After eight World Cup qualifying matches, Argentina remain top of the South American Football Confederation table (CONMEBOL) despite a disappointing 1-1 draw in Peru last night.

Carlos Zambrano gave the home side the lead in the 22^nd minute, before Gonzalo Higuain pulled one back shortly before half time.

It was Peru who looked more likely to take the win though, and were only denied by the heroics of Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Romero, who produced a fine performance including a first half penalty save.

Whilst coach Alejandro Sabella was unable to field a full strength team, his side still contained the likes of Lionel Messi, Ezequiel Lavezzi, and Angel Di Maria.

Messi was particularly anonymous and failed to perform at his best in the face of aggressive Peruvian marking throughout, prompting his manager to declare post-match that “he is human.”

“He cannot always play perfectly,” continued Sabella, who will be concerned by the poor performance of players in almost all positions. Argentina can be thankful for Higuain’s proficiency in front of goal, which saved them from losing their top spot in the league.

Elsewhere, Colombia’s talisman, Radamel Falcao Garcia, continued his rich vein of form, producing a man of the match performance to ensure a 3-1 victory over Chile. The win gives Colombia a valuable 3 points, leaving them second in the group standings.

Meanwhile Paraguay have a mountain to climb if they are to qualify, after they fell to a fourth consecutive defeat at the hands of Venezuela, and currently lie in last position.

Uruguay held Ecuador to a 1-1 draw in Montevideo. The result leaves Ecuador in third place, level on 13 points with Colombia.

The league remains tight at the top with 3 points separating the top 6 teams. The next round of matches sees Argentina play Uruguay in a key match that will be played at the Estadio Malvinas Argentinas in Mendoza on 12^th October.

The Federal Administration of Public Income (AFIP) is investigating the alleged tax evasion in the transfer of 444 footballers here in Argentina. Among those in the hot seat are Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero and Barcelona’s Javier Mascherano.

“An investigation is under way concerning supposed (tax) evasion in transfers of footballers,” a senior judicial source told the American Free Press (AFP) on Monday.

The announcement of the investigation comes after the suspension of 146 players’ agents on 24th August. AFIP has been looking into what it calls irregular deals since the transfer window closed last month.

“(The AFIP) suspended 146 footballer representatives and go-betweens with an irregular fiscal situation since they have not declared the corresponding commission charged for the operations they took part in,” said AFIP in a statement.

They also asked that 12 players be suspended from playing while their contracts are under investigation, including River Plate defender Jonathan Bottinelli.

Bottinelli’s case has been used as one of the two examples the AFIP highlighted for the federal court. Both Bottinelli and San Lorenzo midfielder Ignacio Piatti, were traded to their clubs from clubs they had never played for.

“One of the most emblematic cases involved the strange sale of Jonathan Bottinelli to River Plate, in which a Chilean club held the registration of the player,” said federal judge Norberto Oyarbide. Oyarbide asked the AFIP to launch an investigation after seeing the two examples.

As a result the AFIP announced the creation of a “Dynamic List of Sporting Fiscal Paradises” where all clubs would be entered who had been involved in the transfer of a player who had neither emerged from their youth scheme nor played for them for at least a season.

However, the AFIP only has jurisdiction here in Argentina, meaning it can only investigate transfers from an Argentine team to an Argentine team or from an Argentine team to an international team. Aguero’s move from Independiente to Atletico Madrid will be investigated, but not his subsequent move to Manchester City.

Other well-known players whose transfers are now under scrutiny include Pablo Zabaleta of Manchester City, Ever Banega and Pablo Piatti of Valencia, Martin Demichelis of Malaga and Diego Forlan, now of Internacional in Brazil.

Grace Protopapas caught up with Los Murciélagos, Argentina’s blind football team, before they headed off to London to compete in the 2012 Paralympics.

Camera and editing by Hans Fresen
Lead image by Luján Agusti

The Federal Administration of Public Funds (AFIP) has established a system to exercise a tighter control over football players’ transfers in the Argentine A and B leagues. The move comes days after the head of AFIP, Ricardo Etchegaray, denounced the existence of a triangulation scheme whereby players were being transferred to and from other countries through Chilean and Uruguayan teams to avoid paying taxes.

According to the tax office, “the aim of these kinds of maneuvers is to make it difficult for the treasury to determine the corresponding taxes, and are not transparent in terms of showing the circulation of funds involved in the operation.”

