Ah, January in Argentina. That magical month where half of the population of Buenos Aires seems to disappear, and the other half revels in the sudden proliferation of space around them even as the walls drip with perspiration and the asphalt starts to melt off the roads. A time when shade is worth its weight in gold, and those with swimming pools discover they have more friends than they ever could have dreamed.
Then, there is the football. Or better said, the lack thereof. January has always been the traditional rest month on the Argentine calendar, a respite from the year-round grind as temperatures go through the roof. For the true fanatics, however, there was always one alternative to that football-free hell, until the clubs and powers-that-be deprived us of even that tiny pleasure. That is right: once again, summer football this year has forsaken its spiritual home, Mar del Plata.
For the fourth straight year, Argentina's most famous beach resort has been left out of the schedule for clubs' pre-season friendlies, having been the focus for summer preparations for more than five decades. Racing Club have been playing up in Paraguay; Independiente, at least in theory, were due to dispute a friendly in Uruguay this week, but had to cancel when their plane failed to take off. River headed off to Chile Friday, while Boca had just one pre-season match planned, in San Nicolás on Wednesday against Juventude. The one proposed game that would have brought football back to its rightful summer home, between Racing and Aldosivi, was cancelled due to security concerns. All the while Mar del Plata's Estadio José María Minella lies unused, sun-baked, desolate, left only with the memories of those epic summer matches of yesteryear when it truly was the centre of the footballing world.
As meaningless and ridiculous as they often were, the Torneo de Verano used to serve up regular treats. That tradition for the absurd began right from the start, with the inaugural edition in 1968 that featured five Argentine teams, Uruguay’s Peñarol, the Czechoslovakia national team and Hungary's Vasas, who won the whole thing with a 3-0 thrashing of River in the final. There was the header Martín Palermo scored for Boca back in January 2008's Superclásico while hanging off the crossbar with one arm. Even the 2011 edition, which with River in the B Nacional division served as the sole derby between Argentina's two biggest teams that season. That time where Estudiantes and Gimnasia held an all-out brawl which caused their 'friendly' to be called off, with the enduring image of goalkeeper Mariano Andújar throwing haymakers at anything in a white shirt even as he was hitting the ground. Enzo Francescoli's bicycle kick to take down Poland (!) in 1986. And many, many more.
Reputations could be made and lost in those games. Erstwhile Independiente wonderkid Patricio Rodríguez would consistently wow Rojo fans with his dazzling performances each summer, showing a promise that never quite played out over the rest of the year. A bad showing in Mar del Plata, on the other hand, could prove the final straw for a struggling team: both Ramón Díaz and Alfio Basile were forced to resign from River and Boca at one point due to Superclásico disasters in pre-season.
From Pelé to Diego Maradona (both as player and coach), Ricardo Bochini to Daniel Passarella, some of Argentina and South America's greatest players strutted their stuff by the beach in pre-seasons past. As the years went by, and the chronic lack of investment in the Minella began to show, Mar del Plata lost its sheen.
The final nail in the coffin came with the pandemic, and the discovery by the likes of Boca and River that huge amounts of money could be made by decamping elsewhere in Argentina or even to the United States instead of the beach city. Argentina's sports media still performs its annual pilgrimage to film from ‘La Feliz’ every January, but without actual football it is a hollow ritual that makes about as much sense as eating a hot corn on the cob while lying in the sand (there, I said it).
The Torneo de Verano as we once knew it may be gone, but it is not quite forgotten among fans of a certain age and sentimental leaning. We can only hope that Argentine football one day wakes up and sees sense, and that Mar del Plata may retake its rightful place as the home of the summer game.
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