It was certainly an eventful week in the ever-exciting world of Argentine sport. Ángel Di María marked his first Rosario Derby since returning to Central with an exceptional free-kick to win the game at the Estadio Gigante del Arroyito and heighten tensions around struggling Newell's. The Pumas were busy making history with a different-shaped ball, meanwhile, with their first-ever win over New Zealand on Argentine soil – and even Boca Juniors were getting in on the act, following up last week's long-awaited victory over Independiente Rivadavia with another triumph, this time against Banfield, to mark their first win in La Bombonera for almost four-and-a-half months.
Sadly, however, the biggest news story of the past 10 days held only a tenuous link to events on the field of play and was thoroughly depressing for all concerned – I refer, of course, to the disgraceful scenes during and after Independiente's aborted Copa Sudamericana clash against Universidad de Chile, which brought both clubs and football in South America on a wider level into severe disrepute.
Some parts of this story are still murky. We may never know, for one, what prompted a significant portion of the travelling Universidad support, on a high as their team protected a winning position in this last-16 tie, to begin tearing up pieces of the Estadio Libertadores de América’s upper tier and using them as missiles against the home fans situated right below them and on either side of the stand. Among those projectiles, Independiente alleged in the aftermath of the chaos, was part of a toilet illicitly removed from Rojo facilities and launched off the terracing.
We do not know if some of those same supporters were caught up in the brutal revenge beating received from the Independiente barra or if those left bloodied and humiliated were innocent bystanders caught up in the mayhem. Equally unclear is how that violent element reached the U end in the first place: a tragic accident, or criminal complicity from club and security authorities which could have ended in a massacre?
What we do know is that Independiente and the security operation the club mounted were woefully unprepared. Placing the away section above home fans without perimeter fencing or even a net to protect against errant objects was an act of unfathomable incompetence and negligence. So too was the decision to leave the visiting stand empty of a police presence which could have separated the U from the Rojo fans located in the corner boxes of the stadium, one of the main focal points for the conflict. Just the previous evening, three blocks away, with a larger away contingent in situ, Racing's decider with Peñarol went off without a hitch precisely due to those simple measures, which for some mystifying reason were ignored in this most sensitive of games.
Once the trouble kicked off, the authorities did what they do best: sit back and let it escalate, before grabbing fans indiscriminately upon their exit from the ground whether they were responsible or not. All the while an effective lynching was underway with three U fans pushed off the side of the stand – mercifully, on to a lower concourse which prevented potentially fatal injuries – and others were beaten senseless, stripped and abused.
Amazingly, the prevailing concern even at this late point for CONMEBOL was whether the game would still go ahead, and a considerable time passed before it was finally cancelled with the U holding a slender 2-1 aggregate lead.
Independiente have since set out to point the finger wherever they can, from the U management and fans to the Buenos Aires Province government and CONMEBOL right through to their own barra, of whom some 20 have supposedly been identified and will be given lifetime bans (neatly sidestepping the question of who gave them access in the first place).
It is likely to be insufficient. All indications suggest that when CONMEBOL finally sits down to dole out punishment for those events, it will throw the book at both teams: the U for instigating the chaos, and the Rojo for systematic failures in the organisation added to that last sickening attack. Of all the unsatisfactory outcomes possible in this no-win situation, that feels like the correct decision.
Violence has no place in football, but neither can clubs keep getting away with half-assed operations and organisation that jeopardise and may well one day cost lives of innocent supporters. Both Independiente and Universidad de Chile deserve to be made an example out of, lest these harrowing scenes be played out again in the not too distant future.
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