Never did we make friendships
This is the welcome banner that would greet you as the opposing team when you enter La Bombonera (Boca Junior’s home stadium). Charming, arrogant, shameless. So sweetly Argentinian.
Last night we attended the last Boca Juniors home game until August. We didn’t stay in the sheltered tourist area, nor did we get numbered seats. We came in through the piss dripping back stairwells of the standing-only section to sing and dance with a mass of people so passionate about their football, I couldn’t help but feel jealous.
We sat in these stands just a few feet up from where this video was taken. Total chaos.
Where does all of this feeling come from? How can grown men shout so hard, sing so beautifully, dance and jump and scream like I’ve never seen in North America or Europe?
Football is a mysterious thing. Its lure and grandeur escaped us in Canada where all matter of sport and debauchery is centered around hockey. I’d always wanted to attend a football match in South America but had heard how difficult it is to find good, local tickets. We don’t do clean, tourist packages where you sit in a protected little box to watch the match as if it were on TV. We wanted to be thick in the chaos, in the noise, with the musk of emotion around us. So, when a friend mentioned a cheap, dodgy hostel offering available, we jumped on it. It’s the kind of package probably monitored by la doce but organized by local folk (It’s a known fact that all ‘foreigner’ tickets are handled and sold by the Boca hooligans, referred to as la doce). The ‘company’ who organized everything for us doesn’t have a website for ‘safety reasons’. Ha.
We gathered at a pick-up point until a rickety old school bus blasting reggaeton music came barreling around the corner to take us to a parilla and beer jaunt in a conventillo near La Bombonera. It’s like tailgating, Argentinian style. Then we were walked into the stadium in large groups, were searched more thoroughly than at an airport security line and passed through side streets and back allies that looked like war zones. Smoke, barricades and black-helmeted riot policemen at every corner. Fun!
As game time approached, the beat of drums echoed in the nearby streets. They have a band?! I asked. Yes, a marching band!, he answered sarcastically.
It was a band. Sort of. Actually, it was more like a mob 30,000 strong, jumping, chanting and screaming in tandem. It was the most musically talented mob I’d ever seen and for a few short minutes at a time, when I could copy the words, I jumped, chanted and screamed with them. I was a gringo local. A gringo, but still local for a short time.
To feel the heartbeat of a rabid stadium, to hear it, to smell it – there is nothing more powerful. Looking across the field at the ant-like figures of colour and sound, I felt moved. It was no longer about the players down on that grass. It was about the people. A show for the people, by the people. Families in their best blues and yellows gathering on a warm Sunday evening to cheer on a losing team. Babies on their daddy’s shoulders. Grandchildren, dads and granddads, three generations of men chanting, swearing and jumping all around us. It was madness and beauty.
I wish I understood more what it all meant. I was there, a part of the action, but still an outsider. Football as foreign as the language. Somehow I understood early on that it isn’t just about scoring goals. Even as we lost, the chanting and drums continued. 60,000 fans chanted and stood for 90 minutes. NINTEY MINUTES (I was completely knackered by half time)! If that’s not loyalty, I don’t know what is.
And wow, I learned a whole slew of new Castellano!
Hijo de puta! Hijo de puta!
Dale, gordo! Puta! Puta madre!
and a little more sweetly, translated …
Boca my best friend
this tournament we are going to be with you
we support you with our heart
This tournament we are going to be champions
I don’t care that they say
what the others say
I follow you everywhere
I love you more and more
