Club Atletico Boca Juniors

¡Hola Amigos!

One Sunday evening in Argentina, I witnessed probably the most impressive sporting spectacle that I will ever see: a Boca Juniors game. We had a little trouble figuring out what time the game was. You've all been in the situation where everyone you ask gives you a different time; we had start times ranging from 4:00pm until 9:00pm. We were starting to get desperate when we walked by a noisy sports bar in some back alley. I popped in and asked the first gent I saw if he knew the proper time. He did, ("it's at six-thirty and you'd better get there quickly if you want tickets!"), so we dumped our stuff at the hostal and jumped on a bus for the stadium. There had been some heated debate between the two of us about which bus to take, and weren't a hundred percent sure that in the end we had taken the correct one, but the minute we boarded our worries were allayed. I'd say that 50-60 percent of the people on the bus were wearing some form of Boca Juniors apparel, and there was barely standing room. We and everyone else got off at La Boca, and because we didn't know where to go, we followed three teenagers wearing jerseys to the ticket line. I didn't bring my camera to the game because although La Boca is touristy during the day, it is a rather dangerous neighborhood after dark. To illustrate my point, when we were walking to the ticket line I watched as a man taped the passenger window of a sedan, turned around and used his butt to break the glass, then reached in and tore out the stereo. The whole thing took about 30 seconds. We reached the ticket line (heavily supervised by the police), and bought our tickets. I can't remember if they were seven dollars or seven pesos, but the price was irrellevant. The spectacle was worth the price of the plane ticket.

The home stadium of the Boca Juniors, the Bombonera, resides in La Boca, Buenos Aires. The stadium was built in May of 1940 and seats 57,400. It is very large, very imposing, and very concrete (i'm not speaking figuratively here--it's constructed almost entirely of reinforced concrete). We entered the staduim at about quarter till 6, and were subjected to the most thorough pat-down of our lives. I think a pat-down equally thorough in the states would generate a number of harassment suits. Not that I'm complaining; to the contrary I was quite glad for the security. We entered the concrete behemoth and headed up the steps to our seats. We had intentionally purchased tickets in the "popular" section (general seating) because we figured it would be more interesting. Boy were we right.

The stadium has three main levels that span three sides of the stadium. On the fourth side are the box seats. As in most stadiums, the upper levels overhang the lower ones. The popular section is located on one end of the field behind the goal, middle level. We walked around for a while trying to find a place to sit, and eventually worked our way to a seat. What I really mean by this is that we peered over a railing into a pit of blue and yellow for about 10 minutes, then pushed and shoved our way down through the masses to a vacant patch of concrete the size of a large book. In the popular section there are neither seats, nor aisles (that's not entirely true, there are aisles but they are virtually indistinguishable from the seats and therefore are completely disregarded and used as extra seating). Scattered intermittently throughout are large yellow railings that run horizontal to the stairs. (They´re not vertical like a railing you would expect to border an aisle; more like one that would separate the walkway at the top from the seats--you know, the one you lean on when you eat your hot dog at the ball game.) More on the railings later. Anyway, we sat and waited for the game to start.

As we sat I looked across the length of the field to the section wearing red apparel: the "away" section. It is located on the second deck of the opposite end of the field from the "popular" section, and the location is not coincidental. Surrounding the visitors seating are ten-foot high walls topped with a 5 foot steel fence with sharp points, and above that circular razor and barbed wire. During the game the section was surrounded by about 20-30 police officers in full riot gear. Clearly, there have been some incidents in the past. After the game the visitors were let go immediately, and the "popular" section was released about 20 minutes later...the last seating section allowed out of the stadium.

At about 6:10, the majority of the popular section got to it's feet and began to sing. Things didn't really get going though until 6:20, when the already high energy stadium was infused with the heart-hammering vibrations of a 7-8 man bass drum core. Standing and singing had been a mere suggestion until this point, but once the heavy thudding of the straight-eighth bass drum beats began it suddenly became mandatory. Four guys stood up on the railing in front of Luke and I. To keep balanced, they grabbed hold of a huge banner that ran over the tops of the railings from top to bottom of the popular section. Led by the brave (or crazy) folks on the railing, the whole section began to sing. Keep in mind that this started 10 minutes before the players had even come onto the field. Anyway, I'm up to my neck in this sea of blue and yellow. Standing on a railing in front of me are at least 4 crazed porteños (a porteño is a resident of Buenos Aires), and there are so many bloody banners everywhere I can hardly see. I'd estimate that at any given moment, I could see about 60% of the field. There was no scoreboard, and if there was an announcer, I couldn't hear him. Clearly this experience would not be about watching the game. In fact, one kid in front of me didn't watch a single minute of the game. He stood the whole time with his back to the field singing at the top of his lungs and waving his arms.

