Sunday at La Bombonera

Clásicos are like Christmas for football. In these high-tension matches between fierce rivals, expectation almost always outstrips results. For months, fans visualize goals with the unrealistic yearning of a child who hopes for a new PlayStation from Santa Claus in exchange for a few cookies left out for his tired reindeer.

For me, the Superclásico between Buenos Aires’s Boca Juniors and River Plate on May 4, 2008, was preceded by thirty-four years of anticipation. In 1974 I went to the Estadio Monumental to see River–Boca, but I had never been to the reverse fixture in La Bombonera, that exceptional stadium that should have been examined by Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power.

The wait had charged the occasion with so much emotion that it was almost a shame it actually had to take place. Friends from Mexico, Colombia, and Spain had all similarly circled the date of May 4—the Argentine derby appeals not only to those who sleep in shirts emblazoned with the Quilmes beer logo but to an entire global tribe.

Like Everest or the Mona Lisa, the fame of Boca’s stadium is impossible to deny—look no further than the crowds of tourists who come to snap pictures. But does it really represent the pinnacle of footballing passion?

I spoke about the Superclásico with the taxi driver who picked me up at the Ezeiza airport and he replied with indignation: “But we hate each other more!” He came from Rosario and was referring to the bad blood between his hometown clubs Newell’s Old Boys (“the Lepers”) and Rosario Central (“the Swine”). On the drive he told me about his family’s marvelous wrath and the betrayal of his aunt Teresita, the heretic who refused to support the Swine. At the core of his story was the issue of rancor: on its biggest days, football comes down to contempt, and nobody hates each other more than Swine hate Lepers. In his opinion, the lesser rivalry between Boca–River was inflated by the press. The driver summed up his argument with theological flair: “God is everywhere, but performs his tricks in Buenos Aires.”

On April 16, my friend Daniel Samper Pizano, a renowned Colombian journalist, organized a dinner in Madrid to prepare for the Superclásico. The final of the Copa del Rey had just concluded between Valencia and Getafe, but we weren’t interested. We preferred to talk about the football of the future, which was to say the upcoming game on May 4. The other guest justified our interest; after the meal, Jorge Valdano told us about the first time he faced Boca as a visiting player. Lacing up his boots in the locker room, he said, everything around him seemed to be moving. One of the veterans came over to reassure him: “It’s not you, pibe, it’s the stadium.” Playing at La Bombonera means overcoming an arena about to collapse under the weight of its own passion. No other ground imposes itself so forcefully upon its visitors.

In his stupendous book Boquita, Martín Caparrós reminds us that it was Argentina where fans were first baptized as “the twelfth man.” Accustomed to adversity, we Mexicans consider the scoreline a suggestion we can ignore. Argentine fans, on the other hand, seek to alter the result using three basic tactics: holding their breath, insulting their rivals, and singing love songs. It’s no accident that one of the most prominent barras bravas is called La Doce, or “the twelfth.” These ultras aren’t there to merely watch a game, but to participate in it through their shouts.

For years, magical realism has gone missing from Latin American literature, finding refuge in aviation instead. To fly across the continent is to endure a saga of detours, delays, and strange schedules that lead to a parallel reality. Maybe air traffic control is cheaper in the early morning and this determines the itineraries of the hemisphere. At any rate, I found myself on a four-hour predawn flight from Bogotá to Buenos Aires. Anyone without the meditative powers of a yogi arrived at the destination a zombie. Among the many surprises to come that day, I was made to experience May 4 in an altered state of time.

The relationship between football and aviation is no trifle—the Copa Libertadores will never be truly competitive until the continent modifies its fixture calendar and flight paths. When I was a kid, I used to take medications with labels that read “Shake well before using.” Thanks to a miserable night on the plane, I arrived at the Superclásico in a state of total agitation.

Entering the stadium was likewise an extreme sport. I was lucky to be accompanied by my friend Leo Tarifeño, a diehard River fan who had sworn to never set foot in La Bombonera.

Leo is convinced that Argentines live for confrontation, eagerly disregard established rules, object impulsively, and justify themselves only through negativity, taking issue with anything they don’t agree with. After asserting this theory, he put it into practice. When I praised the chanting of the Boca fans, he replied, “Deep down, their joy is bitter.”

