{"id":173229,"date":"2026-03-24T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=173229"},"modified":"2026-03-23T17:14:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T21:14:49","slug":"sunday-at-la-bombonera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/03\/24\/sunday-at-la-bombonera\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday at La Bombonera"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph by Hern\u00e1n Pi\u00f1era from Marbella, via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cl\u00e1sicos<\/em> are like Christmas for football. In these high-tension matches between fierce rivals, expectation almost always outstrips results. For months, fans visualize goals with the unrealistic yearning of a child who hopes for a new PlayStation from Santa Claus in exchange for a few cookies left out for his tired reindeer.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me, the Supercl\u00e1sico between Buenos Aires\u2019s Boca Juniors and River Plate on May 4, 2008, was preceded by thirty-four years of anticipation. In 1974 I went to the Estadio Monumental to see River\u2013Boca, but I had never been to the reverse fixture in La Bombonera, that exceptional stadium that should have been examined by Elias Canetti in Crowds and Power.<\/em><\/p>\n

The wait had charged the occasion with so much emotion that it was almost a shame it actually had to take place. Friends from Mexico, Colombia, and Spain had all similarly circled the date of May 4\u2014the Argentine derby appeals not only to those who sleep in shirts emblazoned with the Quilmes beer logo but to an entire global tribe.<\/p>\n

Like Everest or the Mona Lisa<\/em>, the fame of Boca\u2019s stadium is impossible to deny\u2014look no further than the crowds of tourists who come to snap pictures. But does it really represent the pinnacle of footballing passion?<\/p>\n

I spoke about the Supercl\u00e1sico with the taxi driver who picked me up at the Ezeiza airport and he replied with indignation: \u201cBut we hate each other more!\u201d He came from Rosario and was referring to the bad blood between his hometown clubs Newell\u2019s Old Boys (\u201cthe Lepers\u201d) and Rosario Central (\u201cthe Swine\u201d). On the drive he told me about his family\u2019s marvelous wrath and the betrayal of his aunt Teresita, the heretic who refused to support the Swine. At the core of his story was the issue of rancor: on its biggest days, football comes down to contempt, and nobody hates each other more than Swine hate Lepers. In his opinion, the lesser rivalry between Boca\u2013River was inflated by the press. The driver summed up his argument with theological flair: \u201cGod is everywhere, but performs his tricks in Buenos Aires.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Don’t Worry: It’s Just the Earth Shaking<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

On April 16, my friend Daniel Samper Pizano, a renowned Colombian journalist, organized a dinner in Madrid to prepare for the Supercl\u00e1sico. The final of the Copa del Rey had just concluded between Valencia and Getafe, but we weren\u2019t interested. We preferred to talk about the football of the future, which was to say the upcoming game on May 4. The other guest justified our interest; after the meal, Jorge Valdano told us about the first time he faced Boca as a visiting player. Lacing up his boots in the locker room, he said, everything around him seemed to be moving. One of the veterans came over to reassure him: \u201cIt\u2019s not you, pibe,<\/i> it\u2019s the stadium.\u201d Playing at La Bombonera means overcoming an arena about to collapse under the weight of its own passion. No other ground imposes itself so forcefully upon its visitors.<\/p>\n

In his stupendous book Boquita<\/i>, Mart\u00edn Caparr\u00f3s reminds us that it was Argentina where fans were first baptized as \u201cthe twelfth man.\u201d Accustomed to adversity, we Mexicans consider the scoreline a suggestion we can ignore. Argentine fans, on the other hand, seek to alter the result using three basic tactics: holding their breath, insulting their rivals, and singing love songs. It\u2019s no accident that one of the most prominent barras bravas <\/i>is called La Doce, or \u201cthe twelfth.\u201d These ultras aren\u2019t there to merely watch a game, but to participate in it through their shouts.<\/p>\n

For years, magical realism has gone missing from Latin American literature, finding refuge in aviation instead. To fly across the continent is to endure a saga of detours, delays, and strange schedules that lead to a parallel reality. Maybe air traffic control is cheaper in the early morning and this determines the itineraries of the hemisphere. At any rate, I found myself on a four-hour predawn flight from Bogot\u00e1 to Buenos Aires. Anyone without the meditative powers of a yogi arrived at the destination a zombie. Among the many surprises to come that day, I was made to experience May 4 in an altered state of time.<\/p>\n

The relationship between football and aviation is no trifle\u2014the Copa Libertadores will never be truly competitive until the continent modifies its fixture calendar and flight paths. When I was a kid, I used to take medications with labels that read \u201cShake well before using.\u201d Thanks to a miserable night on the plane, I arrived at the Supercl\u00e1sico in a state of total agitation.<\/p>\n

Entering the stadium was likewise an extreme sport. I was lucky to be accompanied by my friend Leo Tarife\u00f1o, a diehard River fan who had sworn to never set foot in La Bombonera.<\/p>\n

Leo is convinced that Argentines live for confrontation, eagerly disregard established rules, object impulsively, and justify themselves only through negativity, taking issue with anything they don\u2019t agree with. After asserting this theory, he put it into practice. When I praised the chanting of the Boca fans, he replied, \u201cDeep down, their joy is bitter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Being with Leo was the opposite of having a human shield. The route to the stadium was blocked, so we made our way through a wasteland thick with the invigorating smoke from street stalls selling chorip\u00e1n.<\/i> Our barren surroundings gradually became a funnel. Police barricades flanked us on either side. We continued on until someone\u2014an invisible leader far ahead\u2014committed a grave mistake. The crowd was pushed back by the sound of riot guns and retreated to a checkpoint, where Leo and I asked for directions to the press box. An officer waved his hand as if trying to hypnotize us. We \u201cunderstood\u201d to make our way to the other side of a roundabout, but instead we ducked into the first alley we came across. Another crowd pulled us in before being repelled again by the riot guns. Everyone ran en masse to a station manned by mounted police ushering fans into a makeshift fenced corridor. It looked less like an accessway than a site of detention. Perhaps for regular stadium-goers the challenge of entry might offer a delicious adrenaline rush, but we were in no shape for it. Above all, it was no place for Leo to expound upon his theory of antagonism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We walked through another abandoned lot where someone handed me a flyer I read like a sacred text:<\/p>\n

\n

Injured fans . . . . !<\/p>\n

You have rights and are entitled to lots of $$$.<\/p>\n

Any injury you suffer inside a football stadium,<\/p>\n

or anywhere nearby, can be claimed.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The propaganda was signed \u201cEstudio Posca,\u201d which was located on Calle Uruguay 385, Office 902. Its 2008 slogan was \u201c<\/i>\u00a1\u00a1\u00a1Standing with fans for 32 years!!!\u201d The firm presented itself as specializing in \u201caccidents occurring in traffic or in football stadiums.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was struck by the fact that the sporting ground had generated its own area of legal specialization. I was also surprised that the area of jurisdiction extended to the stadium\u2019s outskirts. Leo and I had entered the zone where it might behoove us to keep Estudio Posca\u2019s phone number close at hand. Among other alarming facts, the flyer warned:<\/p>\n

Do not believe People who claim to be Lawyers, and who show up at your home, in the Hospital, or at the police station.<\/p>\n

Did it make sense to attend an event where I risked ending up in a prison bed, accosted by a “Person who claimed to be a Lawyer?”<\/p>\n

Even if I had “lots of $$$” to claim, I was hardly eager to go through the necessary requirements to get it. The flyer was explicit about the covered risks:<\/p>\n

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Trampling; rubber bullets or lead bullets;<\/p>\n

broken bones; sprains; flares; fights; stones, etc.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

After suffering any of the above, you were advised to take the following actions:<\/p>\n

\n

Keep your ticket.<\/p>\n

Get treated at the club\u2019s sick bay in the closest<\/p>\n

Hospital to the stadium.<\/p>\n

Call us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I kept the flyer to safeguard my survival. The most alarming thing about it was the casual implication that broken bones and rubber bullets simply came with the territory. Some people refuse to see doctors out of fear a previously invisible ailment might suddenly appear in their presence. With Estudio Posca, it was the other way around: we were already injured, we just hadn\u2019t yet discovered the blood.<\/p>\n

Given humanity\u2019s great diversity of mindsets, perhaps someone out there would be excited to receive proof of having entered a zone of aggression. Perhaps others were busy calculating how good the afternoon\u2019s business might be\u2014how much “$$$” might be made from a broken fibula? Could it be worth sacrificing a rib as well? If some people survive by selling their blood plasma and sperm, might there also be professional victims with a long history of fractures?<\/p>\n

We made our way down streets that seemed to lead to the stadium but only ended in more detours. Due to my friend\u2019s distrust of all Boca fans, we asked the police for directions instead. In every country stadium guards seem to come from afar and have no idea how to reach the seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe aren\u2019t going to get in,\u201d Leo said with strange satisfaction.<\/p>\n

I was distracted by the flags hanging from balconies and the women in blue-and-gold aprons selling empanadas. Few clubs retain the urban grit of Boca, whose football still represents the surrounding neighborhood. The club of Maradona hasn\u2019t lost touch with the streets\u2014the only problem is knowing which one leads to its entrance.<\/p>\n

We reached an area where everyone was leaning out their windows. The festive atmosphere was interrupted by homophobic chants: \u201cPuuuuuuuuuutos!<\/em>\u201d A motorcycle roared in the distance. Then we saw the white beast: the team bus of River. We had arrived in the corridor of rage, where those who can\u2019t get into the stadium play their own kind of game. The following day I heard Beto Alonso, one of River\u2019s most emblematic players, describing on the radio the objects that fell onto the roof of the bus. Some people freeze blocks of ice for the occasion and others sacrifice their heaviest padlocks. The bus slowly advanced through the crowd, dented, spat upon, and reviled.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always suspicious of singers who visit a new country and become instant fans of a team, playing their encore draped in a local jersey. However, in that shameful alleyway, I was on the verge of becoming a River fan myself\u2014and it wasn\u2019t just to make Leo happy.<\/p>\n

\n

When Mexican police don\u2019t want to investigate a murder, they label it \u201cassisted suicide.\u201d My sudden sympathy for the abused, paired with my friend\u2019s theories, could have easily transformed us into two potential suicides in search of assistance.<\/p>\n

Naturally, my perception was entirely foreign. In 1974 when I went to River\u2019s stadium, a man heard my accent and asked if it was true that in Mexico, a fan of a team like River could be seated next to the equivalent of a Boca fan. I said yes. \u201cAnd they won\u2019t kill each other?\u201d he asked with interest. I explained that at least in this respect, we were peaceful. His response was withering: \u201cWhat a bunch of degenerates!\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget seeing my father in Mexico\u2019s City\u2019s University Olympic Stadium, urging everyone around us to applaud for the visiting team. \u201cThey\u2019re our guests!\u201d he said with enough amiable quirkiness to make everyone unthinkingly follow along.<\/p>\n

Raised with the belief that losing is synonymous with hospitality, it\u2019s hard for Mexican fans to understand the spirit of the barra <\/i>brava,<\/i> which was seemingly forged, if not in the actual Battle of Thermopylae, at least in the movie 300.<\/i><\/p>\n

During a discussion about football and literature at the Buenos Aires Book Fair, Mart\u00edn Caparr\u00f3s remarked that Mexicans say \u201cI cheer for Guadalajara\u201d while Argentines proclaim \u201cI\u2019m from Boca.\u201d These degrees of belonging are distinct. In Mexico our teams tend to fall into the abyss, so we prefer to follow at a distance. Our passion is an unreachable horizon rather than something woven into our DNA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

On the street where the River bus was pelted with insults, the question of identity couldn\u2019t be more clear. If you weren\u2019t throwing stones, you came from somewhere else.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Side Effects: The Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Occasionally, there are moments in life when we Mexicans reveal our strength in the face of adversity. I had resigned myself to never entering the stadium and to eating chorip\u00e1n <\/i>alongside the peaceful vendors. Then we saw a white-haired policeman issuing orders with the decisiveness of an orchestra conductor. He, and only he, knew how to find our entrance. \u201cIt\u2019s simple,\u201d he said prophetically. \u201cJust follow the train tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

We walked between the rusty rails of a long-abandoned tramway. This had been the route to the stadium in the days when goalkeepers wore caps and footballs were still made from leather.<\/p>\n

We continued along the history-drenched path until we arrived at another dangerous crossroads. To our right was a blue wall of perforated metal. This was the entryway for River fans. We couldn\u2019t see them, but we sensed them advancing like a herd of shadows. The only proof of their presence were the insults hurled in their direction. I was tempted to make a silent gesture of solidarity by slipping the flyer from Estudio Posca beneath the wall.<\/p>\n

The intensity of the scene contrasted sharply with one across the street, where three girls in yellow-and-blue leotards were posing in support of a local candidate.<\/p>\n

Finally, we arrived at the gate and climbed to our assigned tower. From these heights I was able to confirm the optical effect described by the Colombian sportswriter David Leonardo Quiti\u00e1n\u2014Boca\u2019s stadium is the only one where distance from the field does not increase with the level of ascent. Instead, the verticality of its construction creates a dizzying proximity. \u201cYou must take a lesson in abysses,\u201d say the protagonists of Journey to the Center of the Earth. <\/i>It\u2019s a good piece of advice for visiting La Bombonera.<\/p>\n

When Hugo Orlando Gatti, Boca\u2019s most beloved and extravagant goalkeeper, said, \u201cI go to the edge of the abyss,\u201d he was referring to his tendency to complicate plays, but perhaps also to the onlookers who seemed about to collapse onto the field.<\/p>\n

La Bombonera is an odd stadium\u2014fantastically so. It holds 57,395 spectators. Not a single number in this magical figure is even.<\/p>\n

For the crowd, there is no greater exercise than anticipation itself. Energized by the wait, the standing area known as La Popular defines the Supercl\u00e1sico. What happens on the pitch can\u2019t compete with what happens here. On May 4, 2008, someone wanting to see a derby with great Argentine players could have watched Inter vs. Milan to admire the country\u2019s exported geniuses. The match in Italy was a back-and-forth affair, nothing at all like the morass at La Bombonera.<\/p>\n

The home team won by playing defense and prolonging every pause in play with the exaggerated slowness of Soviet cinema. River lacked the forcefulness that their coach, El Cholo Simeone, had once shown in spades during his playing days, and they were only able to triangulate passes when it no longer mattered. River fans are called gallinas <\/i>or \u201cchickens\u201d by their enemies. True to form, the sun-drenched masses shouted like crazed farmers ready to slaughter an entire hen house. They would never have traded this match for the aesthetic flourish of Inter vs. Milan. The Supercl\u00e1sico was as it should be: an effective pretext for the outpouring of passion. You don\u2019t go to La Bombonera to discover football, but to confirm its emotional heft.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always disappointing to compare historical exploits: an ideal game would collapse time, offering us a clash of great idols across eras, with Labruna, Pedernera, and S\u00edvori taking on Ratt\u00edn, Pern\u00eda, and Batistuta. This impossibility\u2014the ghostly sum of everything that has ever been played for\u2014infuses each new contest between these intimate enemies with new allure. It\u2019s a knife fight in which wounds never feel as deep as the animosity that fuels them.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, exceptional days when a derby resembles its inspirational propaganda\u2014in the ninetieth minute a match is tied 3\u20133 and sees a winner scored in stoppage time. But on this Sunday in May, the only astonishing occurrences were in the stands.<\/p>\n

If comic-book superheroes are bipolar characters who punctuate their depressing existence as Clark Kent with maniacal outbursts as Superman, football fans oscillate from affection to invective with nothing in between. The dedication of a fanbase is measured according to its bipolarity, and Boca ranks highly: \u201cI don\u2019t care what they say \/ what the others say \/ I follow you everywhere \/ I love you more each day,\u201d sing the romantic men who just minutes before called for the River fans to be murdered.<\/p>\n

