I feel like it’s possible that I have found football heaven and it’s called the chocolate box. I was expecting great things before I went to La Bombonera for my first Boca Juniors match in Buenos Aires. I wasn’t disappointed.
All of the indicators pointed to a disappointing experience before I left. The match I went to took place on a Thursday afternoon, around 3:00 pm local time. Boca Juniors’ opponent was one of the bottom clubs in the Argentine table – Chacarita Juniors – though I had hope that since it was a BsAs derby, there might be some added excitement. Also, it was 32 degrees Celsius (around 90 Fahrenheit) and I was worried the heat might keep some people away.
The heat didn’t keep anybody away; it just made them more active. Rather than go to a match in Buenos Aires by myself and risk injury, robbery or other unfortunate incidents, I went with a small tour group. We arrived an hour before the match and had to go through three levels of heavy security before getting into the stadium. Our seats were in the end zone, directly beneath the seats for the Chacarita Juniors supporters. This meant that projectiles were coming down frequently, but they all landed without incident.
Despite the heat, despite being a Thursday afternoon and despite the subpar competition, the stadium was packed. It wasn’t just packed. It was loud. It wasn’t just loud. It moved. From about twenty minutes before the match until the end, the singing and jumping and yelling continued. To be honest, it probably helped that I’m a Boca Juniors supporter and Boca crushed Chacarita 3-0. I’ve written about a number of stadiums now, but my experience at La Bombonera was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
No beer was sold at the stadium. None was needed. The fans appeared to carry it with them in their bellies. They carried other things, too, and I had flashbacks to my time in Amsterdam a few weeks prior. With the tour group before the match, we were told that lighters were prohibited in the stadium, so if you wanted to smoke, put your lighter in your sock and nobody would check. You’d think they’d either catch on to that and start checking socks or just lift the “prohibition” on lighters in the stadium, but I digress . . .
One of the interesting features of the stadium is the stands on the right (at least it was on my right) side of the stadium. Because of the lack of property for the stadium, the stands are built straight up, rather than the bowl-like shape you see in the rest of the stadium and other stadiums. It gives the appearance of playing against a wall, though the wall was filled with fans watching the match. Another interesting feature was that all of the Coca-Cola advertisements were in black-and-white rather than the traditional red-and-white. Even Coca-Cola doesn’t want to be confused with a River Plate supporter at La Bombonera.
Another new experience for me at La Bombonera was the post-match lockdown. After the match, the Boca Juniors supporters section at both ends of the field were locked down to allow the Chacarita Juniors supporters an opportunity to escape. We had to wait around forty-five minutes before we could leave and the entire time, the crowd was singing, jumping and celebrating the victory.
In the past few months, I’ve been to football matches in six countries on three continents and all of the experiences have been great, but La Bombonera certainly provided the most unique experience as well as the most exciting.
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