Wow what an atmosphere to experience my first live football game. The game was between la plata and boca juniors(best team in argentina). It was an away game so we traveled by bus to la plata. We would be sitting with the home side, la plata, and were told by all of our tour guides not to cheer for boca juniors as it would be very dangerous to do so. Futbol here is like a 2nd religion. Only turkey supposedely has fans that are as passionate about futbol as argentinans. There were loads of europeans watching the game and they all agreed that the atmosphere here was way better than anything in europe.
The crowd was absolutely nuts!! Everyone stood, jumping, banging these white blow up things around, playing huge drums, throwing firecrackers, from and in the crowd. Huge blue (home side color) fog machines would come on, fans unrolling huge flags, and more puntas and puntos yelled than i have ever heard. They would cuss all the time it was incredible how often they would yell. And the songs!! AMAZING!! Some filled with curse words, others just quite of mantra. We all joined in on the chants as best we could and all the fans of la plata were totally stoked that a bunch of gringos were supporting their team and singing their songs.
We were in the thick of it. General seats, divided by wall and barb-wired fence. Parts of the statium were empty and manned by a row of riot police in order to segregate the fans of the teams. The game was very good, no goals but quite a few chances, one player from the boca team got a red card. A draw for la plata was almost like a win. If boca would have won they had a chance to win their league, now they have to win or draw during their last game next week.
During half time they came out and shot a huge fire hose into the both teams fans. Loads of people were crazing jumping up and down, screaming, and getting soaked. It was unbleiveable, i wanted to join in but i had a camera and a camcorder so it was out of the question.
Once the game was over they only allowed the boca fans to leave. They locked in us and the la plata fans. We were locked in for almost 30 to 40mins. They did this because if they didnt all the la plata fans would harass and do god knows what to the fans of boca juniors. Once the gates were opened it was super funny. Loads of la plata fans sprinted out the gates hoping that they could catch the boca junior fans. Unbelieveable!! If the season starts in march i am defintely going to another game.
