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Mad for it: From Blackpool to Barcelona: Football’s Greatest Rivalries
Andy Mitten


A celebration of the classic football derby matches. From the Celtic–Rangers rivalry and Tyneside derby to the biggest global clashes from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, journalist Andy Mitten uses the fans' own words and stories to illuminate the conflicts, tensions, histories and culture behind these fascinating games.From Belfast to Barcelona, Buenos Aires to Bogotá, these are football matches that are far more than a game.Often a microcosm of life in a city, there are countless rivalries between clubs which are steeped in a historical enmity based on class, religion, politics, envy or philosophy. Some of the games, like Rangers v Celtic, are renowned for their vocal sectarianism, others like Tenerife v Las Palmas for their eclectic fan base, while little or nothing is known about the derbies in Cairo and Calcutta which attracts twice as many fans as any Old Firm clash.Andy Mitten journeys across the UK and the far-flung regions of planet football, talking to a host of passionate fans – from the vividly ordinary, working-class supporters to the corporate box brigade who think nothing of hopping on a plane for their weekend jaunt to the exotic cities of Madrid, Barcelona or Milan – and gets to share their highs and lows. This in turn provides a fresh and revealing insight into the people who make these matches matter – the fans – using their own words and stories to illuminate the conflicts, tension and histories behind the games. He also interviews players, managers, politicians, local journalists and agents drawing out differing opinions and perspectives on the beautiful game.Among the highlights:Celtic v Rangers, Man Utd v Liverpool, Cliftonville v Linfield, Sunderland v Newcastle, Preston v Blackpool, Barcelona v Real Madrid, Roma v Lazio, Boca Juniors v River Plate, Fenerbache v Galatasaray, Ajax v Feyenoord, the Faroe Islands derby, the Calcutta Derby, and the worst derby on the planet, alongside many more.









Mad For It

From Blackpool To Barcelona Football’s Greatest Rivalries

Andy Mitten









HarperSport An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers


This book is dedicated to the people I met along the way and their incredible passion for a game called football. And to my dad Charlie, who lit the spark by taking me to watch him play in the Irlam v Urmston cup derby in 1984.


�By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.’ Liverpool v Manchester United

�Ian Ramsey began supporting The Shire “to be different from my mates. I wanted to support the least fashionable club.” He didn’t have to look far…to a club that gave 32-year-old Alex Ferguson his first managerial job in 1974. There were only eight registered players when Ferguson arrived. “They were the worst senior club in the country,” Ferguson later wrote.’ Elgin City v East Stirlingshire

�Tyres are set ablaze, telephone booths vandalised, windows smashed, and anti-regime chants are heard across Tehran and Iran’s other cities…in a country where boys and girls fear holding hands in case the special morality police take them in or, worse, send them to a moral correction unit, football may not be enough to contain their passions.’ Iran v Iraq




Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u596cfeeb-9865-5e7d-8fef-0204c016ff0c)

Title Page (#ubd004dd3-3200-5562-8d2b-0cec64c0063b)

Dedication (#u112870d2-cb4d-576e-835f-41257dc92823)

Excerpt (#uae41589b-dce2-5209-940b-8a6c1b8a0591)

Introduction (#u250f5c8d-2653-519c-bce3-5bd244446492)

Seeing Red (#ud2b0b510-8cd6-54ff-81d4-82253e1a9f9d)

�Get Ready for a War’ (#u87818a47-3b1a-51e2-8610-8d3fffc66be5)

The Ultimate Showdown (#u01f02864-7d16-5235-b2e6-db9a1c26fdf2)

Tomorrow La Scala (#ud24df2f4-aa7e-5f10-a862-0bdeeff6eb58)

The Mother of All Battles (#u1274e7c7-420a-5807-a39d-87130be699b4)

The One That Got Away (#ub20964be-ef04-5787-a7a1-b28bc6dd2eca)

�Getting on with the Neighbours?’ (#u0a9abd3a-83f2-5d3d-a9c4-cd5671a35382)

More Than a Game (#uf337cd0f-19fb-58ed-91cf-c97f28db8948)

The Clasico (#u2d69cba3-4fe0-511c-b0fc-639b445485a5)

The Rivalry That Time Forgot (#uf9e20d55-1e98-57ea-9bb8-0b838037cbf8)

Battle of the Bosphorus (#u09b6dcdf-d283-59c4-b7d4-797949018586)

Unholy War (#ubd2bfea0-5df1-5833-96e7-db799730f441)

Pride of North London (#u12517a35-0596-523e-a9ae-4e0e29b574e0)

On the Frontline (#ud37c0205-dfe4-56aa-9205-32240d6832ca)

The Coldest Derby in the World (#u2c124872-f154-5b34-beef-ce817a5cf620)

Love Island (#uad9f6f49-2a1f-5c90-998b-d91094dc56ad)

Boys from the Black Country (#ua4281e21-89c5-56b8-9eee-281c4c4f7b52)

Love and Hate (#u2851f016-8e6b-5c17-83ad-6b30b68b6ca8)

Birds of a Feather (#u082f32ab-6770-5b37-9889-e3101b68c433)

The Colombian Connection (#u7e9eaf53-dce4-5ba2-8ae3-b49b5e84ae3a)

Dutch Courage (#u0f1a9506-c094-5b0c-bf6c-e879930a22cf)

It’s Just Not Cricket (#u051bf4be-3f6b-5c05-879b-9f2904e488a5)

�You’re Not Very Good’ (#u74550a0d-c0b1-5d12-8e62-03b3dc3fa1ac)

Sheep Shaggers v Donkey Lashers (#ub236d85b-544b-525d-81e2-5b88730a614a)

The Eternal War (#u3aaed7cd-ba13-500d-b338-a4d2f3afa9a1)

Two Languages, Two Peoples…and Two Countries? (#u916c0312-1ec8-54be-9483-4793e5932993)

A Question of Ships and Coal (#uf0e00dad-06dc-5ad5-a15a-33e01a44f266)

Life in the Glasgow Bubble (#u252eb9a6-2496-5c2e-9ac0-62c0d94083b7)

Acknowledgments (#u8cb29dc9-1ef9-5f56-aff0-e24fc1410634)

The Contributors (#u107c40bc-bdbb-5acf-8ad0-e730e9342578)

Copyright (#u3bcc1980-8790-5a41-979f-05bc447f80cf)

About the Publisher (#ucf7c466e-b50e-5320-bb92-ed585359289f)




Introduction (#ulink_bc6c2cea-7949-5df1-92fa-f4e63cc25c7f)


It was not a day too soon. When Manchester United took on Manchester City away in October 1986, I pestered my dad to take me. I was 12 years old. Dad wasn’t a lover of watching football, always preferring to play, but he finally relented and acquired three tickets for the main stand at Maine Road.

