it has to do with him, I have no idea, but there we are) and suddenly it makes a little more sense that Maggie felt we needed to cling on desperately to two wind blown dots in the southern ocean about as far from Britain as you can get. Naturally it’s impossible for anybody to be pleasant and diplomatic if oil is involved. Hey ho.

Taking the eighties as a whole, though, I’m not sure the Argentinians came off too badly. We got two islands, and they – after the infamous Hand of God episode – got a World Cup. Call it a draw. And in fact it might be interesting to poll young Britons today to see which they’d prefer we’d won.

In the second quarter, when things are not looking good for the home side, the ref produces a fabulously myopic decision and awards the free kick to the Banfield player who’d committed the act of GBH in the first place. This buffoon of an official has a death wish.

When 50,000 unanimous bellows of indignation and rage subside, behind me a man with an enornmous red and white hat, an enormous belly and a voice more enormous than both, expresses a strong opinion on the subject loud enough to carry right across our stand. I don’t speak Spanish really. I take the French and Italian I know, guess a certain amount, and manage. Every single one of the filthiest Italian words I’ve ever heard feature in this man’s outburst. I don’t get all the nuances but it’s clear both the ref’s mother and wife have entered the debate. His face is as scarlet as the stripes on his shirt and beside him his wife seems to have her hands over their son’s ears. A wasted effort, I feel, since this delicate little plant is waving his wee fists around and has a venomous look on his face. A weekend out for all the family! I’m beginning to enjoy this hugely.

Banfield have the better of the first 20 minutes, with most of the possession and all of the decent shots on goal. Without some startling feats of acrobatics and unpowered flight by Daniel Vega,  the River goalie, in fact, they’d be at least two nil down. Perhaps a little collective shame sinks in, as they then begin to get their act together somewhat.

But Banfield are good on the counter attack and a rapid one of these, ten minutes before half time, sees Banfield score right under the noses of the River fans. For the last 40 minutes there has been a constant pounding and hollering rolling round the stadium. Suddenly, for two whole seconds, there is total silence. It’s astonishing. Then, just as suddenly, the red and white army erupts back into life, louder than ever: if they can just muster the decibels, the equalizer must surely come.

By the 80th minute, it still hasn’t. Things are looking a little desperate for River. They throw everything at it, attack after attack. Cross after cross cleared. One over the bar, one dramatic save, will nothing go in?

Just moments from the clock turning red on 90:00, River’s best shot of the game. Slices through the defence. Goalie full stretch – beaten! It whistles just inches wide of the post… The sound that follows doesn’t start in throats. It comes straight from the molten centre of the earth, up through the foundations of the stands, through 50,000 navels (jiggling my innards thoroughly) and jets out of our mouths all on its own: “OOOOOOOoooooooooh”.

Rather improbably, I’ve grabbed my ears with the excitement and seem to be pulling them off. My knees have folded up spontaneously under my chin, which would account for why I’ve not leapt to my feet as so many others have. There are other seated ear pullers, I notice. The leapers tear their hair out. Curious. Just for that moment, football is quite the most vital, compelling and excruciating thing in my world.