Finger pointing

Surprise, surprise: River Plate’s directors had nothing to do with Sunday’s running battle between factions of the club’s main barra brava, and did all they could do maintain security in the stadium. It must be true, because they say it themselves. They’re not the only ones under the finger of suspicion, though; there were seven injuries to fans, and one of them at least is thought by some to be the result of police treatment. One perhaps significant step forward was taken on Sunday, though – the vast majority of River’s fans in the stadium, for the first time, chanted in unison to express their disgust at what was happening even as the battle unfolded in their view.

Domingo Díaz, speaking to Radio Global Station on Monday, told his interviewer that, ‘We’ve done everything that was asked of us by the Security Commission, the police and [the commitee of] Rights of Admission, but on the terrace I didn’t see a single one of the eight-hundred-odd uniformed officers who the club paid for to provide security.‘

‘The directorship,’ continued Díaz, ‘condemns these episodes but the truth is we don’t know whether more can be done to prevent this from happening again.’ This surely is part of the point – the very least the authorities and clubs can do is make sure that they can categorically state nothing more can be done.

That was one thing the police force were totally unable to say of themselves, though. Of the seven injured in the fight, there was one far more serious than the other, relatively minor, wounds. A 39-year-old fan (pictured above), whose image was broadcast across Argentina, in a black t-shirt, struggling to breathe and with his entire head covered in blood, was reported on Sunday evening to be on the brink of death in a medically-induced coma in Hospital Fernández.

Three versions of how the injury was picked up have circulated in the press over the last day-and-a-half. The first, and the one that’s got the small matter of television pictures to back it up, is that the man was hit violently on the back of his head by a barra in the stand behind the goal during the fight (though the injured man himself isn’t thought to be a barra. Another – the police version – is that he suffered an epileptic fit on the way into the stadium – before entering the stand, according to Commissioner Roberto Palavecino - and cracked his skull when he fell to the pavement. The third, a perhaps inevitable accusation given the relationship between the public and police authority in many Latin American countries, is that he was a victim of police brutality.

The police explanation would appear to be seeking to divert attention from what River director Díaz pointed out on the radio – the lack of a police presence actually in the stand. And this in spite of the fact that several journalists familiar with the terrace politics at the club had already forecast the fight. It begs the question, though: even if it’s true, why on earth was a man who’d just had a violent epileptic fit allowed into the stadium? Even more stupid, as Olé point out: how can 700 officers have allowed knives (pictured on the front cover of Monday’s edition), chains and other weapons pass right under their noses into the stadium?

More worrying still are suggestions in some sections of the press that Los Borrachos‘ factions chose this weekend for the clash due to the venue – River’s Monumental was hosting a rock festival so Vélez Sársfield’s was used instead, and there have been suggestions that the barras chose this date to settle their disputes so as to avoid any closure of the Monumental from disrupting the team’s title bid. Never mind the scenes the players had to take the pitch to, hey…

Finally though, one tiny bright side, perhaps. As the battle raged in the popular (the stand behind the home goal), the fans in the rest of the José Amalfitani could see everything and voiced their displeasure. It’s the first time that a fanbase as large as River’s has expressed such distaste towards a barra brava as powerful as Los Borrachos del Tablón. In an action that journalists have compared to the popular protests against past governments in the Plaza de Mayo, the ordinary fans chanted loudly against what was happening. The difference it’ll make? Negligible if any, of course. But what Argentina’s football violence problem needs is a solution which starts from the ground up – and if the police and club officials won’t provide it, is there any way the fans might?