Wednesday, February 10, 2010


Since I can remember I was not good at sports. In Buenos Aires I was a so-so player in our gym classes. Since this was Argentina I had no knowledge of baseball or something called American football. We played futbol, the English brand, cricket and rugby. I was much too small and thin for rugby so I gave it up. My neurons could never rise up to the challenge of understanding the rules of cricket. This left me with futbol, a sport I never mastered as my two left feet prevented me from ever excelling at it or in that other Argentine endeavour, the tango.

My failure in futbol did not prevent me from playing the favourite street game of the time (I was 8 and 9) called estampitas. You would buy at the corner grocery store these futbol estampitas which were the size, shape and heft of the cardboard stoppers of the milk bottles of the time. Here in North America they would have been called trading cards. Estampitas had portraits of the players of the Argentine futbol league. On purpose, the makers of the estampitas issued fewer portraits of the stars. We traded. We traded as we could also buy a comic book sized publication on which we could stick the pictures. The goal was to have all the blank circles in the pages full. We traded but more often we played a came which consisted in tossing (very carefully) the estampitas against a wall from a few metres away. The deal was to get your estampita as close to the line between the wall and the sidewalk. If you got it that close you won all the other estampitas thrown by your friends. I had two left feet but a very good right hand.

Because I was half English, raised as a snob by my parents (in picture here taken in January 1948 when I was 5) to snub at anything that was popular with the masses I was never taken to a futbol game by my father. My father looked down on our neighbours who would loudly play the speeches by Perón and Eva Perón during the festivities of 25 de mayo and 9 de Julio. He also looked down and considered it awfully gauche when they would listen to such Argentine classic futbol games as the one between Boca Juniors and River Plate (Club Atlético River Plate). As soon as there was the goal the announcer would prolong the goal into something like, “¡Goooooooooooooooooool, gol de Boca Juniors…!"

When possible, and on the sly, I did listen to some games. I was struck by some of the expressions the Argentine announcers used. These were hans (for touching the ball with your hands which was an infraction), or penalty. I also often heard corner for the corner kick. In those days they infrequently used the acceptable term in Spanish which was mano and penal. The latter was a penalty shot to goal. Expressions such as backs and senteroforaward were often used.

I smiled at the concept of the name of one the worse teams in the league called Newell’s Old Boys founded in 1903 in the city of Rosario and still around today. They are the Argentine answer to the Cleveland Indians.

It was my Jewish/German friend Mario Hertzberg, who lived across the street, who would clue me in as to who the best teams were and who were the stars. One day he told me about el gol olímpico. This was a goal which was a corner kick (called a corner even in Spanish until in more recent times it was re-named tiro de esquina). The ball would somehow curve into the goal (or bounce in) without any other player touching the ball.

Which was the first one? Fifteen minutes into an international game between the Argentine National Team and the Uruguyan played on October 2, 1924, Argentine forward Cesáreo Onzari kicked the ball from his corner position and it produced a goal. The Argentine team won the game 2-1. They called it a gol olímpico to make fun of the fact that the Uruguayans were recent Olympic winners (Paris) in futbol.

There were other players who had done this before but until the IFAB (International Football Association Board meeting of 15 June 1924) authorized it for the following season such goals were disallowed. While Onzari is considered the first for the feat because his teammates called it a gol olímpico the very first gol olímpico occurred in Scotland on August 21 and it was kicked by Billy Alston.

The gol olímpico remains a rare occurrence, often accomplished by fluke rather than intent, and with the goalkeeper usually blamed for an error. The only Olympic goal in the World Cup finals was scored for Colombia by Marcos Coll, beating legendary goalkeeper Lev Yashin in a 4–4 draw with the Soviet Union in 1962.

One of the few perks of being a conscript in the Argentine navy is that in uniform I could attend any futbol game for free. In that uniform I saw a clásico between Boca (Boca Juniors) and River (River Plate). I arrived late. I remember being in a colectivo (bus) on my way to the game played in the Buenos Aires barrio called La Boca. I could hear a loud roar from the inside of the bus. When the bus stopped at the stadium and I got off I was able to understand what the roar was. Half of the stadium (30,000?) was shouting in unison an insult to the referee. They were shouting "¡hijo de puta, hijo de puta!"(son of a whore!). Once in the stadium I had to stand where those with the cheap tickets stood. This was far from the upper stands called the plateas. One of the singular pleasures of going to football match was to drink a chocolate milk concoction called a Vascolet. Those in the upper areas opted for beer in paper cups. Bottles had been banned years before for obvious reasons. I was not prepared to what followed. The fans in those upper reaches would piss in the empty cups and then throw them down to where we were. I had to jump out of the way many times.

Another time I went to a game between River and Santos of Brazil. At the time (1965) Pelé still wore the dazzling white uniform of that team. I watched him make a goal which for me surpasses any gol olímpico. On his way to the Argentine goal he was met up by two River defenders. He kicked the ball with his heel so that it arched up into the air and in front of him. He ran past the two defenders to receive the ball which he kicked into the goal before it even hit the ground. There were shouts of of !Off side!" The goal was allowed. I was thrilled. As I went down the concrete platform of the River Plate stadium I noticed that the floor was very wet. I then noted that hundreds of men were pissing against the wall and the urine was simply following the dictates of gravity.

I have no doubt that when I read about Scottish or English soccer rowdies (hooligans!) trashing trains after a football match, that Argentines inherited not only a love for the game but also the ancillary rules of misbehaviour of the Sceptered Isle.

A note on rules of Spanish Grammar. In Spanish, nationalities, argentino, dates, julio are never capitalized. Thus a goal, an Olympic goal would still be gol olímpico no matter what the IOC or VANOC might opine and dictate.