Kyle Berg

Sunday I attended perhaps the biggest soccer rivalry in all of South America. The Boca Juniors and River Plate squared off in another Superclásico at River’s stadium. The match was sold out months ahead of time, so I had to pay extra and go with a tour group. I wasn’t sure whether it would be worth it, but I’m glad I went. What emotion! Even in line to enter the stadium, the fans were singing and chanting. Of the 66,000 seats, hardly any were filled by women. This was definitely a macho event where men were free to be morons and say whatever they liked to the opposing fans, players, and officials.

Before the game started, I walked around the concourse with my camera, trying to take it all in. It was fun to hear singing over an hour before the start time of 2:00 p.m. I never returned to my seat and the group. Instead, I stood on the concourse in order to be closer to the action. Despite River’s poor showing this year, they came out and manhandled Boca 2-0 on an early goal as well as one added later in the first half on a penalty kick.

There was no love loss between these two teams and it showed. The Boca fans were relegated to what I would refer to as a large cage. It was a 5,000 seat section with a fence in front and on the sides. Additionally, the fence was capped with barbed wire on the sides and razor wire on the front. Even though it would mean greater tickets sales, one section was left empty in order to limit the Boca fans to 5,000–the same number of River fans allowed at Boca’s stadium. Despite the fence, the Boca fans found a way to show their ire. As the second half wore down and their loss became imminent, the fans tore off the plastic covers from their seats in the upper deck and began to hurl them below toward the River fans. The target zone was limited, but those fans were forced to abandon their seats and find refuge under the overhang of the upper deck. So as to keep fighting to a minimum., the Boca fans were let out a good 20 minutes before the River fans were allowed to exit the stadium.

One thing that caught my attention was the sparsity of the stadium. There was one medium sized scoreboard at the end of the field, but even that wasn’t used much of the time. Fans had to keep track of the score and guess what was going on when a call was made. Also, the food and beverage service was extremely limited. They wisely avoided serving these already crazy fans any alcohol. The only available items were hotdogs, Coke, and maybe one type of candy. River’s stadium is the largest in the country. But even at that, it was very basic. While in decent shape, it was definitely not anything like a stadium you would expect in the United States. Those who attended the game were definitely there to watch soccer and not to be pampered. The security measures were also interesting. It was a mixture of chain link fence, barb wire, a cement moat around part of the stadium, and somewhere around 1,100 police.

It’s impossible to convey the atmosphere or emotion of this event, but it was fun trying. In addition to the pictures, I also took some short video clips and patched them together.