Today, AFIP released a “dynamic list of sporting tax havens” which includes those foreign clubs involved in operations of triangulation. Whenever a player is transferred to a club on the list, their case will be investigated. The list so far includes clubs from Uruguay, Chile, and Switzerland.

On Tuesday, AFIP closed in on players Jonathan Botinelli, who was being transferred to River, and Ignacio Piatti, who was being transferred to San Lorenzo, using this triangulation scheme. It then requested AFA (Argentine Football Association) to suspend the players while the investigation on alleged money laundering and tax fraud is being carried out. According to Clarín newspaper, AFIP would have also requested that a further 35 players, whose transfer deals are suspected, be suspended.

This afternoon, the tax office also suspended 146 football agents who are being investigated for allegedly participating in “situations of capital flight related to money laundering.” The names of the agents were also forwarded to AFA, for the association to apply the necessary disciplinary measures. In a press conference, Etchegaray announced that the banks involved in triangulation maneuvers will also be investigated.

Etchegaray requested AFA take administrative measures to discourage these type of practices and “the consolidation of shady business schemes.” In a letter sent by AFIP to the football association, they indicate that they are trying to determine the existence of “illegal associations who carry out tax evasion, capital flight operations, and money laundering… using football players and clubs as necessary elements for the perfecting of these maneuvers.”

Clubs will now also have to fill out special forms available at the AFIP website whenever buying or selling players, and the players who are freed from their contractual obligations with clubs will need to notify the tax office within ten days. The aim of these measures is to exercise a tighter control over these transactions to avoid tax evasion.

The football clubs have protested AFIP’s intervention, saying that what they do is legal and common practice in the industry. According to Clarín, some clubs have threatened to cancel this weekend’s games if the football players affected are suspended.

The race to succeed Argentina as Olympic football champions hots up tomorrow with the heavyweight clash between neighbours and arch-rivals, Uruguay, and hosts Great Britain in Cardiff. The charrúas will need a victory to put them a big step along the way to gold in London, having won their opening match 2-1 against the UAE in Manchester but then losing 2-0 to Senegal. Uruguay’s dream it to extend their enviable Olympic football record, which stands at two Games appearances, two gold medals!

While the hopes of British football fans will be pinned on Stuart Pearce’s men in the Olympic football tournament, they will face a stiff task from the very first round as they come up against one of the pre-tournament favourites.

Uruguayan flag kissed by the golden sun. (Photo: Mark Orton)

Pride of Paris

Uruguay became the first South American country to play outside of their own continent, let alone compete in the Olympic football tournament, when they crossed the Atlantic for the 1924 Games in Paris, making them an exotic attraction for European crowds. They qualified for the tournament by virtue of winning the 1923 South American Championship, much to the chagrin of Argentina.

Just to get to Paris the team had to beg, steal and borrow to secure their passage in third-class steerage across the Atlantic to Spain, with the prominent Uruguayan Atilio Narancio even mortgaging his house to help pay for the fare. Once there, they played a series of exhibition matches to secure board and lodgings and pay for their rail fare to Paris in second class carriages. It was during the course of these games that Uruguay served notice of their prowess by winning all nine of the matches they played.

Despite Uruguay being tournament debutants, they were far from being babes-in-the-wood, showing they could just be as streetwise as any other team. Their opening opponents Yugoslavia sent spies to watch them train, but the wily Uruguayans had cottoned on, playing as if they were the Keystone Cops, prompting the spies to report back: ‘It makes you feel very sorry, these poor boys came from so far away …’

When the time came for their first match of the Olympics, Uruguay overcame the embarrassment of seeing their flag flown upside down and a Brazilian march played in place of their national anthem, to romp home 7-0 against the Yugoslavs in front of 2,000 fans.

The Uruguay football team at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.

As Uruguay progressed through the knockout rounds, beating the USA 3-1, and then demolishing hosts France 5-1 with four goals from Héctor Scarone, the team drew ever greater numbers of spectators. After taking on the Dutch in the semi-final and easily overcoming Switzerland 3-0 to take gold in the final, writer Henri de Montherlant, was moved to comment: ‘A revelation! Here we have real football. Compared with this, what we knew before, what we played, was no more than a schoolboy hobby.’

In contrast to the paltry crowd that witnessed Uruguay’s opening match, the final at the Stade Colombes was watched by a packed crowd of 60,000, with thousands more locked out.

The Uruguayan team, made up of meat-packers, grocers and ice-cream salesmen amongst others, watched with enormous pride as their national banner of the sun and sky-blue and white stripes fluttered higher and prouder than the other nations, putting their country firmly on the sporting map.

