River Plate fans thronged on to the streets of Buenos Aires when their team scored the decisive goal, yelling “Dale campeón! Dale Campeón!” (“Come on champion, come on champion!”)
Despite heavy rainfall, groups of fans headed for the Buenos Aires obelisk on the wide downtown 9 de Julio Avenue, the traditional scene of football celebrations, to celebrate River beating Boca Juniors 3-1 in the much-delayed second leg of the Copa Libertadores final in Madrid.
Argentina’s capital remained a virtual ghost town on Sunday afternoon as tense football fans remained glued to their TV sets indoors. The stillness was broken only by the loud screaming that emerged from open windows with each goal.
Even the Al Dente gastronomic fair, a big city event that draws thousands of visitors each year to the neighbourhood of Colegiales, remained eerily empty, except for a crowd of football fans gathered around two giant TV screens set up specially to watch the game.
Argentinians are still in shock that the “scandalous violence” of their football fans, as a TV announcer on the TN network put it on Sunday, forced the game to played outside Argentina.
“It’s probably better the game was played in Madrid,” said Adrián Francolini, who took time off from his restaurant’s stand at the fair to watch the game. “At least this way we were able to watch the game without fighting.”
“There’s nothing to celebrate, we should be turning our back to the game because of what happened in Buenos Aires,” River fan Juan Pablo Garrido agreed but nonetheless was watching the game on the giant screens at Al Dente.
Garrido jumped with joy when River finally won. But how did it feel when Boca took the lead in the first half? “It felt like shit,” he said.
