Sunday at La Bombonera

“Clásicos are like Christmas for football. In these high-tension matches between fierce rivals, expectation almost always outstrips results. … For me, the Superclásico between Buenos Aires’s 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–Boca, 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. 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—the Argentine derby appeals not only to those who sleep in shirts emblazoned with the Quilmes beer logo but to an entire global tribe. …”
The Paris Review
W – La Bombonera, W – La Doce
amazon: Crowds and Power – Elias Canetti
Plaque donated by San Lorenzo de Almagro on the occasion of the inauguration of La Bombonera, May 1940.