With the element of surprise, their dazzling passing play made them the darlings of the French crowds, and in ‘Perucho’ Petrone they had a potent forward who topped the tournament scoring chart with eight goals.

Unused to the sight of black footballers in Europe, the presence of José Leandro Andrade in Uruguay’s midfield added to their mystique. Agile and with the capacity to deceive opponents with a swerve of his body, the French press dubbed him the ‘Black Marvel’. After the tournament he stayed in France instead of returning home with his team-mates, becoming a celebrity amongst Parisian High Society, always dressing the part in top hat and tails, and carrying a silver-handled cane – a far cry from his humble origins as a shoe-shine boy in Montevideo, where he would eventually return and die from tuberculosis in poverty and obscurity.

Amsterdam

Four years later Uruguay returned to Europe to defend their Olympic title in Amsterdam. This time they were joined by their great rioplatense rivals, Argentina, who qualified by beating Uruguay to the 1927 South American Championship.

Far from being the exotic novelty that they had been in Paris, Uruguay were now the favourites of the 18-team line-up in Holland, even allowing for the more competitive field with the Dutch playing at home, and the presence of an improved Italy and Germany.

The Uruguay Football Team in play at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games.

Before the final, the superstitious Uruguayan player Adhemar Canavessi made the supreme sacrifice by removing himself from the team on the basis that every time that he had played against Argentina for his country they had lost, and despite having played his part in getting Uruguay to the gold medal showdown, he got off the bus taking the team to the arena.

The opening game in front of a capacity 40,000 in Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium – the hottest tickets of the Games fetched more than ten times their face value on the black market – was against the hosts, and Uruguay were made to fight all the way to a 2-1 victory. Germany were no easier in the second round, winning a feisty encounter 4-1 in which two Germans and Uruguay’s skipper José Nasazzi were sent off.

In the semi-final, Uruguay won a thrilling match against Italy 3-2, with the darling of the Parisian crowds, Andrade showing his class in one last cameo performance, to set up a final against their old foes from across the River Plate.

Excitement at home was at fever pitch as people crowded the plazas of Montevideo to listen to information from the game, read out from telegraphs received at the news desks of newspapers from the Dutch capital detailing the minute-by-minute action. Interest was not confined to the River Plate alone: 250,000 ticket requests were made for the 40,000 available for the final from Europe alone.

The final was a cagey affair in which neither side attempted to seize the initiative, the game ending in a 1-1 draw. The replay was a different matter entirely as both sides went for the win and eliminate the possibility of the gold medal being determined by the drawing of lots. Uruguay freshened up their tired attack replacing Petrone, Urdinaran and Castro with Arremón, Borjas and Figueroa, and the revitalised team triumphed 2-1, the second-half winner coming from Héctor Scarone.

When Uruguay were awarded the hosting rights for the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930, they erected a purpose-built stadium, the Estadio Centenario (to celebrate 100 years of Uruguayan independence from Spain) and named two of the stands, the Tribuna Paris and Tribuna Amsterdam as a permanent memorial of their Olympic exploits.

Fighting Spirit

So for a population of just three million to punch above its weight on the world stage, what is the secret to Uruguay’s success?

They would put it down to la garra charrúa, the fighting spirit of Uruguay’s indigenous inhabitants the charrúas.It was most famously used to win the 1950 World Cup against massive favourites and hosts Brazil, and recently has seen Uruguay cement themselves in the top four of the world rankings – above their much bigger neighbours Argentina and Brazil.

Olympic torch in London (photo courtesy of London 2012)

London Calling

After Juan Verzeri got them through the South American qualification competition, Uruguay’s wily 65-year-old coach Oscar Tabárez, who led the seniors to the 2010 World Cup semi-final and to glory in the 2011 Copa América, has taken charge for the finals themselves.

He has a wealth of young talent at his disposal including Liverpool defender Sebastián Coates, Ajax midfielder Nicolás Lodeiro and Bologna’s Gastón Ramírez, scorer of a delightful free-kick against the Emirates.

Meanwhile, there was no shortage of senior players vying for one of the three over-age places in the squad, with both Diego Lugano and Uruguay’s most-capped player, Diego Forlán declaring their wish to be part of the team seeking to make history. In the event, both missed out as Tabárez went for Fernando Muslera – penalty saving hero against Argentina at the 2011 Copa América, and forwards Luis Suárez and Edinson Cavani.

