Futbol

There are 20 clubs in the 'A' professional soccer league in Argentina. Unlike professional sports in the U.S., where major cities have one or at most two teams, half or more of the top soccer clubs here are based in or near Buenos Aires and represent 'barrios' or neighborhoods. For example, Boca Juniors, the most well known, is from the southern neighborhood of La Boca, River Plate, the next most popular, is based on the north side of the city in Nunez, and San Lorenzo, is from Parque Chacabuco, where I am. Each club has its own stadium which can hold 20,000 to 30,000 persons. And they aren't always that far away from each other. For example, the next neighborhood over from Parque Chacabuco (literally less than a mile) is Parque Patricios/Pompeye which is the home of the club Huracan (Hurricane), who have the coolest art deco stadium and symbol (a giant weather balloon), then only two neighborhoods and less than two miles over from that is La Boca. Some of the clubs are 100 years old and to say the people who live there are passionate about their teams is an understatement. People grow up worshipping their club and go to or watch ever game religiously. And though I've seen lots of people wearing their neighborhood or club's jerseys downtown (which is neutral territory), you won't see many River Plate jerseys in Boca Junior's barrio and vice verse. It's not such a smart thing to do. Soccer games are controlled chaos. There are a ton police and they don't let the fans of the two teams mix. The visiting team fans enter the stadium separately and leave 30 minutes before the home team's fans get to leave. Literally, you have to hang out 30 minutes after the game is over and all of the visiting team fans are out of the neighborhood. This, to prevent fights. There are 4 sections of the stadium. One for 'normal' home team fans (meaning they are not drunk, shirtless and burning anything that's not concrete), one for the home team 'fanaticos' (who are drunk, shirtless and burning things), one for normal visiting team fans and one for the visiting team fanaticos. This is sunday afternoon futbol in Argentina. Today is a big day because there is a 3-way playoff going on between Boca Juniors, San Lorenzo and Tigre, who all won last weekend leaving a 3-way first place tie at the end of the season. On Wednesday, San Lorenzo beat Tigre 2-1, so if they win today they are the champions, and if not Boca Juniors will play Tigre. Rosana and I were in La Boca last weekend because my spanish teacher from San Francisco was here with a group touring and he managed to buy second hand tickets to the last game of the season and took some people from his group. Rosana and I weren't so brave - and they were expensive on top of that. But we hung out at a park for a while. Here is a pic of some kids who were playing soccer in the park. They were funny ... first they were playing soccer, then some other kids game along with small fireworks and they all shot of the fireworks, while yours truly was waiting for someone to loose a finger, then the fireworks were over and they started playing soccer again. I got the feeling that they hung out there all afternoon and early evening and weren't about to leave until their moms called them in for dinner.