La Boca!!!! April 5th

Back in Buenos Airies on the saturday for the Club Athletico Boca Juniors game vs. Banfield. Boca, while being in a poor area of BA, are the superstar club in Argentina having won the Sth American equivalent of the Champions League more than any other team.


The Boca stadium is huge, well at least 3 sides of it is, as the club ran out of money during the building of it so had to make the stadium rectangular shaped rather than the normal oval. Three sides are stands, with the remaining side only having about 4 rows of seats, the corporates and the tv cameras. The shape gives it the name "La Bombonera" The lollie. The Boca colours came from the clubs founders stating they would adopt the nation´s colours of the first ship that came into the port - the ship was Swedish so the shirts and stadium are blue and yellow.


We were picked up by Phillipe, one of a bunch of tour operators offering tourists the Boca experience but shielded from the worst of the stadium madness. Upon arriving at the stadium, we were herded into a nice, clean, and very tacky tourist 'holding pen' where you could buy merchandise, food and generally keep us away from the rest of the fans for much of the build up. Going in with the masses, the security is pretty lax and we found our seats up in the gods of the concrete jungle which did give a great view of the crowd and stadium. Boca reserves won the warm up, by the end of which the stadium was pretty full and the noise was rising.


The noise when the team came out was deafening. The Boca fans are incredible. Not for a second did the drummimg, singing, cheering, or whistling (when Banfield dared to touch the ball) stop. There is a whole section of the fans playing drums and trumpets, with that end of the ground seeing virtually none of the game as they are constantly singing and dancing. The Banfield first goal was vitually ignored other than by their away fans. As Boca scored and pushed for the win we got to experience the stadium in full flight and understand why the fans have the saying the stadium doesn't shake.... it beats. The 1 all draw was not the ideal result but the armosphere and fans were a true experience. The football may not have been as good as arsenal but the premiership could do with some of the latin american passion!