From above, the football pitch in Liniers – a working-class neighbourhood in Buenos Aires – looks like an elementary school pupil’s first attempts at geometry: the touchlines are parallel, but the goal lines both slant disconcertingly, and one half is noticeably shorter than the other.
Yet for nearly 30 years, the fifth-division team have made the best of the pitch.
Now, however, the Argentine Football Association has ordered the club to fix the field by 15 December – or risk permanent closure.
Liniers president Marcelo Gomez says officials realized that the field was crooked after they saw aerial images on Google Maps.
“The field always worked without a problem,” Gomez told the Associated Press. “We knew that it’s something we needed to fix one day, but this order just came all of a sudden.”
Former Liniers player Silvio Fuentes said he grew fond of the field and even scored Olympic goals thanks to its shortcomings.
“After training, I’d always stay kicking corner kicks. I scored nine Olympic goals in my whole career – and five of them were here with Liniers,” said Fuentes, who played with Carlos Tevez in the lower divisions of Boca Juniors.
Experts say the out-of-proportion field goal line might not help the kicker but it does distract the goalkeeper.
“Our field was always the one with the crooked goals,” Liniers forward Maxi Castano told the local La Nación newspaper. “No one got mad about it. The rival teams would just joke with us, but everyone knew the field was a bit abnormal.”
