Playing with Ghosts...Football Stadiums of Argentina
30 images Created 10 Jan 2011
Jonathan Wilson
jonawils@gmail.com
There is something poignant about an empty football stadium, as though
a trace of all the emotions that have ever been experienced there
lingers, ghosts of goals past. In a breeze across a deserted terrace
comes an echo of a last-minute winner; the thucking of a rope against
a flag-pole recalls the staccato claps that start a chant; a startled
crow evokes the howl as a penalty is missed. And in a city like Buenos
Aires, where the stadiums have a faded grandeur, that feeling is
particularly intense.
This is a nation whose history is told by its stadia, and whose stadia
are acutely aware of that history. At Huracan’s Estadio Tomas Adolfo
Duco in the Parque Patricios neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, where the
art deco towers make the main stand appear from the distance like an
ancient cruise-liner, the history is painted on the walls in the names
of former greats and a – brief – list of past titles won. From one of
the rickety executive boxes at the Bombonera, the home of Boca
Juniors, a banner hangs, counting upwards from 180; every time Martin
Palermo scores, it is pulled back in and a cross is placed through
another number, charting his progress first to and then beyond the
club record set by Pancho Varallo in the 1930s.
Buenos Aires often feels like it wishes it still was the 1930s, when
it was still a new thrusting capital asserting its independence after
the days of the informal empire. That surely is why the tango, a dance
popularised in the milonga clubs of the era, remains so popular, why
there are still more theatres in the city than there are cinemas. And
it was in that time, as the stadiums sprang up and radio reported the
games to hundreds of thousands of listeners, that Argentinian football
enjoyed its golden age, the love of individuality and self-expression
– as countless observers, from the Uruguayan poet and political writer
Eduardo Galeano to the anthropologist Eduardo Archetti have pointed
out – a reflection of the same porteno spirit as the milonga.
Some aspects seem barely to have changed since those glory days. Boca
aside, it’s still possible to buy tickets on the day of the game, to
turn up push your money through a hole in the wall and decide between
the populares, the ends that throb with colour and noise, where space
is left behind the goals for the barra, the ultra groups, to take
their places a couple of minutes after kick-off, and the more sedate
platea. Men still huddle around the choripan stalls, a beer in one
hand, roll stuffed with spicy sausage in the other.
And of course that tells its own story, for in the crumbling grounds,
the graffitied walls that haven’t been properly painted in decades and
the uncomfortable concrete seats, is evidence of Argentina’s economic
decline, a tumble so sharp that the best players don’t just desert
their league for the glamorous leagues of Spain, Italy and England,
but also for eastern Europe and most painfully, Brazil.
jonawils@gmail.com
There is something poignant about an empty football stadium, as though
a trace of all the emotions that have ever been experienced there
lingers, ghosts of goals past. In a breeze across a deserted terrace
comes an echo of a last-minute winner; the thucking of a rope against
a flag-pole recalls the staccato claps that start a chant; a startled
crow evokes the howl as a penalty is missed. And in a city like Buenos
Aires, where the stadiums have a faded grandeur, that feeling is
particularly intense.
This is a nation whose history is told by its stadia, and whose stadia
are acutely aware of that history. At Huracan’s Estadio Tomas Adolfo
Duco in the Parque Patricios neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, where the
art deco towers make the main stand appear from the distance like an
ancient cruise-liner, the history is painted on the walls in the names
of former greats and a – brief – list of past titles won. From one of
the rickety executive boxes at the Bombonera, the home of Boca
Juniors, a banner hangs, counting upwards from 180; every time Martin
Palermo scores, it is pulled back in and a cross is placed through
another number, charting his progress first to and then beyond the
club record set by Pancho Varallo in the 1930s.
Buenos Aires often feels like it wishes it still was the 1930s, when
it was still a new thrusting capital asserting its independence after
the days of the informal empire. That surely is why the tango, a dance
popularised in the milonga clubs of the era, remains so popular, why
there are still more theatres in the city than there are cinemas. And
it was in that time, as the stadiums sprang up and radio reported the
games to hundreds of thousands of listeners, that Argentinian football
enjoyed its golden age, the love of individuality and self-expression
– as countless observers, from the Uruguayan poet and political writer
Eduardo Galeano to the anthropologist Eduardo Archetti have pointed
out – a reflection of the same porteno spirit as the milonga.
Some aspects seem barely to have changed since those glory days. Boca
aside, it’s still possible to buy tickets on the day of the game, to
turn up push your money through a hole in the wall and decide between
the populares, the ends that throb with colour and noise, where space
is left behind the goals for the barra, the ultra groups, to take
their places a couple of minutes after kick-off, and the more sedate
platea. Men still huddle around the choripan stalls, a beer in one
hand, roll stuffed with spicy sausage in the other.
And of course that tells its own story, for in the crumbling grounds,
the graffitied walls that haven’t been properly painted in decades and
the uncomfortable concrete seats, is evidence of Argentina’s economic
decline, a tumble so sharp that the best players don’t just desert
their league for the glamorous leagues of Spain, Italy and England,
but also for eastern Europe and most painfully, Brazil.
