After what feels like an eternity the Argentine football season finally comes to a halt this Sunday. Our top-flight teams have played a minimum of 41 games a piece over the course of 2024 between the Copa de la Liga and Liga Profesional, with some pushing over 50 when cup and continental competitions are considered. It has been a gruelling slog to the finish, but this weekend has one more thrilling flourish in store for fatigued fans and players alike.
Not since 2014 have three teams arrived at the final day with the chance to win the title. Vélez Sarsfield, Talleres and Huracán are separated by just two points at the top, with the former still smarting from losing the Copa Argentina final to Central Córdoba on Wednesday, and all three will be desperate to prevail and break their respective droughts.
The Fortín last won the league back in 2013 while Huracán's last league crown was under the late César Menotti with that mythical team of 1973. And then there is Talleres: probably the biggest team in Argentina not only to have not won the title in any of its guises, but to be without a single national trophy in the top flight.
If any extra spice is required for this tripartite showdown, it is provided by the fact that Vélez and Huracán square off on Sunday in what will be a winner-take-all clash unless Talleres – who also come with their own sub-plot neatly integrated, after a year where club president Andrés Fassi has been at loggerheads with the president of the Argentine Football Association, Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia and the entire AFA hierarchy – also beat Newell's Old Boys. For the Globo faithful in particular it is also a reminder of their last close shave with glory and the start of a grudge that still lingers to the present day.
Ángel Cappa's stunning 2009 side still rolls off the tongue 15 years later. Young stars like Javier Pastore, Matías Defederico, Patricio Toranzo and Mario Bolatti paired with grizzled veterans such as current Tigre boss Eduardo Domínguez and Carlos 'Chiche' Arano to form one of the best teams Argentine football has seen in the last two decades. They won eight of their last nine games to move a point ahead of Vélez prior to their final-day meeting in Liniers.
A draw would have been enough to deliver the title, but a series of disastrous errors from referee Gabriel Brazenas culminated in the failure to call a foul on Joaquín Larrivey for a studs-up lunge on Gastón Monzón, leaving Maxi Moralez to tap the ball into an empty net as the goalkeeper lay flat out on the turf. The wait for the crown was prolonged for Huracán, and continues to this day, as does Cappa's contention that the events of that July 5 were a “scandalous robbery.”
Perhaps the best thing that can be said in Brazenas' defence is that his officiating was so erratic and misguided that finding an ulterior motive beyond incompetence is tough; in any case, it was the last competitive game the referee, who was forced to move from his Lanús home due to death threats, ever took charge of. Sunday's whistleblower Facundo Tello will hope that his afternoon goes rather more smoothly, but it could be a bumpy ride if those old memories are raised again in Liniers.
The day Argentina touched the heavens
Has it been two years already? December 18 marks the second anniversary of Argentina's World Cup final victory: a game played by the twenty-three men in the Albiceleste squad in Lusail and some forty-five million more back home in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba and beyond.
To commemorate the occasion, film-maker Eli Mengem and Copa 90 are premiering their new documentary Once in a Lifetime: Argentina in six venues across the world, including Buenos Aires. Mengem chose to capture the joys and tears of 2022 among the Argentine people.
Mengem's intention, as he told the Times, was to go beyond the events on the pitch and even the excitement of Messi gunning for that elusive title - “I was on the belief that if there really was a goal in football, Messi had to win the World Cup”, he affirmed – and capture the mood of a people captivated with the exploits of its heroes, amid economic strife and day-to-day struggles to keep its head above water in adverse conditions. And above all, through interviewing dozens of fans struck down with World Cup fever in December 2022, it paints a portrait of a people consumed by their passion for life in general and football in particular.
“Anything Argentinians are passionate about is to an extreme that is almost unhealthy. It's not just football, whether it's politics, whether it's music, whether it's steak and wine,” Mengem adds.
“If an Argentinian is passionate about something, they're almost not normal about it. They have to make it huge and add songs to it and be the best in the world at it, it's not okay just to be like, yeah, we're okay. It's extreme.
“Argentinians are, in my experience personally, very extreme people, and I think it's wonderful. I think it's also awful, I think it sums it all up. It's just the country's extremes. And, I think that's why football works so well because it's the most extreme sport in every way, for good and bad reasons.”
'Once in a Lifetime: Argentina' premieres at Futbolitis, Thames 1876, CABA, on Wednesday, December 18. Doors open at 6pm.