Tabarez counsels caution, saying: “It’s easy for people to come out and say we should be going to going to the Olympics to win. They’re risking nothing by saying that. We know very well what we should be aiming for and the factors we have in our favour to achieve that.” But with this kind of pedigree, who would seriously bet against Uruguay making it a unique hat-trick of Olympic triumphs in London?

Eight people were shot dead in greater Sao Paulo early yesterday as fans celebrated the victory of local team Palmeiras in the Brazilian Cup.

Men on motorcycles and in cars drove through the town of Osasco and open fired in several different locations.

Of the nine people injured seven died on scene while one was transported to hospital but later succumbed to the injury.

Officers said the gunmen took advantage of the partying to disguise their gunshots. Firecrackers rang throughout the streets during the celebration perfectly masking the attacks.

Despite the timing, police said there is no evidence that the shootings had targeted their victims for being football fans and claim that the shootings took place close to bars that sold drugs.

“The criminals took advantage of the time when people were setting off fireworks to disguise the sound of their guns,” a police statement said.

A study released in 2007 lists the homicide rate in Sao Paulo at 17.4 per 100,000 people, Buenos Aires marks 4.6 per 100,000.

Palmeiras won the Brazilian Cup 3-1 on aggregate after two games against Coritiba. In the first game Palmeiras defeated them 2-0 and in the second they tied 1-1.

The victory means Palmeiras will be able to compete in next years Copa Libertadores against Sao Paulo rivals Corinthians.

Corinthians defeated the Boca Juniors last week before a home crowd of 40,000 to win South America’s elite competition.

Thousands of football fans gathered in cities across Argentina yesterday to protest Juan Román Riquelme’s announcement of his intention to leave Boca Juniors.

The Bombonera stadium became the epi-centre of the protest as close to 5,000 fans held signs and waved flags in support of their star player.

Riquelme’s announcement came after Corinthians defeated Boca in the Copa Libertadores in two games. In the first match the two teams tied 1-1 and in the second the Boca Juniors lost 2-0.

“Riquelme is Boca, Boca is not going!” rang throughout the streets as fans decided to take things into their own hands shouting their frustrations with head coach Julio César Falcioni and club president Daniel Angelici.

Eventually the sea of yellow and blue was allowed into the stadium, where the protest continued throughout the day as they hoped to show their support for N^o 10.

“Riquelme is an idol,” said ex-president Jorge Amor Ameal in an interview with infobae, “This is a demonstration of love, hopefully he will review his decision after seeing the people.”

In total, Riquelme has played with the Boca Juniors for 12 years, taking the field for more than 300 matches. He has won five Premier Division titles and three Copa Libertadores.

In 2002 Riquelme left Boca after seven seasons for an €11 million contract with Spain’s FC Barcelona. However, his lack of playing time led to him being loaned to Villarreal CF for two years. Then in February 2007, Riquelme was loaned back to Boca Juniors for five months. He officially returned to the club in January 2008.

He has been named the Argentine football player of the year four times, the latest in 2011.

Tigre, Argentina Juniors, Brasil’s Flamengo, and Spain’s Villarreal have already shown interest in signing the 34-year-old footballer. However, Boca is still hopeful that they can convince him to stay.

Today Police shut down and inspected a school linked to the Independiente football club due to a bomb threat by suspected football hooligans.

Claudio Ciancio, the club’s administrative secretary, reported that two employees of Independiente club were threatened there “would be a bomb concealed to explode in the morning,” by a self-identified male fan between 3pm-4pm yesterday.

Hooligans warned that unless flags carrying the colours of the club were returned to the Independiente fans, they would plant bombs in the school attached to the club. “If they don’t return the flags, we will make them fly,” the hooligans were reported to have said in Infobae.

A bomb squad raided the school around 8am this morning, looking for the device, but found nothing. Police are still preventing school children from entering the school.

The school, attended by 1400 children, is located on the crossroad of Alsina and Bochini, just metres from the stadium.

Relations between the BarraBravas (football hooligans) and club president, Javier Cantero, are becoming increasingly tense ever since he took leadership.

This evening, at 7pm, there will be a march to support Javier Cantero. The leader of the BarraBravas has organised a counter march an hour before at 6pm.

“The security agencies told us that they will take the necessary measures so that those who come will not suffer any problems,” said Caincio, talking about the march.