I devoured the pre-match hype in the Evening News and knew every player of both sides. It wasn’t a golden age for Manchester football and the attendance of 32,440 was then the lowest post-war for a derby, partly because the game was the first Manchester derby to be televised �live’. Before we left the house, mum again warned us to be careful as we went off to watch players like Graeme Hogg, Terry Gibson, John Sivebaek and Chris Turner. So much for United having the big name stars.

Dad parked the car near the stadium in Moss Side’s tight terraced streets. I was impressed, as he seemed to know all the ticket touts loitering outside the ground looking to do business. Most were black lads whom he’d played football with and against, a lot of them City fans who ribbed him about �being United’ and told him to watch his back as we were in a City section. They were joking, but the atmosphere was vicious outside Maine Road as fans scurried towards the relative safety of the turnstiles, the police moving everyone along to stop trouble erupting. Unlike our local home-town semi-professional derby involving Irlam and Urmston, the antagonism expressed in this derby was not born from social and economic differences but was generated by football. Both laid claim to be the top club in Manchester. City had for a long time been the most successful club; United’s first league and cup victories were achieved, according to City fans, through subterfuge when United took advantage of City’s misfortune to poach their best players for a pittance. And the list of United’s crimes against their neighbours went on from there. United fans gloried in their club’s far greater glamour and worldwide fame.

The game had an interesting twist as John Gidman, the Liverpudlian fullback, had left United days earlier. �I had bought a sports shop in Liverpool and honestly thought that I was going to run that for the rest of my life as I drove back to Liverpool,’ he recalls. Almost immediately, he received a phone call from Jimmy Frizzell, Manchester City’s manager.

�Frizzell wanted to sign me. He said, “We’re playing United on television this weekend and I want you to play.” So I signed and I marked Peter Barnes. He told me to go easy, but you can’t do that. He was a great lad but a bit of a softie and I said: �I’m going to kick f**k out of you for 90 minutes.’ They took him off. It was nice for a Scouser to make an impact in the Manchester derby, although when I played at United we always considered Liverpool to be our biggest game.’

It still is, mainly because United’s players and supporters began to measure themselves, not against their �lowly’ Mancunian neighbour, but against the Scouse juggernaut which dominated English football and swaggered across Europe until Heysel. Derby rivalries often defy logic. Although Mancunians will tell you they despise Scousers for a whole set of other reasons, historical economic rivalries between the two cities being one, Everton versus Manchester United is rarely described as a derby, neither is Liverpool versus Manchester City.

When United scored, City hooligans stood upright like meerkats to spot any stray celebrating Reds. Dad told us to keep quiet. I couldn’t work out why people from the same city hated each other so much, but the buzz was indescribable. My fascination with derby games would only grow.

Twenty-one years later, I’m sitting opposite the Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan, who has just seen his side win the Tyne–Wear derby against rivals Sunderland. The vanquished visiting manager Roy Keane has just faced the press, but he doesn’t go for the sentimental, populist, touch. Unlike King Kev.

�You don’t get an atmosphere like that anywhere else in the world,’ he says proudly. �You can go round the world twice and you won’t get that. Not in Liverpool, the Nepstadion, Budapest, the Maracana or at Boca Juniors. The derby match up here is very, very special.’

He’s playing the role of local hero well, but part of me wants to disagree. That’s because I’d been travelling to derby games around Europe for FourFourTwo magazine and this book for six years. I’d seen derbies where the atmosphere far exceeded that of the Tyne–Wear contest. I’d watched Corinthians play Sao Paulo in the Maracana and wanted to assure Keegan that the atmosphere was far more intense than St James’ Park. But I was there to listen, not speak.

Paulo Di Canio, who has played in five derbies, has his own candidates. �The Juventus–Torino rivalry has deep historical roots, while the Milan derby, Inter verses AC Milan, is probably the best in the world in terms of evenly-matched sides and sheer quality on the pitch,’ says Di Canio. �At West Ham, we played four or five local derbies a year, so perhaps it’s less of an event, but you knew when we played Arsenal, Chelsea or Spurs that we were totally fired up.’

Di Canio was adamant which two derbies stood out. �Apart from the Old Firm (Glasgow) which is far and away the biggest rivalry in all of sport, nothing compares to the Rome derby (between his former club Lazio and Roma). People begin talking about it six weeks in advance, the preparations being made with weeks to spare. The build up is huge, nothing else matters. Roma and Lazio fans care more about winning the derby than where they finish in the league.’

Di Canio, a one time Lazio Ultra, progressed from terrace to pitch, where he scored in the Rome derby. It’s a major reason why he is still revered today by the fans he once stood alongside.

Sir Alex Ferguson, though, begs to differ. �I have been to derby games all over the world…in Milan, Madrid, Rome, Liverpool and in London, plus, of course, from my old playing days I know all about the fierce rivalry between Rangers and Celtic. However it’s our fixtures against Liverpool that get my pulse racing and they are the games I look forward to more than any others. I regard our fixtures with Liverpool as more of a derby than our all-Manchester matches against City.’

Opinions differ widely on which derbies have the most meaning for supporters. Ask Blackpool fans and they’ll tell you that there is no game like when they meet Preston, just as I thought that my local Irlam v Urmston was a game of the utmost importance all those years ago.

Despite often loathing their enemies, fans talk proudly of their derby game – often because their appreciation of its importance is so subjective. While a trophy haul is tangible, the atmosphere at a game isn’t. Scientists don’t measure the noise levels and record the flag displays at games, leaving their impact and size open to exaggeration and debate. Fans of Barca and Madrid consider their clash to be the biggest in the world, yet fans at much smaller derby games deem �their’ derby much more authentic because it is more parochial and intense. �How can a Madrid player from South America possibly hate Barcelona with the same intensity as a Wrexham born player hates Chester?’ one Wrexham fan told me. �We’ve seen the posh tennis playing twats take our girls and our jobs. We’ve got genuine reasons to hate them.’

So while Cristiano Ronaldo may be a superior athlete to any player plying his trade in the Israeli league, Manchester United’s fans are not necessarily superior beings. Derbies give the fans of Hapoel Tel Aviv and Maccabi Tel Aviv a chance to demonstrate that they are more committed, more loyal because of the colour, noise and fervour they generate.

�We are not as big as some of the European clubs,’ one Hapoel devotee told me in a bar next to Tel Aviv’s frequently bombed bus station, �but we have a much tighter and better organised fan culture. We are better fans and we demonstrate that against [our main rivals] Maccabi.’

Geography, history, sectarianism, class, religion and economics each play their part in shaping the unique nature of derby matches. Nor is there only one type of derby. The term needs some clarification, as it is used to widely different types of rivalries. Some wrongly assume that a derby was originally a cross-city match, the term originating in the East Midlands city of Derby, yet Derby County haven’t played a true derby since 1891 when they merged with the city’s only other major team, Derby Midland.

