6 hours ago
4
Well, that was different. On a violently hot Monday night in Miami Gardens, day three of Fifa’s sport-style entertainment event, something unexpected happened. A football match broke out.
And not just the styling, the outlines, the aesthetic sense of a football match. As Boca Juniors tore into a 2-0 first half lead against Benfica, as the stadium interior was transformed into a sustained static field by the Boca fans, as the coaching staff on both benches leapt up in random rotation, like the world’s angriest improv night, this already felt like the real thing, blood, vim, borrowed life.
The final score was 2-2 thanks to a late equaliser scored by Nicolás Otamendi, who hovered powerfully before butting the ball into the Boca net from a corner. At which point the air seemed to shoot out through the powder blue gap in the stadium roof, as the entire Benfica squad leapt up to caper about on the pitch, an impressive feat in itself given the overall effect of the afternoon heat is like trying to walk across the surface of the planet Mercury in a Victorian diving suit made from loft insulation.
There were three red cards by then, one for each set of players, one for a furious Ander Herrera on the Boca bench. And Boca will be hugely disappointed to let slip a 2-0 lead having played with a sustained, bruising fury for most of the first half. This was the opening game in Group C for both of these teams, and a crunch moment too, a chance to slipstream Bayern Munich towards the knockout phase.
For all that this felt like a self-contained event from the start as the Boca fans took ownership of the day and the space, parking themselves like a mobile city state in the home of the Miami Dolphins and putting on a kind of faux-clasico in south Florida.
The three hours before kick-off had seen the blue and yellow shirts streaming in across the vast sunken surrounds of the Hard Rock, all sandy scrub and baked tarmac, and decorated now with names like Riquleme, Cavani and Carlitos. The day before had seen a mass gathering in Miami beach, the Boca fans drinking fernet and coke, grilling great flapping skirts of meat, and subjected also to a flying banter banner reading, in Spanish, “RIP YOU DIED IN MADRID 9/12/18”, arranged by some extremely prescient and well organised River Plate fans, and a reference to defeat in the 2018 Copa Libertadores final.
The stadium was three quarters full at the start, and packed in the Boca section, which also helpfully drowned out the absurd WWE-style practice of announcing the players one by one, finishing with an ear-shredding field of white noise as Otamendi, a Vélez Sarsfield man, appeared with the Benfica flag.
This was always an interesting basic premise, a meeting of yawningly opposed extremes. Boca are connection, collectivism, passion, an acme of the legacy football world. This club is all rootsy culture, history, legend, Diego-scale iconography, the Argentina of Argentina. And in the black corner, well, we have something else entirely. Authenticity: meet the Fifa Club World Cup, the most plasticised, commodified football competition ever devised.
There was something a little uncomfortable about this spectacle. Here is Fifa saying lend us your edge, your colour, your clout, your stamp. Make us feel real. In the build up to this game Fifa’s reliably unctuous website had described Boca as “a nomadic passion”. And this is the business plan in one handy phrase. Instant reality, bolt-on culture.
On the other hand, why not if it pays well? The thing about Boca and the other non-European teams is that they genuinely want to be here. And for obvious reasons too, finally offered a piece of the global broadcast pot that doesn’t involve acting as a talent plantation. This what Gianni Infantino is getting at with his boilerplate chat about diversity and inclusion. Look. South America is getting a cut. Don’t you want to share?
This is also a little misleading. Boca will now have a cash boost, via Fifa/Dazn/Saudi, which means they can buy again, come back again, fed by this new stream of income. In effect Fifa is creating client clubs, a mini-elite to staff the show.
For now Boca brought some authentic World Cup energy to this pop-up stage, as they were always going to do. This is a vast sporting enterprise with its own global reach. And after a slightly dozy start they began to play with some real fury. Boca’s tactics were not complex. They kept a low block, challenged fiercely, broke at speed.
The energetically squat Alan Velasco had their first shot at goal, veering into space and skimming the ball just over the bar. With 11 minutes gone we had the first mass vibration of the Boca fans leaping in unison and making even this vast mound of concrete and steel throb delicately.
And 10 minutes later Boca scored, the goal made by Lautaro Blanco, who shimmied his way inside and crossed low for Miguel Merentiel to nudge the ball on into the far corner. The bodies seethed and writhed in the stands. And shortly afterwards it was 2-0, Rodrigo Battaglia heading in after a flick back across goal from a corner.
This time the bench was cleared, the bibbed players streaming on, the stands in uproar, a noise that seemed to have many layers, hitting you in the chest, ears, teeth.
Watching Boca defend in that period was like watching a group of hugely energetic construction workers demolishing a bungalow in formation, all hungry, rotational collisions. It was fun to see this kind of defending, not pressing or denying space or shutting down angles in the European style, but going straight for the man, rushing from the block to attack the ball.
Benfica looked a bit unprepared for this. But they were awarded a soft penalty before half-time, beautifully rolled into the corner against a fury of whistles and boos by Ángel Di María, who has heard this stuff before.
The second half brought more of the same, both sets of players running themselves into a state of desiccated exhaustion. With 72 minutes gone Andrea Belotti was sent off for a high boot into the head of Ayrton Costa. Jorge Figal got an instant straight red at the death for a targeted assault on the shins of the nearest man to the ball.
And that was pretty much that. No doubt some will see an endorsement of Fifa’s vampire show in the sheer vivid life of this game. But it felt like an act of defiance too, evidence of a culture and an energy that exists undiminished outside of all this.