The tribalism of Argentine football, as I’m certain I have alluded to more than once in these hallowed pages, is a sight to be seen. Thousands of police officers are put on duty and armed to the teeth every weekend with one specific goal: do not let the two sets of fans get near each other, or else watch as all hell breaks lose in a flurry of stones, bricks and trips to the local hospital. The faithful of my own Racing Club, although clearly superior in so many ways to the rabble who go to Boca, River or (god forbid) Independiente every week are from guiltless when it comes to demonising the other in the opposite stands – a fact poetically stated by a good friend of mine before a Clasico, when he declared that he “hated Independiente with all his soul.” Quite.

King’s cycle of dreams and disappointment is painfully familiar for Racing fans

As a born romantic, however, a lover not a fighter and admirer of the legendary Martin Luther King Jr, I too have a dream. That fans of
both teams will one day play in the streets together, that a man will be judged not by the colour of his shirt, but by the content of his character. Walking to El Cilindro on Sunday to watch Racing take on Banfield, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as it appeared my fantastical dream was in the process of becoming reality.

Two men walked in the opposite direction; one bedecked in the unmistakeable celeste y blanca of my beloved. The other was wearing the equally distinctive green and white stripes of the day’s opponents, based in the eponymous city in the sprawling suburb of Lomas de Zamora. Was I seeing history? Was this a seminal moment in Argentine football? Would fans from this point forward be putting down the flaregun, the rocks and the anger to forever more sit in fields and braid each other’s hair before games? Well, not quite.

Upon further inspection, I deduced that the shirt was in fact that of Atletico Nacional, a South American giant based in the Colombian city of Medellin. In Gio Moreno La Academia have one of the Colombian team’s favourite sons in their ranks, and since then fans of Nacional have swarmed to El Cilindro to bring their own colour to the stadium palette. A heart-warming story, if not quite as Kingesque as the one I had first envisaged, but a further sign of how, for a significant proportion of the thousands of Colombians who move to Buenos Aires every year, the shared passion of football brings two fanatical populations together. This is Racing, after all, where on entering our favoured pre-match watering hole you are just as likely to hear a “qué más, parce?” as you would a more porteño form of address: “Qué hacés, vieja?” A lovely bunch.

Fittingly it would be a Colombian star who had the biggest impact on the match, although not completely positive. Not Moreno, but his Cafetero cousin from Barranquilla Teo Gutierrez, a striker whose ability to put the ball in the net is only matched by his talent to put his foot in his mouth, and drive us all insane. Suffice to say he managed both on the weekend.

First, happy thoughts. Our merry band of tipsy supporters had barely elbowed our way into the stands when a penalty was given, and Teo stepped up to slot it home and provoke a mass round of hugs, kisses and other public displays of affection with hairy men you would usually decline to sit next to on the bus. Those readers hanging around from the previous two weeks (cheers, by the way) will remember that Racing had failed to score in their first two outings, and had picked up one measly point. Pay attention, this will all be on the test. And anyone familiar with the mighty L’Acade will know their unrivalled capacity for self-destruction. Yes, it’s another of those stories.

A soft penalty down the other end gave Banfield parity once more, but after Bustamante was sent off Racing surely had to reassert their dominance. No. What followed were 60 frustrating minutes of poor crosses, awful passes, wayward shots and agonised grunts from the terraces. Oh, and the obligatory moment of stupidity from our man Teo: already on a yellow card, for reasons best known to himself he tried to kick the ball out of goalkeeper Lucchetti’s hands, earning himself an early bath no-one could argue with. With that, a draw would have been acceptable, but the visitors had other ideas and three minutes into injury time headed the winner to leave fans perplexed and dumbfounded.

The boos followed, as did the chants referring to a vital anatomical part of the players’ own mothers and a confrontation outside when it was time to get back on the bus. This was accompanied by the brilliant image of coach Basile squaring up to fight each of the disgruntled supporters, only to admit that maybe they had a point after another shocking performance.

Our little group, meanwhile skulked away to begin the post-match dissection of the defeat, and there was perhaps one conclusion that gained more popularity than most. Argentina, England, Colombia: fans of Racing can come from all corners of the globe, uniting cultures and nations with the beautiful game. But for the long-suffering supporters, permanent exile to one of those corners would be welcome for La Academia’s losers. Siberia, anyone?

