Hot, Sweaty, and Humbled: My first game in Argentina

This past Monday I had my first real taste of women's soccer in Argentina. My pride wishes I could tell you it was filled with glory and screaming fans and a beautiful stadium and nice gear and top competition and other equally wonderful things, but I can't. It was not at all a negative experience, but it was, however, a humbling one.

Both teams after the game

Even though this is not my first time playing soccer, or fútbol, here, when I trained with the national team (la Selección) in 2011, I was still in a kind of bubble. La Selección  was the highest level of women's soccer this nation has to offer, so the equipment, facilities, and quality of the players were not so different from the States'. What struck me the most during my first experience playing in Argentina was how far each player had to travel to get to and from practice every day.

Each afternoon before practice, the players would meet at a hotel in Belgrano, a neighborhood in the capital, to take a bus to the training complex which lies about an hour outside  the heart of the city. For those who are unfamiliar with Argentine geography (don't feel bad, I was in the same group until fairly recently), Buenos Aires is much larger than just the capital city, which is actually referred to here as CABA (Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires). It is also the largest and most populated province in the country. So when the girls on the team told me they lived in Buenos Aires, I was surprised to find out most of them had at least an hour and a half bus and/or train ride just to get to the hotel to get on another bus for another hour long trip.

Province of Buenos Aires

Even more surprising was the significant number of players who lived in other provinces and had to take buses into Buenos Aires at the beginning of the week, stay in the city for the days we had training, then return home by bus for the weekend. The shortest bus ride was about six hours, but some would even have overnight trips of twelve hours or more just to get home for a couple days before doing the same trip again to train with the team the next week. Coming from playing at a private university where a daily commute to practice longer than 15 minutes was considered almost eternal, one can see why I was impressed by the girls' commitment to come to practice every day despite the lengthy travel required. 

A map of Argentina with Buenos Aires in red
to get a feel for the distances between the provinces

Anyway... back to my experience on Monday... As of last Friday, February 8th, I am officially a member of Club Atlético River Plate's (more commonly referred to simply by River) semi-pro women's team. Semi-pro is the highest level of soccer for women in Argentina and River is among the best in the league, second only to none other than its major rival, Boca Juniors, in women's titles won. Unlike women's pro soccer in the US, here, women's teams are attached to and supported by the men's professional clubs, not too dissimilar to the system adopted by clubs in Europe and other countries in South America like Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. However, from what I've seen so far, putting together a women's team is not high on the professional clubs' list of priorities, for many it may even be at the very bottom. While the men's side has a full youth academy to develop players of every age group to eventually play with the first team in the professional division, each club only has one women's team, if it even has a team. That's right. One women's team for all age groups. The girls on my team here range in age all the way from as young as 14 up to 27. The lack of age divisions in women's soccer here is a clear setback in the development of new talent as well as the growth of the oldest players who struggle to find a competitive challenge, but I digress yet again (I warned you in the last post about my thing for rabbit trails...).

Alright, so now it's Monday. I've already trained with the team once on Friday and now we're meeting at the stadium to travel to Mercedes, a town in the province of Buenos Aires, to play a friendly against a team called All Boys (even though the team was actually composed of all girls... sorry I couldn't resist...). At practice on Friday, Ramón, our head coach, told us to be at River at 11:30 a.m. on Monday so we could get our uniforms and eat lunch at the club before heading to the game. It was all we were told. No news about what time we were playing. No information about the exact location of the field. Just be there at 11:30 on Monday morning. 

Naturally, since it was my first game with River, I was nervous about arriving on time especially as I was so accustomed to perfect punctuality with my teams in the States. The commute from my apartment to River takes a little under an hour (including the walk to and from the bus stops) so I made sure to leave right at 10:30 to ensure I wouldn't be late. Unfortunately, since it was a holiday here in Argentina, the buses were running less frequently and I had to wait longer than usual. I spent the whole bus ride fretting over being late, and when I got off, I power-walked the rest of the way to the stadium, checking my watch every 30 seconds as though by staring at its face, the minute hand would somehow slowdown enough to let me get there on time. By some stroke of luck or fate or what-have-you, I made it into the club at 11:29 – right on the money. After I walked into the locker room to change into my uniform, I realized only about half of the team was there. The other half strolled in nonchalantly throughout the rest of the next half hour before we headed into the cafeteria for lunch at noon.

At this point, I'm assuming we are simply going to eat quickly then get on the bus to head to the game. I don't know what got into me. I forgot we were on Argentina time – a.k.a. meals are never rushed. More than an hour or so later we finished lunch and headed out of the cafeteria only to get to wait around for about another half hour watching the tennis tournament going on at River while waiting for the bus to arrive.

Waiting for the bus at River with a few teammates

Finally, around 2:30 we got on the bus to head to Mercedes. True to Argentine form, the bus didn't have air-conditioning. Oh, and I forgot to mention how the temperature was more than 90 degrees and sunny and humid. Oh, and there were no windows we could open to let air in. Oh, and we didn't have any water with us for the trip. Oh, and the drive was two and a half hours long. Within a short period of time, we were using whatever we had on hand to fan ourselves and try to create some airflow. Thankfully, we were able to stay somewhat entertained for the journey so we could distract ourselves from how much we were sweating before we even stepped onto the field.

As we arrived in Mercedes, we initially drove past a field with untrimmed and unmarked grass with goals without  nets. Jokingly, I asked one of the girls if we were going to play there. In all seriousness, she said she wouldn't be surprised if it was the field we'd be playing on. "Welcome to women's soccer in Argentina, Gaby." The bus pulled into a complex which was actually a sports/recreation park of the municipality. Getting off the convection oven which was our bus and stepping into the fresh air (despite the 90 degree heat), the team let out a collective sigh of relief as we could finally breathe again.

The host team's coaches guided us into the building which would serve as our locker room. From the outside, it looked like a typical Argentine government building, maybe even a military barracks, from the first half of the 1900s which had been deserted or left unused for a long time, as everything was dusty, dirty, and old. On the inside, the building's age showed even more. The hardwood floors were cracked, and they creaked loudly as we walked through to the room where we would be changing. As we sat on the dirty floor to put on our socks, cleats, and shinguards, Ramón gave a short pre-game talk emphasizing the importance of this game as preparation for the upcoming season.

Waiting outside the building to head to the field

                             

Game-time was finally here. Walking onto the field, I realized how lucky I had been to practice on such pristine grass during my four years of college. This grass was uneven and rough, the ground was rock hard, and the field was completely unlined except for a small concrete track which ran around the field which would serve as our sideline boundary (our coach warned us not to try too hard near the sidelines in order to avoid falling or tripping on the concrete). When I came in for the second half, I found another lovely surprise near my goal on the other side of the field. The penalty spot was marked with a concrete circle about six inches in diameter with a small metal pipe sticking a few centimeters out of the center. I made a mental note not to dive around the penalty spot if at all possible... Luckily the game went well for us, we won 9-0 despite the other team having a few scoring opportunities. Such uneven score-lines are typical in the Argentine league, except in games between a few teams at the top which usually are more competitive. Teams from the provinces, like All Boys from Mercedes, find themselves significantly behind the teams from the capital despite having a couple good players (who usually end up moving to the city to play with the better teams).

One of the few saves I had to make during the game in my netless goal

After the game, we went back into the barracks to change and have our all important merienda (snack which comes in between lunch and dinner) which we shared with the other team. The day finally ended when we arrived back at River around 9:30 p.m after another two and a half hour bus ride filled with song, dance, and laughter. As of Monday evening, I am officially an Argentine women's soccer player.