Being with Leo was the opposite of having a human shield. The route to the stadium was blocked, so we made our way through a wasteland thick with the invigorating smoke from street stalls selling choripán. Our barren surroundings gradually became a funnel. Police barricades flanked us on either side. We continued on until someone—an invisible leader far ahead—committed a grave mistake. The crowd was pushed back by the sound of riot guns and retreated to a checkpoint, where Leo and I asked for directions to the press box. An officer waved his hand as if trying to hypnotize us. We “understood” to make our way to the other side of a roundabout, but instead we ducked into the first alley we came across. Another crowd pulled us in before being repelled again by the riot guns. Everyone ran en masse to a station manned by mounted police ushering fans into a makeshift fenced corridor. It looked less like an accessway than a site of detention. Perhaps for regular stadium-goers the challenge of entry might offer a delicious adrenaline rush, but we were in no shape for it. Above all, it was no place for Leo to expound upon his theory of antagonism.

When Mexican police don’t want to investigate a murder, they label it “assisted suicide.” My sudden sympathy for the abused, paired with my friend’s theories, could have easily transformed us into two potential suicides in search of assistance.

Naturally, my perception was entirely foreign. In 1974 when I went to River’s stadium, a man heard my accent and asked if it was true that in Mexico, a fan of a team like River could be seated next to the equivalent of a Boca fan. I said yes. “And they won’t kill each other?” he asked with interest. I explained that at least in this respect, we were peaceful. His response was withering: “What a bunch of degenerates!”

I’ll never forget seeing my father in Mexico’s City’s University Olympic Stadium, urging everyone around us to applaud for the visiting team. “They’re our guests!” he said with enough amiable quirkiness to make everyone unthinkingly follow along.

Raised with the belief that losing is synonymous with hospitality, it’s hard for Mexican fans to understand the spirit of the barra brava, which was seemingly forged, if not in the actual Battle of Thermopylae, at least in the movie 300.

During a discussion about football and literature at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, Martín Caparrós remarked that Mexicans say “I cheer for Guadalajara” while Argentines proclaim “I’m from Boca.” These degrees of belonging are distinct. In Mexico our teams tend to fall into the abyss, so we prefer to follow at a distance. Our passion is an unreachable horizon rather than something woven into our DNA.

On the street where the River bus was pelted with insults, the question of identity couldn’t be more clear. If you weren’t throwing stones, you came from somewhere else.

Side Effects: The Game

Occasionally, there are moments in life when we Mexicans reveal our strength in the face of adversity. I had resigned myself to never entering the stadium and to eating choripán alongside the peaceful vendors. Then we saw a white-haired policeman issuing orders with the decisiveness of an orchestra conductor. He, and only he, knew how to find our entrance. “It’s simple,” he said prophetically. “Just follow the train tracks.”

We walked between the rusty rails of a long-abandoned tramway. This had been the route to the stadium in the days when goalkeepers wore caps and footballs were still made from leather.

We continued along the history-drenched path until we arrived at another dangerous crossroads. To our right was a blue wall of perforated metal. This was the entryway for River fans. We couldn’t see them, but we sensed them advancing like a herd of shadows. The only proof of their presence were the insults hurled in their direction. I was tempted to make a silent gesture of solidarity by slipping the flyer from Estudio Posca beneath the wall.

The intensity of the scene contrasted sharply with one across the street, where three girls in yellow-and-blue leotards were posing in support of a local candidate.

Finally, we arrived at the gate and climbed to our assigned tower. From these heights I was able to confirm the optical effect described by the Colombian sportswriter David Leonardo Quitián—Boca’s stadium is the only one where distance from the field does not increase with the level of ascent. Instead, the verticality of its construction creates a dizzying proximity. “You must take a lesson in abysses,” say the protagonists of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It’s a good piece of advice for visiting La Bombonera.

When Hugo Orlando Gatti, Boca’s most beloved and extravagant goalkeeper, said, “I go to the edge of the abyss,” he was referring to his tendency to complicate plays, but perhaps also to the onlookers who seemed about to collapse onto the field.

La Bombonera is an odd stadium—fantastically so. It holds 57,395 spectators. Not a single number in this magical figure is even.

For the crowd, there is no greater exercise than anticipation itself. Energized by the wait, the standing area known as La Popular defines the Superclásico. What happens on the pitch can’t compete with what happens here. On May 4, 2008, someone wanting to see a derby with great Argentine players could have watched Inter vs. Milan to admire the country’s exported geniuses. The match in Italy was a back-and-forth affair, nothing at all like the morass at La Bombonera.

