Superclasico!!! - River Plate v Boca Juniors
Trip Start
Oct 06, 2010
1
28
77
Trip End
Mar 14, 2011
Where I stayed
Apartment on San Martin
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
7pm Tuesday 16th November 2010
River Plate Stadium
The Background
This football match is the biggest derby march in Argentina and arguably the whole of South America. And now in my view its the crazy match in the world!!
These two teams and their fans hate each other. Iīm pretty sure the story goes that River Plate was formed by ex-members of Boca Juniors way back in the early 1900īs. Boca represents the poorer side of Buenos Aires in the area south of the centre. Whereas River Plate represents the wealthier neighbours in the area to the north of the centre. The rivalry between these teams therefore is not just in footballing terms, but also in class and social stature in Buenos Aires. Boca Juniors are more well known around the world due to Diego Maradona playing for them in his younger days.
The Game
Guish picked us around 2pm to take us to the ground. He had made arrangements for us to get tickets from a tout. 400 pesos was the fee. Pretty steep but still a no-brainer for football fans like us. As it turned out the 6 of us (Guish, Ma, Robbo, Matt, Jesse and I) were going to be sitting in different places. Jesse went with the ticket toutīs sons into the nutters section of Boca fans, and Guish, Robbo and Matt went to the not quite so nutters Boca section. They were all sitting in the upper tier of the stadium at one end fenced in and separated from the River fans.
Meanwhile Ma and I ended up in the River Plate nutters section directly underneath the Boca nutters section. When we got inside after 3 rounds of security checks an old fella took our tickets and lead us to a spot underneath the upper tier. Initially I thought it would be good to be down with the fans closer to the fence as they were louder and it looked like fun. Later on youīll see the old fella knew what he was doing and we were grateful. We couldnīt see any other gringos in our area and we didnīt for the whole time we were there. Nobody has assigned seats. Itīs just first in first served. By the time the game started people would be standing in the aisles as well.
The atmosphere was already pumping when we arrived and that was just the crowd watching the junior game!! As the start time approached the fans packed into the stadium and various activities took place. One was the unfolding of a giant River Plate flag that covered the whole end of the stadium. The unfolding and refolding was a masterpiece of team work. It would take about 30 seconds to unfold, they would wave it about for another 30 seconds and then fold it back up in another 30 seconds. A seriously impressive feat that I put up there with Americas Cup sailers working their magic on sails in terms of teamwork. The other main activity was the singing and taunting been the fans. Flares, fireworks and blow up dolls started flying around the stadium and when the River Plate team came out the smoke filled the stadium and we couldnīt see the ground for a couple of minutes. Sitting amongst the River fans the singing was filled with passion when they sung about River and full of vitrol and spite when singing about Boca.
The game itself was pretty average in the first half. It need a goal and River duly obilged in the middle of the second half. The goal lifted the roof off the stadium. The River fans went crazy and so did Ma and I (Just check out the video). You would think the Boca fans would go quiet but it wasnīt so. In fact it was quite the opposite. They sang louder than before, while they also began to rip up the stadium and throw it at the Rivers fans below, along with flares an fireworks. It was complete madness at this point. Instead of getting out of the way the River fans stood there throwing abuse back at the Boca fans. We saw (and have videos) of flares flying straight into the crowd and setting the seats on fire. The River fans would just move out the way or alternatively pick up the seats that had been thrown at them and us them as helmets, while they continued to taunt their Boca rivals.
The game continued in the background as a sideshow to the main event in the stands. Neither Ma or myself can remember watching any football for the 15 minutes after the goal. In the end River Plate won 1-0. At the final whistle the place went crazy again. The atmosphere was electric for the whole night. Iīve never witnessed any football match or event with such an air of excitement and passion mixed with the threat of violence and danger of injury. That said, I never saw anybody get injured and the emergency services (they were all there including the riot police) just sat and watched mostly, apart from the occasional fire that had to put out near the ground itself.
After the game all the River fans were kept from leaving for close to an hour while the Boca fans were given the opportunity to get out of the area.
It was a theatre of madness where the battle was on the park but the war was fought in the stands.
It was a special day. Definitely a major highlight so far and well worth diverting my trip to meet up with the football lads in BA.
Special Note
Iīve taken the time to load videos as they are crucial to get an understanding to the atmosphere. There are 3 videos, two of which I took from my seat. One with the River fans celebrating the goal and one the victory. The third was shot by Matt from above to give the perspective of the Boca section and the rain of fire they sent towards the River fans. There are also some of Mattīs pictures at the end. Otherwise the pictures an videos are shown in the order they were taken.
Comments
Madness!
awesome! i went to go see a velez vs tigre futbol game and it was awesome too! but definitely not as crazy!