This past weekend I got the chance to go to a Peruvian soccer game, Alianza Lima vs. Universitario (La U). This game is played once every year and is deemed by most as the best game of the year in Lima, thus gaining the name, ‘el clasico’. Now to preface the rest of the story, the idea to go to game all started with a volunteer or two who heard from their host families that this is a crazy game every year. After a group of us decided to go we started hearing the warnings from the PC staff. The responses varied from person to person but all in all they seemed to express concern and tell us all to be really careful. We then found out that there are almost always fights that break out and last year someone even died. So needless to say going into it we were pretty excited and pretty cautious.
After hearing the warnings and forming our groups we decided to leave a little early and get to stadium a little while before the game started. We took some combi’s down and got there about an hour and a half before the game. Combi’s are the names of the busses that run up and down the main highway and take crowds of people throughout districts of Lima for a dirt cheap price. The Combi’s are pretty hectic and can get really crowded but all in all there aren’t that bad and there are so frequent that you can always count on one rolling up when you need it. So we got off near the stadium and for those of us who didn’t have jerseys already we decided to buy some to try to rep our team (which was based on what section we bought tickets in). We then kept walking and started to see the huge groups of people funneling toward the stadium. As we neared the stadium we started to see cop after cop decked out in riot gear, and even some on horses, looking out ominously amongst the crowds passing them. We found out afterwards that about 4000 policeman in total (not sure who was looking out for the rest of Lima).
After a little confusion about what line to get in we found the right one and get our seats, and met up with another group of gringos that had gone down (we tend to use the word gringo affectionately amongst each other because we hear it so much). They thoroughly search everyone getting in and you aren’t even allowed to bring belts for fear that people will use them as a weapon. We ended up getting seats in the Orriente section of the U side. After being bombarded by the food vendor’s we settled in and starting the pre game rituals. They passed out a bunch of plastic sleeves that can be blown up to a long balloon essentially and then thrown around everyone. Then the flags were busted out, these were huge and covered almost half of the section we were in. They started in the front and then went over everyone’s head back and forth, hitting it along the way to make a ripple effect. Then they started passing out bags of cut up pieces of newspaper to throw up in the air like confetti, and I mean thousands of bags. Towards the start of the game the cheering sections started to get really loud and traded back and forth chants about their teams.
The Norte and Sur housed the Alianza and U fans respectively and these sections are the cheaper section where it gets pretty crazy. Based on advice from the Peru staff we decided to buy tickets in the mas tranquilo section of Orriente to try to avoid the Barristas (essentially gangs of soccer fans) that reside in the North and South. Watching these two sections battle out was pretty exciting and maybe the highlight of the whole experience truthfully. The game was pretty good but after getting spoiled with the World Cup play it seemed a little sloppy. Essentially anything goes and they didn’t bust out the yellow cards too much. During the game there were streamers constantly being thrown on the field. It was pretty crazy. It happened during pregame and they never even bothered to clean it off, then during game play people would throw more on the field and even come close to hitting players sometimes.
So in the end my new found team the U lost 1-0 and we left early to avoid the fights that probably broke out after the game. We decided that it was probably better to get out early rather than be a group of gringos stuck in the middle of crazy drunk soccer fans upset by a loss and I have to think we made the right decision. But it was a really fun experience and something that would be hard to replicate again and I’m really glad I got to see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment