Batteling Hooligans in Rosario

Argentina vs. Brazil in Rosario... big game. Why? The 4 top teams from South America go to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Right now, Argentina is #4 and Brazil is #1 with 4 games remaining, so if Argentina beats Brazil they'll qualify for the WC. Also, this is the first time in history that the Argentina national team has played in Rosario, usually the team plays in Buenos Aires at the River Plate Stadium but Maradona (the coach) doesn't like the field since he played for Boca (the two teams in Buenos Aires are River and Boca). He decided to move the game to Rosario. On top of everything else, Brazil vs. Argentina is always a big game because they are rivals like the Red River Shootout game (UT vs OU). It will always be the RR Shootout to me, even though for "crowd purposes" theyve changed it to the Red River Rivalry, lame. Movinggg on...

Since its such a big game, getting tickets isnt easy, long story short, our only option was to camp out in front of the stadium in Rosario for a day to get tickets for the Populares section. (The cheapest section to sit in where the super fans are) So thats what we did...

Tickets went on sale Friday morning at 9am and the game wasnt until that Saturday night, so we got to Rosario (4 hrs north of Buenos Aires) at 7am Thursday morning and were camping by 10am. By the time we got there, the line had already wrapped around the entire stadium and trickeled down 7 blocks. People had been out there since Monday! Some had tents and radios and food and everything, we just had blankets and yoga mats. We set up shop on the cement at the end of the line against a gate. It was alright, sitting on the cement all day.. we sat next to this kid from Rosario, Martín who was super nice- and Luis, this guy in his 60s.

So, sitting sitting sitting all day- kinda chilly , trying to make the day pass, then all of a sudden we see everyone in front of us start packing up all their shit super fast and run towards the front of the line. So thats what we did, we ran, asked no questions, packed up our stuff and just ran- hurdeling over lawn chairs, blankets, anything. It was survival of the fittess at its fullest. Seriously. The long line that had wrapped around the stadium was now condensed to 5 blocks. It was complete madness. What had happened was a bus of a group of the Barra Brava - soccer hooligans- had gotten out of the bus and rushed the front of the line all at once. Luckily a lady had warned us about this earlier so we were prepared. Ok so now its 6pm and we're in this crazy packed line which wasnt even a line it was just like a sea of crazy soccer fans trying to push to the front.. why? I have no idea, tickets werent even going on sale for another 15 hours. Everyone was so so squished... thats an understatement- you were slammed in between the person in front of and behind and to the sides of you.

The line would move forward but there were so many people, you couldnt move an arm or anything, and you just moved with the flow of the people without walking because you couldnt move any other way. Even though it was really cold outside, in that crowd of people, you got so hot and sweaty because you still had all youre layers on. Then the police showed up and did absolutely nothing. They just shot shotguns in the air- which I think I was the only one scared by it - but apparently its pretty common. It was dumb, the whole thing was crazy. There were people climbing on walls and gates trying to regulate. Women with babies were stuck in the crowds, some old fat man passed out from exhaustion.

(we're in between the green and blue tent)

Okay so this goes on for 3 hours- then around 8pm, it starts pouring, great, and, its dark outside. Of course, we have no umbrella and my rain jacket got stolen in the chaos. Whoever has it, I hope they know I loved that jacket.. ughh who steals? Anyway, we had nothing and were standing in this group of packed people like sardines in the freezy freezy freezy rain for a couple hours. People were using tents, trashbags, sharing umbrellas with strangers, anything to keep dry. Riot cops had shown up a little earlier to try to form a line out of the people, but when it started to pour they left. What are you supposed to do? Its 10 at night, freezing, raining, and tickets dont go on sale for another 11 hours!

If you stay in the wet rain, you may get tickets but youre probably going to be super super super sick during the game that it wont even be worth it, but it was like you had already waited sooo long you couldnt give up now. Soo... at 10:30 PM, we gave up :( we couldnt do it. If there wouldnt have been rain I think I couldve done it, but when youre soaking wet standing up exhausted, its so much worse. We lost the battle.

Luckily we left because around 3AM that night another bus of the Barra Brava came , rushed the line, started chaos and a lot of people got robbed, bottles were thrown and there were fights, No where for me and Sol to be. We went back to our hostel and took a hot shower. I heard they didnt even finish selling tickets to the 4,000 people until like noon the next day and a lot of people didnt even get tickets. Crazy. Whoever lasted in that line, deserved their tickets!

The next day we went exploring around the city of Rosario... if San Diego and Sevilla had a love child, Rosario would be it. Its so beautiful! Its a smaller city that borders the Rio Paraná , so there are parks everywhere and people laying out and flying kites and everything all the time (when the weathers nice). Pretty much, we explored all day on Friday, ate lunch by the river and ordered a pizza that night and played drinking games at the hostel. I think we were all still so exhausted from the night before :)

Our room smelled like mildew-y, humid, bananas and wet dog from our wet disgusting clothes from the night before. haha gross, but it was so true. It smelt like a first graders lunch box after sitting out for a couple days. Seriously. We went by the stadium earlier that day and you could just see where everyone had been the night before, the streets and sidewalks smelt like rotten sweaty sweet vinegar and there was dirt everywhere. Brought back some bitter-sweet memories.

On Saturday, me Sol and Bryan were still super unsatisfied with going through all that and still not getting tickets that we decided to go by the stadium and try and get some scalped tickets. The stadium on game day was a zoo! There were drug dogs, horses, riot police, radio stations, churipan stands, old ladies sitting outside of their houses selling homemade pies, stray dogs, tourists, argentines, everyone... The average populares ticket was going for $600 pesos- and they were selling them in the line the day before for $50! That stung a little. Bryan found a guy selling his for $350- deal, done. I down, two to go. We had been out at the stadium all day long, and it was getting late, so the cops were starting to show up for the game and the scalpers were starting to scatter. (Its illegal to sell scapled tickets but not illegal to buy them ) Crappppp. Crunch time. Bryan found this sketchy kid selling 2 tickets for $1000 pesos total- ouch. You know when you have that weird feeling in your stomach like, somethings not right... well that was what I got from this kid, super shady. Anyway, he took us to the guy selling the tickets.. it was broad daylight on a busy street right by the entrance of this crowded restaurant, he was selling Argentine flags.. so the situation wasn't sketchy. I was standing kinda by Bryans side and Bryan asks the guy to see the 2 tickets to compare them to the real one he already had because a lot of people were selling fake tickets- and that would've sucked a lot to buy a fake one and get denied at the door. He was comparing the tickets when all of a sudden these two guys (clean cut dressed in regular street clothes) come up real fast, grab Bryan and the kid selling the tickets and start yelling. "Freeze!" (..or something) He throws Bryan against the wall and is like - "Im a cop, it's a federal crime to resell tickets." yada yada yada. Bryan tries to tell the cop, No no this is my ticket- Im just trying to buy one for my girlfriend and I was comparing the tickets to make sure they werent fake. The cop kinda has his hand over Byans mouth and is scream-whispering (if you can imagine that), "Shut up! Dont make a scene! Shut- up!" very scary. He sees me and makes me stand against the wall, of course Im crying like a loser on the side picturing the absolute worse case scenerio possible, going to South American jail but we didnt do anything wrong, really. "Who sold you this ticket! Who sold you this ticket!?" he kept yelling so Bryan finally said, some guy around the corner. He treated me and Bryan so much worse than he treated the kid actually scalping the tickets. The cop takes Bryans ticket! Takes it!! Thats when the tears really came, he had no idea what we even went through to get that ticket and runs around the corner, to "catch" the guy selling tickets and tells us to stay where we are and not to move. And... that was the last we saw of him.

What was Bryan supposed to do? Keep arguing so the cop would search him and steal his ticket and the $1000 of pesos he has in his pocket, or go tell another cop that a cop just robbed him. Theres really nothing you can do. I probably did a sucky job explaining that whole situation, but everything was so fast and so crazy and loud that I just froze and not one word of spanish came to mind, I couldnt say anything. The cop turned the story around to that since Bryan had a ticket in his hand, he probably had the intention of scalping his ticket. So, he took our ticket and probably sold it on the streets later that day for $600 pesos and pocketed the money. $600 pesos is a lot of money here. The average wage is about $1200 pesos per month, so selling one ticket gets you far. ($1200 pesos = $315ish USD)

The Argentine futbol system is really corrupt, the police and the head people at the soccer club association and the hooligans and the thieves all work together... everyone gets a cut.. very mafioso. The cops pay the Barra Brava to rush the line and steal tickets, thousands of tickets magically go missing and into the hands of the people on the streets, yada yada. We were talking to some guy on the street and he was telling us how on the day the tickets go on sale, if you go down this little alleyway and ring the bell, a cop comes to the door- you pay him $100 pesos and he goes into the "ticket safe" and gets you tickets. The cops set the price that the tickets get sold on the street. So they make a killing off of the games.

So, after being completely defeated and wanting to burn my Argentine jersey, we went back to the hostel- put on Brazillian colors and met Felipe and Maria at a brazillian bar to watch the game! I even, conveniently had face paint :) It was so perfect, it was this little happy hole-in-the-wall pizza place owned by an old argentine guy married to a brazilian lady. He had a big TV set up and we were the first ones there so we got a table right in the middle front.

The bar was packed of Argentine fans and then there was our table, an island of green surrounded by a sea of blue and white. Luckily, the game was a blow out and Argentina ended up losing 3-1. It would've sucked a lot if we would've ended up paying all that money to see a losing game where the fans were bummed out the whole time and no one was cheering. There were 3,000 people stuck outside the stadium with real tickets who weren't allowed to go in because so many people had gone in with fake tickets. That sucks a lot. Later that night, the girls went to a boliche called Madam.

Then on Sunday we woke up early- early as in 11AM, but when you stay out singing and dancing until 5am, 11 is pretty early, and went to Martín's house(the guy we met camping in line) for an asado his family wanted to have for us. How nice is that? We meet this kid for one day, talked, shared our snacks with him and his family makes a huge bbq for all 5 of us. His house was kind of on the outskirts of town and you could tell that they didn't have much by looking at the way their house was, the kind of meat they bought, the questions they asked, etc.. but they were so so so nice and so genuine and so great and so welcoming! Really really nice people. We hung out with them around their dinner table the entire afternoon hanging out.. and snacking of course. They were so great. Aw and his little sister told me that me, Maria and Sol were the prettiest girls she had ever met :) And, thats it, we took a bus back to Buenos Aires later that night and thats the story of my trip to Rosario.

Bryan, Sol, Me, Maria