Derby fans consider the fixture with Nottingham Forest, who are based 15 miles away, their biggest game. And while Forest have their own cross-city derby with Notts County, they consider the game against Derby to be their main, well, derby.

The origins of the word �derby’ are derived from the horse race known as the Derby Stakes, which was first run in 1780 and named after Edward Stanley, the 12th Earl of Derby. It became established as the high point of the racing season as part of the meeting at Epsom in Surrey in early June. Such was its importance, other classic races were named after it, such as the Kentucky Derby.

Derby day, the day of the race – always a Wednesday until recently – became a hugely popular event, not just for the toffs but as a big day out for all Londoners, a public holiday in all but name. Great numbers of people drove or took the train down to Epsom, making a day of it with picnics and lots to drink. In 1906, George R. Sims wrote: �With the arrival of Derby Day we have touched the greatest day of all in London; it may almost be said to be the Londoners’ greatest holiday – their outing or saturnalia.’

Around the time George Sims was writing, the word moved into more general use to describe any highly popular and well-attended event. In particular, it came to be applied to a fixture between two local sides, first called a local Derby and then abbreviated. But it is used to describe football games between teams which may be situated far further apart, regional rather than local rivals.

The 28 games featured here are by no means definitive, but they are chosen because they demonstrate the incredible diversity of derbies, as well as the common elements they share. The Faroes was the only place on my travels where I was unable to find a fan with a bad word about their rivals, for instance. In Glasgow, it wasn’t difficult.

Some games are omitted because we only wanted each team to feature once. The cross-city derbies in Madrid and Barcelona are fascinating, but they don’t compare to the Barca–Madrid game.

I tried to spend at least 48 hours in a city to write a feature. It irritated me as a Mancunian and United fan when writers were parachuted into Manchester for the day and returned to write lazy features full of stereotypes, which often missed the point. And while I spoke to the usual suspects like players and local journalists, I tried to talk to as many fans as possible. Fans often have a far greater feeling for a rivalry than any player could have. Because of my background editing the United We Stand fanzine, I’ve always felt comfortable around fans and understand the nuances and hierarchy of fan culture. When I went to Anfield or Ajax Amsterdam, I didn’t do what television cameras tend to do and collar the fan desperate to perform for the cameras for his or her opinion.

Instead I sought out the views of the most hard-core supporters. Sometimes they were hooligans; sometimes they were old men who hadn’t missed a game for half a century. But they were always people who cared deeply about their club.

I tried to be objective. I always knew I was going to be in a no-win situation the minute I agreed to write the piece on Cliftonville–Linfield in Belfast. In fact, I turned down the assignment many times. I finally agreed when Mat Snow, then editor of FourFourTwo told me, �You either write it or I’m commissioning someone else.’ I couldn’t let the opportunity slip and loved my time in Belfast. I produced a positive and passionate piece to reflect that enjoyment. I tried my best to be fair and the initial feedback on the message board populated by fans of football in Northern Ireland was very encouraging. Then the bigotry started to seep in and extremist cyber warriors took over. One wrote that I had been so fervently anti-Linfield (had I?) because I’d stayed at the house of a Glentoran fan, their hated enemy, on my sojourn in Belfast. Actually, I’d lodged with a Linfield fan.

That’s football fans, though. When Hugh Sleight took over Mat Snow’s job at FourFourTwo, he encouraged me to cover as many derbies as possible. I was happy to oblige. Of the pieces that have appeared previously in the magazine, I’ve already been able to gauge reactions. I’ve been accused of bias, yet been informed that I never need to buy another pint should I return to Wrexham or Rotterdam. I remained in contact with the fans at many clubs, while I’ve no wish to speak to the official of East Stirlingshire who was possibly the rudest person I came across on all my travels.

As in politics, a week is a long time in football: for example, when the Southampton–Portsmouth chapter was written Southampton were in the ascendancy. Now, for the time being, Portsmouth have turned the tables and are the Premiership side, as well as celebrating a long overdue FA Cup win. For rivalries that go back in time, it was decided to retain the flavour and relevance of those particular clashes rather than update to more recent matches, which would dilute the impact of the originals.

Of the games included here, I have covered 14. It would have been impossible for one writer to cover them all, nor am I necessarily the best qualified person to do so. The other writers are listed and credited with their biographies elsewhere. I am thankful to all. Each one of us has tried to convey why these games are, as FourFourTwo entitles its regular feature on derby games of all shades and on all continents, �More Than A Game’. From the high theatrical drama of Rome’s Il Derbi Capitale and el gran classico in Madrid to the infinitely more parochial Caledonian tussle for supremacy between the Shire and Elgin on Scotland’s windswept north east coast, football’s most intense encounters are laid bare in these pages.

Andy Mitten

Barcelona, June 2008




Seeing Red Liverpool v Manchester United, March 2007 (#ulink_ef127fb6-7687-555f-b22c-25ee9ea7086a)


One of the most eagerly-awaited games of the season, between two teams whose cultural influence extends far beyond their city boundaries.

My head feels like it’s going to explode. Barely ten yards in front of me, John O’Shea is wheeling away in celebration and the stunned Scouse silence means the joyous screams of the Manchester United players are audible. We’ve beaten arch-rivals Liverpool in dramatic and, many will say, undeserved circumstances: one-nil, at Anfield, with a killer late goal after defending for much of the game. As a result, we’re now twelve points clear in the race for a Premiership title most fans considered out of reach last August.

As the players shout at lung-bursting volume and frenziedly hug each other, I have to contain the euphoria of this perfect, body-tingling buzz, not showing the slightest sign of pleasure. I’m standing on the Kop, a lone Mancunian in a mass of 12,000 fuming Liverpool fans.

After glancing one last time at the ecstatic United players and 3,000 delirious travelling fans in the Anfield Road stand, I jog back to the car through the streets of dilapidated and boarded-up Victorian terraces which surround Anfield. Past pubs, the ones closest to the ground teeming with fans from Bergen and Basingstoke with their painted faces, jester hats, and replica kits. It reminds me of Old Trafford. Finally, in the relative safety of the car I let my emotions go and punch the air repeatedly, before looking out to see a man staring at me from his front room window. He raises his two fingers. It’s no �V’ for victory and I don’t need assistance from a lip reader to know what he’s saying. It’s time to get on the East Lancashire Road and back to Manchester.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

United 3 Liverpool 4

League, February 1910

United’s new Old Trafford home, resplendent with an 80,000 capacity, earned the club the �Moneybags United’ tag. The stadium’s grand opening was going well as United led 3–1 after seventy-four minutes. Then the visitors scored three times…

My mood had been so very different before the match as I queued to get onto the Kop for the first time in my life. I’d not seen a United fan all day, save for the Mancunian ticket touts working the streets alongside their Scouse counterparts behind the Kop. �We’re in the same game and we all know each other,’ explained one. Whether you’re at the Winter Olympics in Japan or Glastonbury Festival, the vast majority of spivs will be Mancunian or Scouse, an unholy alliance of wily, streetwise grafters.

