Alfie goes to his first Fútbol match

It has been a challenging week, Alfie went to hospital for the second time on Thursday as he was suffering from a virus that has been going around here in kindergarten (yep we got it too). It has kept all of us up for two nights in a row with a high temperature – a scared child because he can’t stop shaking whilst running a temp. close to 40C isn’t what anyone wanted. We went to the hospital on Thursday night & he wasn’t allowed back to school on Friday. We had to see a paediatrician on Saturday to get the all clear for him to return to kindy on Monday. The good news is that it’s Sunday and he is looking and feeling much better despite the hangover of a cough and runny nose. So we are all set to see River Plate play in the Estadio Monumental at 7pm this evening…or so we thought.

It’s around 11am and I’m sitting on the throne upstairs when I hear some screaming and crying coming from downstairs somewhere. Alfie has hurt himself, he’ll shake it off I think to myself, Agus will kiss it better, sing him as song and all will return to normal. Aah, no, not this time. Agus runs upstairs with him to see me – he has hit the back of his head on the tiled kitchen floor and split it open. It’s a decent cut and as with all head wounds there was a lot of blood spilt. I clean the blood out of his hair to find the wound, luckily it’s not too big and not very deep and it has started clotting. We decide Agus should take him to the hospital to get it checked, cleaned properly and to make sure he hasn’t got a concussion. A call to tia Silvi and she and Trombetta are around quickly with their car to take them. After a near 3hr wait and negotiating the volume level on the iPad 100 times, they see a doctor who gives him the a-ok and they are back home.

Alfie is back to his normal self and trying to get him to take it easy and not run around like a lunatic is hard work. You’d never known (other than his blood stained t-shirt) that he’d just been to hospital…it was the same thing during the day when he was suffering from the virus. Oh, what was the first trip to the hospital you ask – that was the week prior when he complained one night of a pain in his ear. Again Agus suffered through a two hour wait (this time at 9pm) only to find out that he was probably in the early stages of an ear infection. It was then a mad dash to find a chemist that was open to get antibiotics and ibuprofen. He had just finished the antibiotic course when he got the virus from school! So the grand total so far is 3 trips to the hospital and 2 to a doctor…hopefully no more! (He had to get a full check up by a paediatrician when we arrive just so that he could go to kindy)

River Plate vs. Argentinos Juniors – ronda 9 de Copa de la Liga Profesional

We are off with tio Santi and tia Caro to watch the River vs. Argentinos game at the Estadio Monumental (River’s home ground). This is a 9th round fixture in the Copa de la Liga Profesional (last season it was called the Copa Diego Armando Maradona as a tribute to him) and we have been invited into a palco (box) by one of Santi’s good friends as they have spare seats. This is a perfect situation for Alfie to see his first football match in Argentina as taking him into the stands would have been a tough task with his attention span, not to mention negotiating the seating etc. with the football crazed River fans. Being in a box and being able to drive and park directly at the stadium is also a much safer prospect for us foreigners. Agus and Silvi are walking to the stadium and sitting in Silvi’s usual seats in the terraces. Traffic on a Sunday night to get to the game is crazy, 10x crazier than on a normal day going into towards the city…Alfie lasts all of 5mins and then falls asleep. Probably a good thing as he has had a crazy day already and this way he will not be super crabby at the match. I’ve packed snacks and the iPad just in case.

We park the car and the head towards the stadium & the first security check, we scan our ticket cards at the gate and continue on. I’d been told to bring my passport as my drivers license may not suffice as ID and to also take Alfie’s DNI (national ID card). There is a line of security guards scanning people’s DNI cards; they ask for mine “yo no tengo, soy Australiano”…ok pasa. So for all of the security protocols that surround football here, it seems that Aussies (with tickets to the match) are the lowest of priority on their list. I later found out that they only check DNI’s to make sure that you are not a person that has been banned from attending matches for prior bad behaviour and we were obviously not going to be on that list. In we go and up the lift to the second floor placos – we are in box 37.

We have an amazing view of the ground and from here I can see the renovation work that has been done to the pitch during COVID lockdown. It’s not obvious on TV but the pitch has been dropped down 2m to allow a new watering & drainage system to be installed to ensure that the grass surface is one of if not the best in Argentina. I’m told that renovation works are still happening to the stadium and won’t be finished for likely another year. Santi takes Alfie to sit with him in the first row of seating and I sit behind them with Caro in the 2nd of the 3 rows. We don’t have to wait long for the players to come out onto the pitch and for the match to start and the first goal to be scored. 6 minutes in River scores and the crowd goes nuts…I’m not sure that Alfie was expecting all that noise, but he cheers along with Santi. The second River goal comes 3 minutes later and Alfie definitely was not expecting that one and the response to it from the people in our box – I think the screaming actually scared him a bit. I had to take him to the couches in the back of the palco to give him some snacks and setup the iPad. This is where he stayed for the rest of the match, except for when River scored 2 more goals and he ran up to join in the celebrations.