City Experiences, Featured Content

Buenos Aires Football, Fecha 5 Comes to a Close

Sam Kelly

By | March 18, 2011

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The jewel in the crown of Argentina’s sporting landscape, the domestic football league, continues apace, and is now five rounds old. It’s a league which is notoriously hard to predict in comparison with others around the world, but so far even by its normal standards, the First Division campaign is proving a surprising one.

When Racing’s key man, fan favourite and best player Giovanni Moreno got injured in the second round, away to All Boys, and was put out for six months, their hopes of a championship challenge were supposed to dry up. But not only has another Colombian stepped up to rocket into the nation’s footballing consciousness, but the rest of the team have suddenly started playing some really fantastic stuff as a collective. From feeling depressed at losing their talisman, the club are now so optimistic that Moreno gave an interview last week in which he claimed, ‘I’m a bit pissed off because the team are going to win the championship, and I won’t be able to play a part in it.’

The optimism continued for Racing on the weekend just gone as they traveled to Santa Fe Province to take on Colón. Traditionally, Colón have been a very tough prospect in their own ground. In the 1960s, they beat some of the great sides of South American football, including Pelé’s Santos, in the Copa Libertadores (South America’s answer to Europe’s Champions League, or European Cup as it was then known). Over the last twelve months or so, though, they’ve been woeful at home, and the nickname of their stadium – ‘The Elephants’ Graveyard’ – is ripe for mockery these days. All the same, the manner in which Racing simply dismantled their hosts, 4-0, was quite something.

Buenos Aires Football Soccer

Racing Club going crazy!

Two of those goals came from new Colombian star Teófilo Gutiérrez, a former top scorer in the Colombian league who arrived in Buenos Aires a couple of months ago after a mixed twelve months playing in Turkey. Teo, as the fans here have named him, is fully aware of how good he is, but most Racing fans would just love him to stick around long enough to play in tandem with their other Colombian Gio when Moreno returns from injury.

As for me, I headed to the north of the city on Sunday to watch my team, River Plate, for the first time this year. River had a difficult pre-season during which goalkeeper Juan Pablo Carrizo picked up an injury that was expected to keep him out for three months. In spite of having to play youngster Leandro Chichizola between the sticks, they went the first four matches without conceding a goal, and were confident at kick off against Vélez Sarsfield. Vélez are arguably the best footballing side in Argentina (or were, before Racing’s recent renaissance), but had some bad luck and poor play at the start of the year, and River were confident of getting a result.

It turned out to be a pretty even match, decided unfortunately by Chichizola’s blunder before half time, when he missed a clearance and allowed Vélez’s hardman Uruguayan striker Santiago Silva to score. Although River equalized with a penalty just after half time, and matched their opponents for most of the match, they made a hash of clearing a loose ball after Chichizola had rushed out to block a shot late on, and Silva took advantage of the chaos in the box to stab home a winner for Vélez, who won 2-1.

It was a muted atmosphere in the Estadio Monumental after the match. Probably the most tiresome thing about going to games in Argentina is the policing policy of keeping home fans inside the stadium until the visiting support have been shuttled off to what’s considered a safe distance from the ground, to prevent clashes. It works, undeniably, but it does mean that in a ground the size of River’s one can often be standing around for forty minutes after the final whistle, and of course when the team have just lost everyone just wants to get home. All the same, River manager J.J. López’s summary, namely that it was an even game which either side could have won after the equalizer, was about right. River may have lost for the first time in a good while, but they’ve definitely improved a lot since López took charge last year.

The other big footballing story of the week was Wednesday night’s friendly between an Argentina representative side and Venezuela. It would be misleading to call Argentina’s team the ‘national side’, even though that’s what the AFA insist they were. The squad was made up entirely of players from the local league, and was hardly even the best of those (for one thing, players involved in midweek action for their clubs in the continent-wide Copa Libertadores weren’t included). The match acted, though, as the curtain-raiser to the brand new Estadio Bicentenario (Stadium of the Bicentenary) in San Juan, the capital city of the Province of the same name. It’ll be used during the Copa América, the South American championship for national teams, which this July is taking place in Argentina, and which I’ll write about here on Landing Pad in a little more detail closer to the time.

The actual match, by the way, was won 4-1 by Argentina, with Boca Juniors’ representatives on the side – Cristian Chávez and Pablo Mouche – scoring three goals between them; one more than Boca as a team have managed so far in the Torneo Clausura. This Sunday, Boca host Olimpo, struggling against relegation but doing well so far this year. Olimpo conceding plenty, but have been free-scoring as well, so even if Boca do improve on their goal ratio, they might not necessarily be any better off for it if they’re too careless at the other end. We’re all set for another chapter in what’s becoming an intriguing championship.

Sam Kelly
LandingPadBA Football Extraordinaire

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