The coach’s Mouth: “it Is unfortunate that you cannot play a River-Mouth in Argentina”

‘The end of the cowards’, by Orfeo Suárez

The players of River Plate and Boca Juniors will meet the domingoen the Santiago Bernabéu stadium to decide who is the champion of the Libertadores Cup while in the stands, face to face, will be two of the hobbies most passionate known in the football world.

The love for the colors of the fans of the one and the other team sometimes exceeds that which many understand as logical. What explains Nicolas Mattera, member of the board of directors of the peña Boca Juniors in Madrid, in an interview with EFE before the historic match, to be played in the capital of Spain.

“I Know people who directly have been divorced for the Boca Juniors. Was ‘or the Mouth, or I,’ and it ended up being the Mouth, it is not something that can be stopped. But there are thousands of stories. Now in the peña we’re getting close to three hundred or four hundred inquiries a day from people of Argentina and there are some, literally, that offered us their car to change the flight and the entrance to the pitch,” he says.

“There are also a lot of people who quit their job. They said that is not what they lost, they didn’t give them the day off and were letting them decide what to do with them. And so many stories. You are giving situations of people who has left all his savings to buy the ticket and ask to let them sleep on the terrace of any house without having how to get back,” he said.

“Absurd”

Are efforts that the fans are willing to perform in many other situations, not only in this so transcendent. Mattera, without going any further, do not hesitate to make a break in their summer holidays to accompany his own in a summer tournament.

“I Made a 1400 or 1800 miles in the middle of vacation to see the match of the Joan Gamper against Barcelona. It was my mother, who had come from Argentina. I left you all, I took the car at five in the morning to get up to Seville, then a plane, then a train… That’s a bit of a constant, allow time and dedicate it to something that makes you happy,” he says.

in Spite of everything found understanding in the mother figure: “my mother, yes, it is easily understandable, because he knows me, because he has also been the protagonist of the Mouth when I was young because my father was part of the commission directive. Them when they were young went too far and were part of the life of the club”.

“My wife is from madrid and will cost much more, even after so many years together. It seems absurd as it seems absurd that I should be giving this interview right now. You do not understand what can be of importance for the football. With the time we have reached a point of balance where you understand that without this I can not live, and she nor does he care much,” he says.

The travel to the Camp Nou has not been his only sacrifice for the club of his loves: “I have a younger brother and both he and I were born with a chronic kidney disease. At 18 years old I had surgery and they made me a transplant, which I donated to my father. I went with my father in the hospital and when we were put next to each other he told me that at the exit we were going to go to the court of the Mouth.”

“The problem is that when I left one of the first things that you say to a transplanted is that they can’t have contact with people. I discussed tremendously with the doctors because I wanted to go to the field when I was already in my house and I was starting to feel a little better. We fight and I got to a point of negotiation in which I was accompanied there for a nurse, and with a mask. It was the first exit to public that I, along with my father also,” he says.

Like him, there are many who work around the obstacles that life sets in order to encourage from the stands: “the people do not surprised. In the stage of the Mouth if you’re in the stands you see all over. The day that Martin Palermo in his return makes the goal to River Plate and let them out of the Copa Libertadores saw people two metres away crying to seas pulled in the grandstand”.

“it Is common to come to be an invalid, a paraplegic, who will be blind to the court. Is so widespread the passion that the most normal thing in the world is that you see people going there as a last resort in your life to die to two months,” he explains.

Many of those who share that love for the Boca Juniors in the lands in madrid have joined him on the rock: “we put it together because we were alone like dogs. Now everything is so much easier but when I got to Spain, for twelve or thirteen years ago it was even difficult to see the games of Argentina in the World cup. We were three or four crazy people we used to meet up in a bar of some argentine”.

“peña was growing and today calls 700 people to see a game. It was like a site to be able to come together and desahogarnos for example, at three in the morning on a Wednesday alone and dead of cold in a place to see a match of the Copa Libertadores. We make videos, drawings, roasted, we have a football team… “, he adds.

Given the circumstances, does not hide that it would cost to take a defeat against River Plate in the match: “it would cost Me because the road has been leading to Boca Juniors until the end has been from less to more, and because somehow between the fights are classic River-Boca is ‘the spot’. When the River goes to B was a before and an after in our historical relationship”.

“it Is an insult tremendous in Argentina the decline, and in some way although it is not the same to lose a final to go down to the second category, the sector of the River would try to somehow argue that they won the final”, he reasons.

whatever Happens, trust that no one spoils the party: “Any person who knows well the environment of football knows perfectly well that if there is a place where nobody is going to fight is in Madrid, outside of Argentina. The sectors ultras are not stupid”.

Violence

“it Is much more complex, the violence in Argentina, has a fabric infinitely more complex than what is believed. Many times they are not the heads of the bar but the kids around there, they tend to follow it, those who go and pull something for an order. All of that is not going to happen, the climate of barra brava will not exist. On the other hand I know that the police of Madrid is not like Buenos Aires and here you put someone in jail and does not remove the political shift,” he says.

The end will be, perhaps, the most significant clash of his life. Something that I can tell to those who come behind: “In the case of my son I am sorry a lot that he has not been able to live for the moment some things that I have lived because you only have three years. I went to ‘La Bombonera’ smaller still and the surroundings of the stadium even today is absolutely stunning. No one in the world that enters in an official match in the stadium of the Boca Juniors emerges unscathed. At some point I would like to take you”.

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