Like me, 95 per cent of the United fans at Anfield wore no colours, but paranoia gripped me as I reached my seat. It would take just one person to suss I wasn’t a Liverpool fan and I’d be in serious trouble. I wasn’t going to attempt to fit in by trying a Scouse accent, mutilating words like �chicken’ to a nasal �shickin’ or calling people �la’, �soft lad’, or �wack’, but I wasn’t aiming to advertise my allegiances either.

�Alright mate,’ said the lad next to me in a North Wales accent as I found my seat.

�Alright mate,’ I replied, cagily. They were the last words I spoke all game.

When Liverpool’s fans sang �You’ll Never Walk Alone’ I focused firmly on events on the field. I did the same when they chanted, �You’ve won it two times, just like Nottingham Forest,’ in reference to United’s two European Cups compared with Liverpool’s five.

I ignored the continual anti-Gary Neville abuse, was surprised that Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t booed once – ls;We don’t go for all that “little Englander” nonsense,’ a Scouser explained later – and stunned that the Kop applauded Edwin van der Sar as he took to his goal. The Dutchman applauded back warmly.

All around me, Liverpool’s flags continue the European theme: �Paisley 3 Ferguson 1’ reads one. Liverpool are obsessed with flags. One piece of cloth even has its own website; others try hard to be examples of the famed Scouse wit.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

United 2 Liverpool 1

FA Cup Final, 1977

With the League Championship in the bag and a European Cup final to follow, rampant Liverpool were clear favourites – even among some United players. �We were not too confident,’ admits striker Stuart Pearson. �We knew we’d give Liverpool a game but they were so good you could never say: “We’re going to beat these”.’ United won a thriller, thus denying Liverpool the Treble.

At half-time, I met Peter Hooton, former lead singer of The Farm and lifelong Liverpool fan in front of the Kop’s refreshment kiosks where the Polish catering staff struggle to decipher the Scouse brogue.

�What are you going to do when we score?’ he asked.

�When?’

�When.’

But Liverpool don’t score and United have taken six points from Liverpool this season.

It is commonly agreed that there is rising tension between fans of Liverpool and Manchester United. At Old Trafford last October, both clubs sought to defuse the increasingly fraught atmosphere. During an FA Cup game at Anfield in February 2006, a Liverpool fan had hurled a cup of excrement into the 6,000 United fans on the lower tier of the Anfield Road, hitting one on the head. After the game, Liverpool fans rocked the ambulance carrying injured United striker Alan Smith to hospital – though Smith later received hundreds of cards from well-wishing Liverpool supporters, keen to stress that this was something which made them ashamed.

At Old Trafford, past greats like Bobby Charlton, Ian Callaghan, Denis Law, and Roger Hunt were paraded on the pitch before the game and a penalty competition was held between rival fans. It didn’t work. Not that anyone was too surprised given the levels of animosity. Liverpool fans approaching Manchester that day had been greeted with freshly-painted �Hillsborough ’89’ graffiti on a bridge over the M602 in the gritty United heartland of Salford. Closer to the stadium, another sprayed message bore the legend: �Welcome to Old Trafford, you murdering Scouse bastards.’

The teams were led out by Gary Neville, punished for the heinous crime of celebrating a goal in front of Liverpool fans the previous season, and Steven Gerrard. Both understand the United v Liverpool rivalry acutely given their lifelong affinity with the clubs they captain. Both would rather stick pins in their eyes than join the enemy. Both were subject to dog’s abuse in the songs which rang round the stadium, which also rehearsed some enduring stereotypes and prejudices about the two clubs and the inhabitants of their cities.

United fans: �Gary Neville is a red, he hates Scousers.’

Liverpool: �USA! USA!’

United: �Michael Shields gets bummed by queers.’ (Referencing Liverpool fan Shields, who was jailed in Bulgaria for an attack on a waiter before Liverpool’s 2005 European Cup victory, a charge which he denies.)

Liverpool: �Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, you’ll never walk alone.’

United: �Sign on, sign on, with hope in your heart, you’ll never get a job.’

Liverpool: �We won it five times in Istanbul, we won it five times.’ (Liverpool fans hold up placards bearing the number five.)

United: �Steve Gerrard, Gerrard, he kisses the badge on his chest…then puts in a transfer request, Steve Gerrard, Gerrard.’

Liverpool: �All around the fields of Anfield Road, where once we saw the king Kenny play – and could he play. Stevie Heighway on the wing, we have tales and songs to sing, now its glory around the fields of Anfield Road.’

United: �Murderers, murderers.’

Liverpool: �Shit on the Cockneys, shit on the Cockneys tonight.’ (A surprising reference to United’s perceived out of town support – United are usually loathed by Scousers precisely because they are Mancunian).

United: �If you all hate Scousers clap your hands.’ (More people join in this than any other chant.)

Liverpool: �We all hate Mancs and Mancs and Mancs.’

United: �Park, Park wherever you may be, you eat dog in your own country. But it could be worse, you could be Scouse, eating rat in your council house.’

Liverpool: �Once a blue, always a Manc.’ (For Wayne Rooney)

United: �Once a blue, always a Red.’ (For Rooney)

Liverpool: �You fat bastard.’ (To Rooney – a Scouser who has contributed financially to the �Free Michael Shields’ campaign).

United: �City of culture, you’re having a laugh.’

Liverpool: �Oh Manchester, is full of shit…’

United: �Does the social know you’re here?’

Like all the greatest rivalries, it’s the common ground that divides the most. Manchester United and Liverpool both hail from largely working-class, immigrant cities with huge Irish populations. Just thirty-five miles apart in England’s North West, both were economic powerhouses that enjoyed a friend/foe relationship by the 19th century. Liverpool considered itself the greatest port in the world, gateway to North America for millions, and a key trading post for the Empire. Manchester was �Cottonopolis’, the first city of the industrial revolution – hence the phrase �Manchester made and Liverpool trade’.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

Liverpool 2 United 1

Milk Cup Final, 1983

An Alan Kennedy equaliser ten minutes from time cancelled out Norman Whiteside’s twelfth minute opener and extra-time followed. With 100 minutes played, Ronnie Whelan curled a shot around the United defence to score the winner and seal Liverpool’s third consecutive League Cup.

