booths, the crowd surges forward en masse, forcing dozens of armed police into action with their shields. As the jubilant River fans emerge from the scrum, one by one they kiss their tickets before holding them aloft like trophies and exchanging high fives and celebratory hugs with others. It’s as though they’ve already won the match in question, even though it’s still two days away and it’s not being played here but at on the other side of town at La Bombonera (‘the Chocolate Box’), home of River’s bitter rivals Boca Juniors. But this, you see, is no ordinary match. This is El Superclassico (‘the super derby’) and River’s allocation of 11,000 tickets will be snapped up in next to no time.
So big is El Superclassico that to the media this week’s anti-capitalist demonstrations in Buenos Aires, sparked by an impending free-trade convention in the city, is a mere side show in comparison to the main event. Television chat shows and radio phone-ins are dominated by Boca-River this week and for the next few days, Argentina’s top sports newspaper Olé will dedicate ten pages of editorial to the clash each day. Also, on every wall around the city is a poster published by Argentina’s weekly football magazine El Graphico bearing the red and white shirt of River, the yellow and blue shirt of Boca, and the words Se Viene – ‘It’s Coming.’
Argentina’s two biggest and most successful clubs have met 166 times before this week – Boca winning sixty-one, River fifty-five – and have been fierce rivals since 1923 when River moved from La Boca, a cosmopolitan, working-class neighbourhood where both teams then resided. Since 1944, River have played in Nuñez, also known as Barrio River (‘Neighbourhood River’), a middle-class neighbourhood some ten kilometres north west of La Boca, up the River Plate from which the club takes its name. They have since been dubbed the middle-class team.
Although most people will tell you this class divide no longer applies, the rivalry remains just as intense. For example, River’s kit manufacturers are sportswear giants Adidas, with their biggest rivals Nike doing the honours for Boca, so you’ll rarely see River fans wearing Nike gear, nor Boca fans donning the Adidas logo. As for wearing the colours of your rival team, well that’s totally out of the question. The only apparent contradiction in the rivalry is the fact that both teams are sponsored by Quilmes, Argentina’s most popular beer.
So deep do emotions run between these two that we’ve barely stepped off the plane when my translator Pablo, an ardent River fan, greets us with some words of warning: ‘Get ready for a war.’ Sadly, ‘war’ is an all too accurate description of some of the scenes that have marred Boca–River fixtures in the past. In June 1968, seventy-four fans were killed at El Monumental when Boca supporters caused panic by throwing burning paper onto the home fans beneath them. More recently, in 1994, a busload of River fans was ambushed several miles away from the ground, resulting in two of them being shot dead. River had won the game 2–0 and for days afterwards graffiti appeared around Buenos Aires reading ‘River 2 Boca 2.’
These crimes of passion are committed by the Barra Bravas (‘tough gangs’), Argentina’s notorious hooligan groups. River’s Barras, Los Borrachos del Tablón (‘The Drunks from the Board,’ a name derived from the days when the terraces were wooden planks on which the fans bounced up and down), have succeeded the Boca hooligans, La Doce (‘The Twelve’, so called because the fans believe they are the team’s 12th player), as Argentina’s most feared gang.
For both sets of Barras, El Superclassico is the season’s most important game. ‘On balance, most fans would rather beat La Boca than win the championship,’ says Matias, a 24-year-old River Barra, motorcycle courier, and trainee lawyer, who was brought up in Palermo, a middle-class neighbourhood not far from El Monumental. ‘It is more important to beat Boca on their own turf,’ he explains. And this week, they’ll get the chance.
Down at La Bombonera in the newly opened Boca Juniors museum I ask an assistant whether Boca fans share the same sentiments when it comes to beating River. ‘Are you kidding?’ he replies. ‘There was a party round here when River lost on Wednesday [in the Copa de Libertores to Uruguayan side The Strongest]. I’d rather Boca beat River and ruin their chances of winning the championship than Boca lose to River and win the championship ourselves.’ With River five points clear at the top of the table and Boca loitering near the bottom, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
As the fans gear themselves up for what is their cup final the players are trying to keep some sense of perspective. The River players, in particular, are doing their level best not to get caught up in the hysteria. ‘I know this game means a lot to both the fans and the players,’ says River’s diminutive playmaker Ariel Ortega, known as El Burrito (‘the Little Donkey, because he hails from Ledesma in the north of Argentina where there are no horses, only donkeys). ‘But I want to make it clear that I would never trade a championship for a single victory against Boca.’
With only a day to go, the whole of Buenos Aires is consumed by the game, which is staggering given that twelve of Argentina’s nineteen top division clubs play in the capital and its surrounding area. ‘River-Boca is a national derby, there are fans of both clubs all over the country,’ explains Juan Sasturain, a journalist and author – Argentina’s answer to Nick Hornby, according to Pablo. ‘When River play Boca you can bet your life there will be a fan of each team, up in the north of Argentina near the Bolivian border, stood in their replica shirts fighting,’ adds Sasturain.
‘In general, if you are not a Boca fan, you are anti-Boca. Boca have something socially irritating about them, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they have fans from so far and wide.’ A bit like Manchester United then.
So, Boca are widely recognised as the country’s best supported club. But which of the two clubs is the biggest? ‘I cannot say because they’re both very different in terms of history and image,’ says Sasturain. ‘Historically, River is stylish and offensive; Boca is the opposite – heart and strength. River is money and the middle classes; Boca is popularity and the working classes.’
As the game draws ever closer even Ortega, who was admirably circumspect only yesterday, gets caught up in the media hyperbole. In a bet with celebrity broadcaster and Boca fan Alejandro Fantino, Ortega has agreed to dye his hair green if River lose. In turn, Fantino will dye his hair bright red if Boca lose. Worried he might lose the bet, Fantino asks Boca midfielder Antonio Barijho, who regularly dyes his hair (blond being the current colour of choice), which brand of dye he should buy. ‘Don’t bother buying any, you won’t need it,’ says a confident Barijho, who instead insists Fantino should tell Ortega to dye his hair in the blue and yellow of Boca if River lose.
‘Ortega would have no hair left if he’d made the same bet over the past few seasons,’ says Barijho, and it’s a valid point. River have lost six of the previous ten meetings between the two, winning only one. Has Ortega bitten off more than he can chew?
Certainly Boca’s is the more relaxed camp on the eve of the game. Whereas their training sessions at La Bombonera are open to both press and public, up at El Monumental we have to rely on sneaking through an unguarded gate to watch the River players being put through their paces. That is until an angry security guard boots us out.
On leaving La Bombonera the evening before the game, having collected our tickets, a security guard calls us over; our pale skin, short trousers, and cameras are dead give-aways that we are not from round these parts. ‘Tell them to be careful,’ he says to Pablo. ‘There is a strange atmosphere around this week.’
So tense is the mood now that with the game imminent, Pablo says he feels uncomfortable being in enemy territory, even though he’s not wearing River colours. He’s in far less danger than one misfit we see ducking into a house, wearing River’s red and white replica shirt. ‘He’s a brave man,’ says Pablo, who has thus far