That afternoon, when Sebasti\u00e1n Battaglia scored the stunning header that made the game 1\u20130, the building shook as promised by legend. Coming from a country of earthquakes, I talked about this enthusiasm, measurable on the Richter scale, for days. I was corrected by a writer, a waiter, and a police officer with the same phrase, extracted straight from the most sensitive ventricle of the Bostero heart: \u201cBoca\u2019s stadium doesn\u2019t tremble, it beats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Passion can also be defined by its power to summon those who are absent. That day, the ultras of Barra Auriazul memorialized the passing of a man named Raulito, an extraordinary fan made present even in death, and they paid tribute to the great players who had migrated away from a place where careers never last.<\/p>\n

Long gone are the chivalrous days of Ernesto Lazzatti, who played his entire career without ever being sent off, and who wore Boca\u2019s colors without ever thinking of them as a stepping stone to Europe. Today Argentines are football\u2019s great nomads. \u201cIf they were any good they wouldn\u2019t be playing for us,\u201d a taxi driver told me. \u201cVer\u00f3n came back because he\u2019s old, Riquelme because he\u2019s weird.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remembered a scene from Germany \u201906, when I was a commentator alongside Carlos Bianchi for Mexican TV. During a commercial break, the former coach who won everything with Boca received a phone call. He said something like \u201cI can\u2019t help anymore\u2014you have another father now.\u201d Later he told us \u201cthat was Riquelme,\u201d with the same satisfaction Homer would have felt announcing a phone call from Achilles. Argentina\u2019s number ten needed to feel loved in order to play well. From his training camp in Germany, he was seeking the emotional support Bianchi had given him at Boca. Coming from the riotous atmosphere of La Bombonera, it\u2019s no wonder Riquelme had little success at Barcelona\u2019s Camp Nou, where spectators behave like opera-goers.<\/p>\n

With few exceptions, Argentina\u2019s cracks consider their feats a boarding pass to faraway places. The only ones who remain sedentary are the supporters. Perhaps their devotion stems from this irreconcilable disagreement. In football, passion feeds on pain\u2014every fan base finds a way to overcome its own distinct evils. In Argentina, miracles are possible but short-lived; in Mexico, they are forever postponed and glory can only be imagined. The Estadio Azteca sportswriter describes plays that require adjectives to become interesting. The Bombonera sportswriter is faced with something that needs no words of validation; in the press box, I met Juan Jos\u00e9 Becerra, the indispensable author of Grasa<\/em>, who was chronicling the team\u2019s season for the daily newspaper Cr\u00edtica. <\/i>\u201cThe only thing I want,\u201d he admitted, \u201cis for Boca to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what does an expert in postponement discover in the realm of the impatient? In La Bombonera, the Mexican fan no longer waits for the fiction of spectacular Mexican goals. Instead, he enters a hardboiled reality. The stadium vibrates like nature at its most radical, demanding survival instead of interpretation.<\/p>\n

Adrift in the tide, the sportswriter from afar has ninety minutes to get used to something he never before associated with football: vertigo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An excerpt from\u00a0<\/i>The Game at the End of the World<\/a>, translated from the Spanish by Francisco Cant\u00fa, to be published by Restless Books in May.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Juan Villoro <\/i><\/span>is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. His columns have appeared in <\/i>Reforma, <\/i>The New York Times, El Pa\u00eds,\u00a0and <\/i>El Mercurio, among others, <\/i>and his books have been translated into numerous languages. A recipient of several awards, including<\/em> the 2018 Manuel Rojas Prize for his body of work, Villoro has taught <\/i>at <\/i>Autonomous Metropolitan University, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, <\/i>and Pompeu Fabra university in Barcelona, as well as at the New <\/i>Journalism Foundation, created by Gabriel Garcia M\u00e1rquez.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Francisco Cant\u00fa <\/i><\/span>is a writer, translator, and the author of <\/i>The Line Becomes a River. He is the<\/em> winner of the 2018 <\/i>Los Angeles Times Book Prize and is the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award in Nonfiction<\/i>.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i>His writing and translations have been featured in <\/i>The New Yorker,<\/em> Granta,<\/em> Guernica, and <\/i>VQR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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