Civic co-operation in anticipation of greater wealth ensured that the world’s first passenger railway was opened between the cities in 1830, but by late 1878, the year Manchester United were formed as Newton Heath, a worldwide trade depression left Manchester grappling with economic stagnation and labour migration. Liverpool was blamed for charging excessively high rates for importing the raw cotton spun in Lancastrian mills and Manchester’s solution was to give the city direct access to the sea to export its manufactured goods, thus cutting out the middle man of Liverpool.

A canal big enough to carry ships was proposed, which infuriated Liverpudlians. They tried to ridicule the plans out of existence and Liverpool-based backlash against the ship canal ranged from music hall songs and pantomime references to reasoned economic argument. None of it prevented the Manchester Ship Canal being built and the city became Britain’s third busiest port, despite being forty miles inland. This is why the United crest has a ship on it. But this was only a temporary respite for Manchester.

With the end of the British colonies and the introduction of container ships, Liverpool’s port became less viable, while the disintegration of the textile industry hit Manchester and both cities suffered generations of economic decline and depopulation. Extreme deindustrialisation and suburbanisation was coupled with growing unemployment and poverty among the proletariat. The nadir was marked in 1981 by violent riots in Manchester’s Moss Side and Liverpool’s Toxteth districts.

Yet when it came to football and music, both cities punched well above their respective demographic weights, making them special to millions around the globe, but also reinforcing and extending the rivalry.

On the pitch, enmities were not clear cut. Manchester City were the bigger Mancunian club until World War Two, while Everton were often the pre-eminent Merseyside force. Indeed, the rivalry between United and Liverpool was respectful until the 1960s with some Manchester United players even going to watch Liverpool when United didn’t have a game.

�We’d stand on the Kop,’ recalls Pat Crerand, a former hard-tackling United midfielder turned pundit. �The Scousers would have a word with us, but it was good humoured.’ Bill Shankly used to call Crerand at home every Sunday morning for a friendly football chat. Shankly and the United manager Matt Busby, who both hailed from Lanarkshire mining stock in Scotland, were also close and Busby had played for Liverpool.

�I always had great respect for Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly,’ adds Crerand (though that didn’t stop him, in his early-’70s role as United’s assistant manager, from snaring Lou Macari in the Anfield main stand just as he was about to sign for Liverpool). �When I go to Anfield now, I speak to long-standing Liverpool fans who can’t put up with what the rivalry has become, with the hooliganism and the nastiness between the fans. Liverpool and Manchester are both working-class cities that have produced two of the greatest football clubs in the world. People should be proud of that, but they’re not.’

United had the hegemony in the 1960s – twice league champions and the first English team to win the European Cup. Not since that decade has a player left United for Liverpool or vice-versa (Phil Chisnall was the last, in April 1964). Liverpool were far superior to United in the 1970s and ’80s, winning four European Cups and eleven league titles as United endured twenty-six title-free years, but United were usually the better supported club and matched Liverpool in head-to-head encounters. And even as Liverpool had the success, United enjoyed a reputation and allure which rankled Liverpool supporters who thought it undeserved.

By the 1980s, the rivalry had become vicious, with United’s Scouse manager Ron Atkinson describing a trip to Anfield as like going into Vietnam. Big Ron’s experience fighting the Viet Cong has not been fully substantiated, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating – he had just been tear gassed.

�We got off the coach and all of a sudden something hit us and everyone’s eyes went,’ Atkinson recalls. �I thought it was fumes off new paint or something, but it was tear gas. In our dressing room before the game there were a lot of fans, Liverpool fans too, kids, all sorts, eyes streaming. Clayton Blackmore was so bad he wasn’t able to play. I was in an awful state. I’d run in and there’d been two blokes standing in front of the dressing room door and I couldn’t see who they were. I was blinded and I’d pushed one of them up against the wall. Afterwards, [assistant manager] Mick Brown said, “What you done to Johnny Sivebaek?” I said, “What are you on about?” It turned out that Sivebaek, who we’d signed the week before, didn’t speak much English and in his first game, against the European champions, he was gassed as he got off the coach and then got hurled against the wall by his new team manager. No wonder he didn’t perform that day!’

Liverpool fans frequently sang songs about the 1958 Munich air crash, but stopped for a time after the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. United fans barely sang about Hillsborough until a minority changed that in recent years. Yet for every United fan who stoops so low, you’ll find one who respects the continued boycott of The Sun on Merseyside and the continuing campaign for justice for the ninety-six who perished.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

Liverpool 3 United 3

League, April 1988

First v Second, but Liverpool’s substantial lead made them clear title favourites. Reduced to ten men and trailing 3–1 with thirty minutes left, United were on the ropes until goals from Bryan Robson and Gordon Stra-chan levelled the scores. The latter celebrated by smoking an imaginary cigar in front of an outraged Kop.

For United fans, no matter how dangerous the trip to Anfield became, it remained one of the most eagerly-awaited of the season because it contained all the edge, passion, and vitriol that you’d expect from a long-standing cultural and social enmity between two teams whose cultural influence extends far beyond their city boundaries.

In the 1990s, Liverpool’s demise coincided with United’s ascendancy under Alex Ferguson. Asked to list his greatest achievement at United, Fergie once replied: �Knocking Liverpool off their fucking perch. And you can print that.’ That wasn’t quite how Scousers intended it to be when they unleashed their �Form is temporary, class is permanent’ banner in 1992 as United squandered a league title at Anfield.

In contrast to the hooligan-blighted ’70s and ’80s when Liverpool were on top, the Sky-led football boom allowed United to capitalise on their success and the Mancunians accelerated into a different financial league by regularly expanding Old Trafford; meanwhile Liverpool were hampered by Anfield’s limited capacity. United were so commercially successful that many fans objected to the 2005 Glazer takeover principally on the grounds that they were not needed, while Liverpool fans welcomed their new American owners in 2007 because they are.

Both clubs fill their grounds but Old Trafford has over 30,000 more seats than Anfield, allowing United to make more than ВЈ1.4 million per home match than Liverpool. Liverpool only have to look east for the justification for building a new stadium.

It’s three hours before kick-off at Anfield and I’m sitting in a pub full of Liverpool fans in Liverpool city centre. Among them is the novelist Kevin Sampson, author of seminal tomes like Away Days and Powder. Reading Powder and knowing that Sampson was a Liverpool fan, I interviewed him for the United We Stand fanzine in 1999.

I met him at Lime Street and it went well – it remains the most popular interview in the fanzine’s eighteen-year history, although we received three letters from readers appalled about �fraternising with the enemy’. Our conversation should have been over a lunchtime pint, but extended to an overnight stay as Sampson introduced me as a curiosity figure to assorted Liverpool characters who claimed they’d never met a Mancunian United fan before.