PS. We still are less than fond of Banfield

Please don’t take this as a mark of disrespect, my dear readers and fellow travellers through the smoke-obscured labyrinth that is

Hi-ho, Hi-ho | Back off to work goes the Guardia Imperial

Argentine football. It delights me to have the chance once more to regale you with my tales of following the mighty Racing Club across the length and breadth of this fair nation, sharing everything inside the stadiums that’s fit, and not so fit, to publish.

For myself, however, and as I imagine it would be for most enfermos who claim allegiance to the cream of Avellanedan football, my re-entry down the hallowed halls of the Argentina Independent is but the second most important reunion I have enjoyed this week. And anyone with a particularly long memory who remembers my earlier musings on the same subject, will surely by now know just what I am talking about.

That’s right. After two and a half long, agonising months away from the Cilindro, frantically scouring images of sports broadcasts transmitted from impossibly sunny beaches in Mar del Plata in search of just one more football fix to keep me in relative sanity, the Clausura Crucero General Belgrano is in action. And remaining blissfully unaware of the escalating tensions between my nation of birth and my adopted country which could well end with an atomic bomb dropping on my Caballito palace one day, I made my way with a skip in my step to my second home in Argentina.

The routine was reassuringly familiar, like emerging from a coma to find that the sky is still blue, the grass is still green and River Plate are still in the B. Sunday’s lack of traffic meant that myself, Omar and Juan arrived in Avellaneda some two hours before kick-off, leaving ample time to start the previa. For those unfamiliar with the football previa, I can only recommend it as a wonderful activity on a boiling Sunday afternoon. Ice-cold Quilmes? Check. The very best Milanesa sandwich in the whole of Buenos Aires? Check? Raucous singing amongst the faithful who were making up for 10 weeks of shopping and DIY on the weekends? Oh you’d better believe it.

You see, even by the standards of the famously optimistic, some would say deluded, Racing support, hopes are sky-high for this season. Academia favourite Alfio ‘Coco’ Basile is back on the coach’s bench for a fifth spell with the club that made him a legend. The name may not ring a bell to casual observers, but the voice is unmistakeable. Coco has always been famous for a vocal register that could be used to scare birds away from crops, but after a recent throat operation he now sounds like part of his warm-up exercise consists of gargling gravel followed by a milkshake composed of live bees. Still, he’s an idol, and that combined with the ability of last year’s runners-up to maintain their squad intact meant that the faith was there, ideally to start with a win against relegation-threatened Tigre.

The great Basile deep in pre-season training

Of course, since this is Racing, we saw nothing of the sort. The most exciting part of proceedings was the entrance of the players, the most popular of whom were left beaming by the serenades of the home popular. Unfortunately, that was as good as it got. 90 turgid, uninspired minutes of football were what followed, although for those of us who had engaged enthusiastically in the previa this pain was mitigated by the Quilmes misting sense and sentience to a degree.

So we continued jumping and singing throughout the fixture, oblivious to the 0-0 that was as inevitable as the tides or an insufferable Boca fan following any victory. The draw was fair, mainly because neither team did nearly enough to win, and as we filed out of the stadium along with 40,000 fellow fans, hope of bouncing back with a victory in the following week dominated conversation. On Sunday it did not come, but of course the next 18 games should be a walk in the park.

In the interests of balance, and mainly to protect this blog from claims that it is a platform for the rantings of a one-eyed madman, there were some other games played over the weekend (my sources inform me). Boca of course won again, angering everyone in what we can contrarily dub the Mitad menos Uno who wish nothing but strife on this band of Maradona wannabes. Of course this wasn’t enough for the Bosteros, and as I finish these scribblings coach Julio Falcioni is one his way out due to a refusal to share his toys with the great Roman Riquelme.

So ends a predictably action-packed first week of the Argentine season, although admittedly the action was to be found more often off the pitch than on it. The coming weekend sees Racing making the long trip to Mendoza (the place with the wine) to meet Godoy Cruz, a punishing 24 hour round trip that surely only the most ridiculously obsessed fan would make. The bus leaves at midnight on Saturday, I’ll be the one banging the windows and cradling a bottle of Fernet. Vamo L’Acadeeeeeee

PS. A gratuitous plug for myself seems merited. An article of mine about Racing’s 1967 Intercontinental Cup triumph over Celtic, which made the team the first-ever Argentine world champions, will appear in issue four of the Blizzard magazine. Aside from my scribblings it is a fantastic read which brings together some of football’s best journalists from across the world, and it is available to pre-order on a pay as you like basis via http://www.theblizzard.co.uk/, hard copies and pdfs for those of you who have those fancy space-age reading machines both available.