River Plate vs Boca Juniors
Today we saw one of the most reknown football derbies of all times – River Plate vs Boca Juniors. These two teams are traditionally the most powerful agentinian teams and, being neighbours in Buenos Aires, also entertain a strong rivalry. This rivalry extends to Maradona, a Boca man, never visiting the River stadium except when the national side plays there, and it not being recommendable for River fans to wear team colours when walking in the La Boca neighborhood. Through sheer luck, the derby was on the first week-end I am here (I did extend my stay in BsAs by a couple of days to see the game), and it was thus with great anticipation that, after finally getting our hands on some tickets, six of us went to see the game at River’s stadium.
We sat in the River side of the stadium (Boca fans had only been allocated 4500 seats), in the seated sections (the “populares” were the first to sell out). The game itself was OK but not great – both teams were too fielded in recent years. However the fans were the stars of the show – the stadium was filled to capacity (65000), and I greatly extended my repertoire of Spanish insults thanks to the encyclopedic knowledge of my fellow supporters. I had also never seen a father so enthusiastically exhorting his 10 year-old son to shout profanities – all in all it was great fun, a great chance to see the kind of enthusiasm for football still unique to Latin America.