Some didn’t want to socialise; they didn’t want to like what they had spent a lifetime loathing. They were content with the status quo that Liverpool and United despised each other and wouldn’t have it any other way: happy to reinforce stereotypes, exaggerate prejudices, and ignore the evidence that the two clubs are almost too alike to admit it. United fans were the same, perpetuating the clichés of Scousers as employment-shy thieves and passing over the statistic that you are almost twice as likely to get your house burgled in Manchester (which has burglary rates three times the national average) than Liverpool.

It’s the same in the pub today but there are signs of grudging respect.

�Is there anything you respect about Manchester United?’ I ask a table of hardcore Liverpool fans.

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

Liverpool 3 United 3

League, January 1994

After winning the league for the first time in twenty-six years, United went to Anfield and were 3–0 up in twenty-four minutes. But Liverpool refused to be humbled and Nigel Clough pulled two goals back before half-time. United searched for another goal, but Neil Ruddock equalised with eleven minutes left. A classic.

�Paul Scholes’, comes one reply.

�Ryan Giggs’, another.

�I don’t like Gary Neville, but I respect the way he signs contract after contract at United. We’d love a player who celebrated a goal so passionately against his main rivals.’

�Why are United fans obsessed with Liverpool?’ asks another. �All your songs are about Liverpool. Ours are too, but we support Liverpool.’

One thing we do all agree on is a decline in the atmosphere inside both grounds. Sampson is now behind a campaign to �Reclaim the Kop’. In October 2006, he wrote an impassioned plea on a Liverpool website regarding his club’s support. It came after Liverpool had played Bordeaux, when sections of the Anfield crowd taunted 3,000 Frenchmen with chants of �Who are ya?’, �Eas-eh’ and �You’re not singing anymore’.

�Seasoned heads were shook,’ reads the website. �It was embarrassing. These fans had welcomed travelling Reds for our away game, and here, at Anfield, we were ridiculing them. This is NOT the Liverpool Way. We led from the front. We never followed. Be it pop music, terrace chanting, fashions; we were pioneers in the British game. The “Reclaim the Kop” aims are to promote The Kop’s traditional values, its behaviour, and its songs. It aims to encourage fair play and respect towards the opposition; to promote The Kop’s traditional songs and chants; to encourage wit and creativity; and it aims to rebuild the camaraderie and individuality of football’s greatest terrace.’

�Our support needs sorting out before the quilts [the antithesis of the streetwise fan] have watered us down to nothing,’ added Sampson.

It would be easy to attempt to score cheap points at the very idea of organised spontaneity, but United fans have gone through exactly the same. Despite great success on the pitch, the atmosphere inside an increasingly commercialised Old Trafford withered throughout the 1990s. The �singing section’ in Old Trafford’s Stretford End is contrived, but it was needed to kick-start a lame atmosphere which still pales alongside past decades.

Like Liverpool fans, long-standing United fans cringe at elements of the club’s glory-hunting support. There is tension and in-fighting within both fan bases – hardly surprising given that they are so big. Like Liverpool fans, United fans hate the way opposing clubs bump up the price of tickets for away fans – a rich club doesn’t mean rich fans. Both sets of fans are regular visitors to Europe and have similar tales of police brutality. Many on both sides are indifferent to the fortunes of the England national team, preferring pride in their own city and team. The laddish fan elements dress in a similar way, listen to the same music, and note the same cultural influences. When news filtered through recently that the Salfordian �Mr Madchester’ Anthony H Wilson had cancer, there was as much respect on Liverpool websites as on any United one – despite Wilson once presenting Granada’s regional news wearing an FC Bruges rosette on the eve of Liverpool’s 1978 European Cup Final against the Belgians.

Both fans talk with pride about the renaissance brought by new developments in their cities after decades of decline. Yet for all the similarities, there are stark differences between Liverpool and Manchester.

�Liverpool has a very small middle class,’ explains one Anfield season-ticket holder who lives in Manchester. �As soon as people get money they leave, moving to the north of the city or to the Wirral. Or else they move to Manchester or London to further their professional ambitions.’

SIX CLASSIC GAMES

United 2 Liverpool 1

FA Cup, 1999

The treble seemed a long way off as Liverpool led an off-the-boil United with barely a minute to go. Then Dwight Yorke equalised and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the winner in injury-time. In an uncanny rehearsal of what would follow in Barcelona, a gleeful Stretford End demanded to know: �Who put the ball in the Scousers’ net?’

Several Liverpool and Everton players live in Manchester’s suburbs and regularly shop and socialise in the city, no United players live near Merseyside. You don’t see neon signs offering �quality perms’ in Manchester.

Liverpudlians seem more maudlin, with the popularity of the deceased measured by the number of tributes taken out in the bulging obituary column of the Liverpool Echo. Mancunians are more inclined to adopt a harder exterior – and not just to the thousands of Scousers who flood the incongruous Trafford Centre, Manchester’s superior concert venues (the Liverpool team booked their Take That tickets for the Manchester Evening News Arena on the day they came out) or Manchester Airport, now that Scousers look beyond North Wales for their holidays.

Three days after the game at Anfield I received a text from the Liverpool fan who sorted me with a ticket for the Kop.

�The lad next to you knew who you were,’ he writes. �He couldn’t think where he had seen you but he clicked after the game. He’d seen you covering the Wrexham vs Chester game for FourFourTwo last year and knew you were a Manc. He told the others after you had gone.’

It wasn’t just Manchester United who got lucky.





�Get Ready for a War’ River Plate v Boca Juniors, April 2001 (#ulink_289fea25-d546-5eea-884c-f7488dd9e337)


They know each other as �the chickens’ and �the shits’. Seventy-nine arrests is considered a quiet day at the office. River Plate v Boca Juniors is more than just another game…

Autumn in Argentina and it’s warm and sunny without being uncomfortably hot, but in Buenos Aires the mercury is beginning to rise. It’s midday and around 2,000 fans are gathered outside El Monumental (�the Monument’), the 70,000 capacity home of reigning Argentine champions River Plate, and the stadium which witnessed Argentina lifting the World Cup in 1978 beneath a shower of ticker tape and toilet roll. Suited and booted middle-aged men, briefcases in hand, stand toe to toe with the young, replica shirt-wearing riffraff, a stark contrast in their scuffed trainers and ripped jeans as they queue along the edge of the stadium’s perimeter fence.

As the queue bottlenecks towards the pitifully inadequate number of open ticket booths, the crowd surges forward en masse, forcing dozens of armed police into action with their shields. As the jubilant River fans emerge from the scrum, one by one they kiss their tickets before holding them aloft like trophies and exchanging high fives and celebratory hugs with others. It’s as though they’ve already won the match in question, even though it’s still two days away and it’s not being played here but at on the other side of town at La Bombonera (�the Chocolate Box’), home of River’s bitter rivals Boca Juniors. But this, you see, is no ordinary match. This is El Superclassico (�the super derby’) and River’s allocation of 11,000 tickets will be snapped up in next to no time.

