“Somos la Ciudad, Somos Rosario” Rosario Central Fútbol!

For some reason, I was under the impression that one of our planned excursions while in Argentina was to attend a fútbol (soccer) game. I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I was a little disappointed when I found out that we weren’t going to attend a game. Fortunately, Cain was a little more motivated than I was to make attending a fútbol game a reality. He looked into the schedules for the two soccer teams in Rosario, Newell’s Old Boys (NOB) and Rosario Central, and learned that our last weekend in Rosario was the start of Rosario Central’s season. I’ve been a little partial to NOB because their letters really speak to home, and I was hoping that we could make one of their games, but they weren’t playing this weekend. After figuring out who all wanted to attend the fútbol game and where to buy tickets, Cain and I set out for la cancha de Rosario Central (the stadium) on Friday afternoon. We were a little nervous that they wouldn’t let 2 of us buy 8 tickets, but the worst that could happen would be that everyone else would have to go on their own to see what tickets were left, so we took our chances.

La cancha de Rosario Central is on the far north side of town. As we took a taxi to la cancha, we could tell we were entering Central territory because all the graffiti along the sides of the road was blue and yellow. When the taxi driver dropped us off in front of the stadium, we were surprised that there were hardly any people around. Fortunately, there was one other person purchasing tickets at the same time, or we would have had no clue where to find the ticket office. The whole setup was very sketch. There was a sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve taped to the cinderblock wall listing the prices of tickets. A ticket cost 150 pesos for men and 125 pesos for women. We stepped up to the ticket window, which was a sheet of plywood with a few holes drilled in it, to talk to the voice coming from inside the office. Unable to see the man behind the window, we pooled 1050 pesos for 8 tickets and passed our stack of pesos under the plywood. After we received our tickets, Cain and I decided to walk around the stadium and its surrounding neighborhood. We discovered that Rosario Central is not just a fútbol team, but also an athletic club and community center. We also saw el Río Panara from a different view. There were a few beachy areas as well as tiki huts set up along the river, which seemed very out of place in the midst of a city. After walking around the neighborhood, we caught a taxi back to the site to distribute the tickets.

The other program was supposed to have their navegación on the river on Saturday afternoon, and since our trip was cancelled due to weather last weekend, we were invited to go this weekend. Unfortunately, there were thunderstorms in the forecast, even though it was sunny when we were supposed to go, and the navegación didn’t happen for the second weekend. We were supposed to meet at el Monumento de la Bandera when the boat tour was over, but since we were done an hour and a half before we were supposed to be, we ended up meeting at Plaza San Martin at 4pm for the 6:15pm game. We set out for la cancha, only get dropped off a few blocks away from the stadium because the police had blocked the street that runs in front of the stadium. While we waited for the students in the last taxi to arrive, we got to experience the fandom on the street. Everyone that walked past us was decked out in blue and yellow. Grills were set up on every corner, and Rosario Central clothing shops were set up along every block. City buses carrying fans were so crowded that people had climbed to the top of the bus and were dancing on the top like it was no big deal. What!?

Apparently, dancing on top of buses is totally normal.

The craziness only continued once we arrived at la cancha. We walked past a line of armed militants in order to get in. Once we arrived in our section, we found that our seat numbers were really only suggestions of where to sit, as our seats were occupied by boxes and boxes of paper shreds. As game time got closer, the drums from the fan section got louder and louder, mortars were shot off, and the stands filled with jumping, singing, flag-bearing blue-and-yellow clad fans. It was crazy. We were totally in the middle of it. Here’s a video (you will be in awe of my videoing skills):

The game itself was just as you’d expect any fútbol game to be. Fans cheered when Rosario Central did something well, and booed and shouted insults when the team messed up or the refs made a call they didn’t like. One section of fans, what I would compare to a student section, sang and beat drums through literally the entire match. I told Mary that I would convert to a Rosario Central fan if they won, but if they lost, my allegiance would stay with Newell’s. My allegiance didn’t change as Rosario Central lost 0-1. As the team walked off the field looking defeated, the fans in the stands around me all started shouting. At first, I thought they were showing their loyalty to their team, but then I realized they were shouting insults at the team for losing! I couldn’t believe it.

We knew that we weren’t going to get a taxi right outside la cancha, so we started following the masses of people down the street. We tried walking along side streets parallel to the main road to see if any taxis were hiding down there, but there were none to be found. Thanks to my ability to remember directions, we walked back the way that Cain and I went home in the taxi on Friday afternoon. This road would take us past Alto Rosario Shopping, and we figured we might have more luck catching a taxi down there. Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea we did, so we just kept walking to try and find a less densely populated area to catch a taxi. One eventually passed us, so 4 people jumped in to go home. The rest of us ended up walking the entire way back to our neighborhood in Barrio Central. We had to have walked for at least an hour and a half, maybe closer to two hours, so we rewarded our hard work with ice cream.

Rosario Central fútbol was certainly a sporting experience unlike any I’ve been to in the United States. It would have been awesome if they had won, but just to feel the passion from the fans was incredible. It was also quite the experience walking through Rosario for hours trying to get home. I’m glad I spent my last night in Rosario at the fútbol match. As Cain and I were getting ready to leave the site on Friday to buy the tickets, one of the Spanish professors told us, “Fútbol no es un deporte. Es una religion!” (Soccer isn’t a sport. It’s a religion). After seeing the fans at the game on Saturday afternoon, I can definitely see why she’d say that.