Banfield 0 Argentinos Juniors 2
My mum always says that football is just a bunch of blokes kicking a ball about. She’s not wrong. But she’s not quite right either. It is a bunch of blokes kicking a ball about but it’s also so much more. How else do you explain the deep disappointment, the hopes and expectations, the joy and the anger and the disappointment? I think I already mentioned the disappointment. That’s because I’m overflowing with the stuff after watching West Ham United, 2-0 up at half-time to mighty Manchester United, lose 4-2 at home to leave the claret and blues sitting sticky back in the relegation bottom three.
But then there was the unexpected joy just a few hours earlier of seeing Argentinos Juniors completely outplay Banfield to come away with a 2-0 win that leaves the bichos colorados in second place – at least until the rest of the weekend fixtures are played.
My ramblings raise an important question. Is it possible to support two football teams and feel the same joy, anger, disappointment etc. for both? Or does it make you a fickle, superficial, indecisive sort of chap?
Spilt loyalties?
There was a senior figure at the large organisation where I used to work who, in a national newspaper interview, said he supported two Premiership clubs. I remember thinking at the time: “That is a man I would not trust. He no doubt got where he got by snivelling and sliding through the oily passages that take a person to the top in a big organisation.”
Subsequent events proved me right. I would like to argue however that it is possible to feel similar levels of emotion for teams in different countries. Or even for teams in the same country but in different divisions, as long as they never draw one another in the cup.
My heart is with West Ham. But the cost and the no small matter of the Atlantic Ocean prevent me from getting from Buenos Aires to the London Borough of Newham. They are building an extension to the Linea B of the Buenos Aires subte but it doesn’t really make getting me onto the District Line any easier.
West Ham are known as the Academy for the long list of talented players they’ve nurtured, only to see them transferred to bigger clubs. Clubs, some would argue, that win things. Over the years, there have been many, too many. A quick glance at just a few of the top players now plying their trade in the Premiership illustrates my point. Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Michael Carrick, Rio Ferdinand, Glen Johnson, Jermain Defoe, Carlos Tevez to name just a few. OK, Tevez wasn’t quite nurtured at West Ham but I’d argue that he was primed there for a successful spell in English football.
Much the same story applies to Argentinos Juniors – the semillero or seed bed of Argentine football. The obvious name at the top of the list is that of Diego Maradona. But even without him, it’s pretty illustruous. Juan Román Riquelme, Juan Pablo Sorín, Esteban Cambiasso, Fabricio Coloccini, Fernando Redondo, Claudio Borghi and 1986 World Cup winner, Sergio Batista.
Since I live in Argentina and get infected by the football passion, I’ll shout for the national side. Until, of course, they meet England then there is no doubt where my loyalty lies. On the club side, the chances of West Ham ever meeting Argentinos Juniors are slim.
My kids have a tougher dilemma when it comes to national loyalties. Their mother is Argentine, they live here but they have lived over there. Their bedrooms are bedecked with posters celebrating the Argentina and England national teams and also West Ham and Argentinos Juniors.
Most of their sporadic visits to West Ham have ended in disappointment while we got to celebrate a championship win with Argentinos Juniors. Some weekends we endure double the misery or twice the joy.
No connection.
Manchester United turned around a dismal first half because they’ve got a manager in Alex Ferguson who knows how to turn things around when they’re not going his way. He brought on the Mexican Javier Hernandez at half time and Dimitri Berbatov shortly afterwards and the difference was immediate. Oh! And of course Wayne Rooney scored a hattrick. They took the game to West Ham. Our manager, Avram Grant, just continued in the second half as he had in the first and only made significant changes ten minutes before the end, bringing on Robbie Keane and Victor Obinna, when the game was already lost.
Pedro Troglio seems to have forged a team at Argentinos Juniors. Commentators say they play much the same way as the very entertaining side that won the title a year ago under Claudio Borghi. I don’t think the current crop of players is as good. There’s no Ismael Sosa or Nestor Ortigoza. But it’s a team. They’ve conceded just two goals in eight games. The goals they score tend to come from their opponents’ defensive errors which means, if they don’t make any, the games end 0-0. That’s been the outcome in three out of the eight games played this season.
The foundations are in place though for a team that probably won’t challenge for the title this season but might be worth placing a peso or two on for the next one. West Ham look good enough to stay up but time is running out.
It is just a bunch of blokes kicking a ball about. But that’s like saying ‘Picasso just daubed a load of colours onto a canvas’ or ‘Borges just scribbled a bunch of words onto a page.’ If it gets your heart racing, your tears flowing or you kicking your television set in frustration, then it’s art. Especially the way Mauro Bogado nodded in Argentinos Juniors’ clincher and Mark Noble slotted home West Ham’s second penalty. Ahhh!