So big is El Superclassico that to the media this week’s anti-capitalist demonstrations in Buenos Aires, sparked by an impending free-trade convention in the city, is a mere side show in comparison to the main event. Television chat shows and radio phone-ins are dominated by Boca-River this week and for the next few days, Argentina’s top sports newspaper Olé will dedicate ten pages of editorial to the clash each day. Also, on every wall around the city is a poster published by Argentina’s weekly football magazine El Graphico bearing the red and white shirt of River, the yellow and blue shirt of Boca, and the words Se Viene – �It’s Coming.’

Argentina’s two biggest and most successful clubs have met 166 times before this week – Boca winning sixty-one, River fifty-five – and have been fierce rivals since 1923 when River moved from La Boca, a cosmopolitan, working-class neighbourhood where both teams then resided. Since 1944, River have played in Nuñez, also known as Barrio River (�Neighbourhood River’), a middle-class neighbourhood some ten kilometres north west of La Boca, up the River Plate from which the club takes its name. They have since been dubbed the middle-class team.

Although most people will tell you this class divide no longer applies, the rivalry remains just as intense. For example, River’s kit manufacturers are sportswear giants Adidas, with their biggest rivals Nike doing the honours for Boca, so you’ll rarely see River fans wearing Nike gear, nor Boca fans donning the Adidas logo. As for wearing the colours of your rival team, well that’s totally out of the question. The only apparent contradiction in the rivalry is the fact that both teams are sponsored by Quilmes, Argentina’s most popular beer.

So deep do emotions run between these two that we’ve barely stepped off the plane when my translator Pablo, an ardent River fan, greets us with some words of warning: �Get ready for a war.’ Sadly, �war’ is an all too accurate description of some of the scenes that have marred Boca–River fixtures in the past. In June 1968, seventy-four fans were killed at El Monumental when Boca supporters caused panic by throwing burning paper onto the home fans beneath them. More recently, in 1994, a busload of River fans was ambushed several miles away from the ground, resulting in two of them being shot dead. River had won the game 2–0 and for days afterwards graffiti appeared around Buenos Aires reading �River 2 Boca 2.’

These crimes of passion are committed by the Barra Bravas (�tough gangs’), Argentina’s notorious hooligan groups. River’s Barras, Los Borrachos del Tablón (�The Drunks from the Board,’ a name derived from the days when the terraces were wooden planks on which the fans bounced up and down), have succeeded the Boca hooligans, La Doce (�The Twelve’, so called because the fans believe they are the team’s 12th player), as Argentina’s most feared gang.

For both sets of Barras, El Superclassico is the season’s most important game. �On balance, most fans would rather beat La Boca than win the championship,’ says Matias, a 24-year-old River Barra, motorcycle courier, and trainee lawyer, who was brought up in Palermo, a middle-class neighbourhood not far from El Monumental. �It is more important to beat Boca on their own turf,’ he explains. And this week, they’ll get the chance.

Down at La Bombonera in the newly opened Boca Juniors museum I ask an assistant whether Boca fans share the same sentiments when it comes to beating River. �Are you kidding?’ he replies. �There was a party round here when River lost on Wednesday [in the Copa de Libertores to Uruguayan side The Strongest]. I’d rather Boca beat River and ruin their chances of winning the championship than Boca lose to River and win the championship ourselves.’ With River five points clear at the top of the table and Boca loitering near the bottom, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

As the fans gear themselves up for what is their cup final the players are trying to keep some sense of perspective. The River players, in particular, are doing their level best not to get caught up in the hysteria. �I know this game means a lot to both the fans and the players,’ says River’s diminutive playmaker Ariel Ortega, known as El Burrito (�the Little Donkey, because he hails from Ledesma in the north of Argentina where there are no horses, only donkeys). �But I want to make it clear that I would never trade a championship for a single victory against Boca.’

With only a day to go, the whole of Buenos Aires is consumed by the game, which is staggering given that twelve of Argentina’s nineteen top division clubs play in the capital and its surrounding area. �River-Boca is a national derby, there are fans of both clubs all over the country,’ explains Juan Sasturain, a journalist and author – Argentina’s answer to Nick Hornby, according to Pablo. �When River play Boca you can bet your life there will be a fan of each team, up in the north of Argentina near the Bolivian border, stood in their replica shirts fighting,’ adds Sasturain.

�In general, if you are not a Boca fan, you are anti-Boca. Boca have something socially irritating about them, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they have fans from so far and wide.’ A bit like Manchester United then.

So, Boca are widely recognised as the country’s best supported club. But which of the two clubs is the biggest? �I cannot say because they’re both very different in terms of history and image,’ says Sasturain. �Historically, River is stylish and offensive; Boca is the opposite – heart and strength. River is money and the middle classes; Boca is popularity and the working classes.’

As the game draws ever closer even Ortega, who was admirably circumspect only yesterday, gets caught up in the media hyperbole. In a bet with celebrity broadcaster and Boca fan Alejandro Fantino, Ortega has agreed to dye his hair green if River lose. In turn, Fantino will dye his hair bright red if Boca lose. Worried he might lose the bet, Fantino asks Boca midfielder Antonio Barijho, who regularly dyes his hair (blond being the current colour of choice), which brand of dye he should buy. �Don’t bother buying any, you won’t need it,’ says a confident Barijho, who instead insists Fantino should tell Ortega to dye his hair in the blue and yellow of Boca if River lose.

�Ortega would have no hair left if he’d made the same bet over the past few seasons,’ says Barijho, and it’s a valid point. River have lost six of the previous ten meetings between the two, winning only one. Has Ortega bitten off more than he can chew?

Certainly Boca’s is the more relaxed camp on the eve of the game. Whereas their training sessions at La Bombonera are open to both press and public, up at El Monumental we have to rely on sneaking through an unguarded gate to watch the River players being put through their paces. That is until an angry security guard boots us out.

On leaving La Bombonera the evening before the game, having collected our tickets, a security guard calls us over; our pale skin, short trousers, and cameras are dead give-aways that we are not from round these parts. �Tell them to be careful,’ he says to Pablo. �There is a strange atmosphere around this week.’

So tense is the mood now that with the game imminent, Pablo says he feels uncomfortable being in enemy territory, even though he’s not wearing River colours. He’s in far less danger than one misfit we see ducking into a house, wearing River’s red and white replica shirt. �He’s a brave man,’ says Pablo, who has thus far been ferrying me around in his wife’s car. �Tomorrow I will bring my car to the game. It is not so good so it doesn’t matter as much if it gets vandalised.’