So back to these songs. Each song is led by the bass drums, and each is sung for an average of 7-10 minutes. Usually by the time we changed songs I had caught on to about 90% of the lyrics. Now I need to be clear with this; we're not talking about some wussy C-H-I, L-E, ¡Viva Chile! chants. From ten minutes before the players came onto the field until fifteen minutes after the game had ended the entire popular section was on its feet, singing at the top of its lungs. The volume never diminished. Nobody sat down. It was ridiculous. At one point, there seemed to be a bit of a ruckus to my right. I thought maybe a fight had broken out or something, so I asked the girl next to me what was going on. Her reply? "They're not singing." We both cracked up. (Luke thought this girl was just about the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his whole life. Problem was he was standing directly behind me and directly next to her thug-looking boyfriend. Sorry Luke.)

What really got me were the lyrics of the songs. This one was popular, and illustrates my point well (I didn't remember all these lyrics, nor did I catch 100% of them when they were sung by thousands of rowdy Argentinian soccer fans. I looked them up online.)

Boca mi buen amigo esta campaña (Boca my good friend to this campaign)
volveremos a estar contigo, (we will return to be with you)
te alentaremos de corazón, (we will encourage your heart)
esta es tu hinchada que te quiere ver campeón (this is your fans that want to see you champion)
no me importa lo que digan, (it doesn't matter to me what they say)
lo que digan los demás, (what the others say)
yo te sigo a todos partes y cada vez te quiero más. (I follow you everywhere and every time I love you more.)

The translation on that is not perfect, but I think it captures the gist---these are some diehard fans we're dealing with. Most songs begin with the declaration that the singer is in fact a Boca fan. Following is a series of statements that about the never-ending support of said fan, the committment to the team, the unimportance of winning versus losing, and the promise to follow the team wherever it will go. Usually there is also a statement about how inevitable it is that the team will win; my favorite says something along the lines of "if you play with huevos (balls) you can't lose". At the end is another statement of undying love/undying support/etc. I'm not sure if its a conincidence or not that the Boca Juniors play every SUNDAY.

Also while I'm here I'd like to make the point that I didn't see a single drunk fan the entire game. I have witnessed all too many times the drunken crowd dynamic that comes with college football, and this experience was absolutely the opposite. These fans didn't need a BAC that resembles Shaq's free throw percentage to get excited about their team; all they needed was a Sunday afternoon and a bass drum core. Case in point: one of the guys on the railing in front of me looked like the type of bloke that has probably beaten someone senseless with a blunt metal object, or at the very least been present when the act was committed. He was about 24, very well-built and wearing a white wifebeater. He had three prominent scars on his face: one above his left eye, another on his cheek, and a gigantic chunk missing from his chin. I never saw him smile, and the look of ferocity in his eyes never really left. Nevertheless, he was completely sober and he stayed on that railing for 90 minutes of play, shouting at the top of his lungs and encouraging his fellow fans. I really wish I had his photo, but I don't really think I would have been comfortable asking this bloke to pose for a picture.

By far the most impressive Boca fan was the 50 year old guy about 8 rows behind us. He had fashioned a rope to support himself on the railing (instead of using the ever-popular banners). He would alternately whistle loudly (the really deafening finger-in-mouth-whistle) the melodies of all the songs and sing. Why does he win most impressive? When was the last time you saw a 50 year old man with ONE LEG standing on a railing supported by nothing more than a rope for 90 minutes? I bet never.

Anyway, Boca Juniors won 3-1, although I'm not absolutely sure on the score. Like I said, it didn't really matter. Between the people on the railings and the huge banners blocking the field, I could only see about 60 percent of what was happening. I grabbed some photos from the internet to give a general idea of what a spectacle these games are. Enjoy.

This shot of the "popular" section gives a pretty good perspective because you can see the guys standing on the railings. We were sitting right smack in the middle of this section.

Popular section once again. When we went, instead of flying the flag from the top level to the bottom, it was simply used to cover all of the middle section. Luke and I were underneath it with a bunch of sweaty Argentinians for about 4 minutes. It was a riot.

Popular section, again. The banners from the third deck down to the secondblock quite a bit of the view.

Looking at this photo you might be able to figure out why it was that we were only able to find seats on the second deck, middle. All the absolute madness eminates starts there.

ya me voy, Andrius