The home team won by playing defense and prolonging every pause in play with the exaggerated slowness of Soviet cinema. River lacked the forcefulness that their coach, El Cholo Simeone, had once shown in spades during his playing days, and they were only able to triangulate passes when it no longer mattered. River fans are called gallinas or “chickens” by their enemies. True to form, the sun-drenched masses shouted like crazed farmers ready to slaughter an entire hen house. They would never have traded this match for the aesthetic flourish of Inter vs. Milan. The Superclásico was as it should be: an effective pretext for the outpouring of passion. You don’t go to La Bombonera to discover football, but to confirm its emotional heft.

It’s always disappointing to compare historical exploits: an ideal game would collapse time, offering us a clash of great idols across eras, with Labruna, Pedernera, and Sívori taking on Rattín, Pernía, and Batistuta. This impossibility—the ghostly sum of everything that has ever been played for—infuses each new contest between these intimate enemies with new allure. It’s a knife fight in which wounds never feel as deep as the animosity that fuels them.

There are, of course, exceptional days when a derby resembles its inspirational propaganda—in the ninetieth minute a match is tied 3–3 and sees a winner scored in stoppage time. But on this Sunday in May, the only astonishing occurrences were in the stands.

If comic-book superheroes are bipolar characters who punctuate their depressing existence as Clark Kent with maniacal outbursts as Superman, football fans oscillate from affection to invective with nothing in between. The dedication of a fanbase is measured according to its bipolarity, and Boca ranks highly: “I don’t care what they say / what the others say / I follow you everywhere / I love you more each day,” sing the romantic men who just minutes before called for the River fans to be murdered.

That afternoon, when Sebastián Battaglia scored the stunning header that made the game 1–0, the building shook as promised by legend. Coming from a country of earthquakes, I talked about this enthusiasm, measurable on the Richter scale, for days. I was corrected by a writer, a waiter, and a police officer with the same phrase, extracted straight from the most sensitive ventricle of the Bostero heart: “Boca’s stadium doesn’t tremble, it beats.”

Passion can also be defined by its power to summon those who are absent. That day, the ultras of Barra Auriazul memorialized the passing of a man named Raulito, an extraordinary fan made present even in death, and they paid tribute to the great players who had migrated away from a place where careers never last.

Long gone are the chivalrous days of Ernesto Lazzatti, who played his entire career without ever being sent off, and who wore Boca’s colors without ever thinking of them as a stepping stone to Europe. Today Argentines are football’s great nomads. “If they were any good they wouldn’t be playing for us,” a taxi driver told me. “Verón came back because he’s old, Riquelme because he’s weird.”

I remembered a scene from Germany ’06, when I was a commentator alongside Carlos Bianchi for Mexican TV. During a commercial break, the former coach who won everything with Boca received a phone call. He said something like “I can’t help anymore—you have another father now.” Later he told us “that was Riquelme,” with the same satisfaction Homer would have felt announcing a phone call from Achilles. Argentina’s number ten needed to feel loved in order to play well. From his training camp in Germany, he was seeking the emotional support Bianchi had given him at Boca. Coming from the riotous atmosphere of La Bombonera, it’s no wonder Riquelme had little success at Barcelona’s Camp Nou, where spectators behave like opera-goers.

With few exceptions, Argentina’s cracks consider their feats a boarding pass to faraway places. The only ones who remain sedentary are the supporters. Perhaps their devotion stems from this irreconcilable disagreement. In football, passion feeds on pain—every fan base finds a way to overcome its own distinct evils. In Argentina, miracles are possible but short-lived; in Mexico, they are forever postponed and glory can only be imagined. The Estadio Azteca sportswriter describes plays that require adjectives to become interesting. The Bombonera sportswriter is faced with something that needs no words of validation; in the press box, I met Juan José Becerra, the indispensable author of Grasa, who was chronicling the team’s season for the daily newspaper Crítica. “The only thing I want,” he admitted, “is for Boca to win.”

So, what does an expert in postponement discover in the realm of the impatient? In La Bombonera, the Mexican fan no longer waits for the fiction of spectacular Mexican goals. Instead, he enters a hardboiled reality. The stadium vibrates like nature at its most radical, demanding survival instead of interpretation.

Adrift in the tide, the sportswriter from afar has ninety minutes to get used to something he never before associated with football: vertigo.

An excerpt from The Game at the End of the World, translated from the Spanish by Francisco Cantú, to be published by Restless Books in May.

Juan Villoro is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. His columns have appeared in Reforma, The New York Times, El País, and El Mercurio, among others, and his books have been translated into numerous languages. A recipient of several awards, including the 2018 Manuel Rojas Prize for his body of work, Villoro has taught at Autonomous Metropolitan University, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Pompeu Fabra university in Barcelona, as well as at the New Journalism Foundation, created by Gabriel Garcia Márquez.