As we drive through the dusty streets of La Boca, with its mixture of crumbling, derelict buildings and bright pastel-coloured houses, we pull up outside San Salessiano, a Catholic school. On the wall outside is a magnificent mural, painted in 1969, depicting Buenos Aires at the time. On the left of the picture some workers stand beneath the industrial backdrop of La Boca and on the right stands a businessman and a tango dancer depicting the city’s middle classes. In the middle is a priest, stood next to two children, one wearing a Boca shirt, the other wearing a River shirt. This is the church’s ideal of Buenos Aires: harmonious. Tomorrow’s game will be anything but.

Within minutes of arriving at La Bombonera news filters through that the River team bus has been ambushed by Boca fans on the way to the ground. The windows were stoned, River’s club president took a blow to the head and two others were injured. At the ground a 1,200 strong, armed police unit (three times the usual size) prepare themselves for more outbreaks of violence. But security is tight, with every fan being searched and stripped of anything that might be deemed offensive, even empty plastic bottles. Apart from ticket-less fans trying to storm the gates there are few signs of serious trouble, but as an outsider, you still fear for your safety.

At the other end of the ground – the River end – however, there are knife fights breaking out and one Barra completely loses it with a concrete paving slab when it refuses to break under the pressure of him stamping on it (he wants to throw the broken pieces at Boca fans). Twice we hear the sound of gunfire. Whether the police or the fans are responsible nobody knows.

La Bombonera is a purpose-built football stadium – no athletics or dog-racing tracks here – so the crowd are very close to the pitch and almost on top of it. Three sides of the ground (one side and two ends) form an extremely steep concrete, three-tiered C-shape, with the area behind each goal standing only.

Away to our right, anything from coins to urine rains down on the Boca fans as River’s travelling support, fuelled by alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and pure adrenalin, make their presence felt from the two tiers above. Strangest of all though, amid the sea of red and white many of the River mob are wearing handkerchiefs and surgical masks over their faces. This, Pablo informs me, is because River’s nickname for Boca and their fans is El Bosteros, roughly translated into English as �The Shits’, in reference to the unpleasant smell that wafts over La Boca, a remnant of the area’s industrial past. If you go down to the port and smell the water you’ll know what they’re on about.

To Boca’s fans, River are know as Las Gallinas (�The Chickens’). This goes back to 1966 when River played Penarol of Uruguay in the final of the Intercontinental Cup in Montevideo. River were 2–0 up and cruising in the second half when their keeper caught the ball on his chest – puffed out like a chicken’s if you will – and proceeded to mock the opposition, who became so enraged that they lifted their game and ended up winning 4–2 after extra time. Boca have never let the River fans live it down.

Inside the ground the only people missing from the 52,000 crowds are the two sets of Barras. They prefer to make a late entrance so the other fans reserve a space for them at the centre of the middle tier. Once inside, the two sets of fans exchange taunts and sing songs – nothing new there then – but the real craze in Argentina is to jump up and down on the spot. And I mean everybody. Both sets of fans at the same time. Now Boca’s is not the most state-of-the-art ground and as the stadium shakes under the weight on 52,000 lunatics pogoing simultaneously, you wonder if it’s going to crash to the ground.

Amid the sea of yellow and blue away to our left are a surprising number of women and children, some of whom are so young they nestle in their dad’s arms as he screams his support, blood-vessels near to bursting in his forehead. As if the crowd is not fired up enough, the reserve teams of both clubs play their fixture immediately prior to the first team game. It keeps everybody entertained at least. Not that they need it.

When the fist teams finally appear they do so through an inflated tunnel, which stretches out into the centre of the pitch to prevent the players, especially those of River, being pelted with whatever the fans can get their hands on. A few bottles make their way over the tall perimeter fencing but all of them miss their targets.

As ticker tape pours down from the sky, children appear on the pitch carrying two giant flags bearing the words no mas violencia: un mensaje de Dios (�no more violence: a message from God’). �It won’t be enough,’ says Pablo, as the �boos’ reverberate around the ground, drowning out the sound of �We are the World’ and �Imagine’, which are playing over the stadium’s public address system.

An appalling, goalless first half is lifted only by the appearance of Maradona, a former Boca star, of course, who emerges on the balcony of his box to the delight of Boca’s fans and the derision of River’s. At half time he even puts on a juggling show using a ball thrown up to him by one of the cheerleaders.

In the second half the referee, who was the best performer on the pitch in the first half, loses control of the game under intense pressure from the home crowd. He’d agreed to meet me for an interview over breakfast tomorrow morning, depending on how the game went. Needless to say, we never get the phone call. Boca, who are the better side anyway, win 3–0 after River have two men sent off. After each goal, the Boca fans, Maradona included, take off their shirts and lasso them round their heads. They’ll be going home happy and will be able to hold their heads high. At least until the two teams meet again.

In the back of Pablo’s car another River fan – also called Pablo – and a friend of Los Barrochos (though not one himself) is inconsolable. �I am always without hope when I come to see River play Boca, because I always feel like we’re gonna get fucked,’ he says, unable to comprehend River’s recent poor record against Boca. �I don’t understand it. Against teams who play good football we play beautifully and win. Then we go and lose to Boca and their shitty, ugly football.’

Still, at least nobody was killed. And with only seventy-nine arrests at the stadium, today’s Buenos Aires derby was one of the quietest.




Buenos Aires – A tale of two teams

Boca Juniors


Boca were founded in La Boca district of Buenos Aires in 1905 by Irishman Paddy McCarthy, newly arrived Italian immigrants, Pedro and Juan Feranga, and three students from the National School of Commerce – hence the name �Juniors’. They chose to play in the colours on the flag of the next ship to sail into port. It was a Swedish vessel – hence the yellow and blue.

Their most successful periods were the early 1930s and the late 1970s and early 1980s, when, inspired by Diego Maradona, they reached the South America Club Championship final three years in a row. Controversially, though, no Boca players were included in Argentina’s 1978 World Cup-winning squad, because of their rugged style under then manager Juan Carlos Lorenzo.

Boca have a history of bigger, more robust players, such as Gabriel Batistuta and Argentina’s 1966 World Cup captain Antonio Rattin. Even Boca’s skilful players, such as ex-stars Diego Maradona and Juan Sebastian Veron and Barcelona-bound Juan Roman Riquelme are powerfully built.




River Plate


Also founded in 1905, River were formed in La Boca when two local English teams, Santa Rosa and Rosales, joined forces after playing against each other in a friendly. Both teams played in white, which caused confusion until River had the bright idea of sewing red patches on to their shirts to distinguish themselves – hence River’s colours.

The 1940s saw River and their famous forward line La Maquina (�The Machine’) dominate the domestic game and this success continued into the 1950s with Alfredo Di Stefano to the fore. More great players followed, including Daniel Passarella and Mario Kempes.

In contrast to Boca, River have a reputation for producing stylish teams and players who fit within that framework. Current stars Ariel Ortega and Barcelona-bound starlet Javier Saviola as well as Valencia’s Pablo Aimar are classic River players.




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