FIFA World Cup 2022: Clowns Versus Rascals

Brazil and Argentina head to qatar as hot favourites. While Neymar leads a hugely talented side, Messi, in perhaps his last world cup, is in search of the missing silverware. Two of the biggest democracies in latin america share a passion for the beautiful game, food and colonial history

- Milan Sime Martinic

Rising less than a metre from the edge of the sidewalk in Buenos Aires’s Boca neighbourhood, tall, blue-topped gold columns mark the massive perimeter of the chocolate-box-like La Bombonera, one of the world’s grand temples of football. The Alberto José Armando Stadium is set in a working-class, Italian-immigrant neighbourhood at the mouth of the Riachuelo waterway where its waters flow into the Río de la Plata.

Looking and feeling a lot like the South Side of Chicago, the area takes a sudden and decidedly Argentinian air as one notices the different colours of wooden and corrugated-tin walls that clad the houses, and then there are the milonga dancers, street tables, and bars that brighten the storied El Caminito, the little road of tango fame that inspired its name.

Under the imposing shade of the stadium, home of the popular Boca Juniors club, one feels that there is more in the moment than concrete and colours. Standing there, tempted by the smells of chimichurri-topped choripán sandwiches from the street grills and serenaded by the romantic strands of tango from the traditional bandoneon, one can almost hear the drums and the fans inside, ghosts of games that go back a half-a-century and more.

Two thousand kilometres north of La Bombonera, at the majestic Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, too, the ghosts of games past live. Sitting in the empty stands, you can feel Brazil’s disappointment at its loss to Uruguay in the final of the World Cup in 1950, the year Argentina withdrew its participation due to “a disagreement with the Brazilian Football Confederation”.