Tucuman Rising E10: The Plight of the Mayfly and 14 tons of Black Forest Gateau

Imagine if you will the plight of the Mayfly.

Its an insect, that in adult form, only lives for 24 hours. Imagine the feeling of knowing that you can enjoy life to its fullest, drink the finest wine and eat the finest food, but within 24 hours you’ll be brown bread.

I envy the fucking Mayfly. He doesn’t have to deal with the fucking Argentine FA.

After my run-in with PLP in a nightclub, it would now appear that my club is at least partly funded by some kind of gangster. And said gangster now wants me to perform courier duties in addition to shagging his daughter and performing semi-effective tactical adjustments. I don’t even know what it is I’m delivering! It could be Incan Matrimonial Headmasks or it could be 14 tons of Black Forest gateau.

Or drugs. It’s probably drugs.

I breathe slightly more easily when I see that our next away trip is to Gimnasia y Esgrima de Concepcion Del Uruguay, right on the Uruguayan border. I consider defection to Montevideo and settling down at a quaint Uruguayan Third Divison club and opening a hardware shop called “D-I-(Uru)Guay”. But no, my heart belongs to Tucuman. As much as I wish it didn’t. I bin my phone and spend the bus trip down playing cards with Mancuso and Begbie. We revert back to our standard formation and change a couple of personnel to deal with fitness concerns.

Straight from kick-off, we get the ball and Pico runs forwards. He keeps on dribbling for what seems like a full minute and threads a cross between two men for Guillermo to rise like a salmon and head in for 1–0 in just the second minute. Whilst this is a great start, Gimnasia have the better of the rest of the half and Navarro a couple of brilliant saves. We look disjointed and disengaged, and have won 3 headers in the entire half.

I make a double change and bring on Delgado for El Bivouac and gamble on Adolfo out on the left, despite his quizzical look when I suggest this. They make a double change three minutes into the second half, which seems like a complete waste of fucking time. Nothing happens until Adolfo tees up Cabrol who shoots….over the bar. But its an opening and we start to look like the better time finally, with Pico and Guillermo missing chances. We are helped when 4 minutes after their final sub, they go down to 10 through another injury. And Pico puts the game to bed on 84 minutes, following up to score from a rebound after Delgado’s shot was saved. 2–0 — Solid.

It’s a long ride back to the Jose Fierro and I head to the villa when I return. We are now miles ahead in our group and I’m pretty sure we’ve already won it. Next opponents Huracan De Tres Arroyos are a tricky prospect as they are decent at football, which puts them in the top 25% of teams in the league.

We are model professionals through training on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We work on set pieces and discipline, by playing tight games and punishing fouls by players having to listen to Hans in 60 second segments talk about 5G conspiracies. Friday, it’s twice from the training ground to El Parque followed by penalty forfeits, with the losing side buying breakfast for the next morning. Saturday, its shooting and technique. Rondos, Mondos, Pondos, you name it, I invent a drill with a stupid name. We finish with free-kicks, and we play elimination. It comes down to Cabrol vs Pico and it’s very high quality — with Dario sneaking a victory before being doused in leftover beer from the night before.

Gameday at the Jose Fierro and its the long walk to the ground again. This time I am more guarded, keeping an eye out for anyone getting too close. I sneak in a side entrance to the ground, espousing my usual beer token duties for tactical discussion and a solid 8/10 team talk. When I get to the dugout, I light up and look up towards the directors box. PLP is there, eyepatch and all — looking like a budget Corleone with cataracts.

We get the first chance with Guillermo — on the right wing today — getting to the corner of the box and hitting it wide. The opening 30 minutes retain this pattern as Delgado, Cabrol and El Gigolo all miss chances. As El Gigolo runs back towards the halfway line, for some reason the opposition skipper turns round and lamps him. This leads to a full on brawl that ends with them down to 10 men and us looking more fired up than Krakatoa. Straight from the free-kick, we link together passes with Pico, Mancuso and Bressan with Andres then pinging the ball in and Delgado hits a volley into the top corner. 1–0.

We plug away til half time and through til the hour mark, hitting the woodwork twice and I turn to Adolfo and El Bivouac and tell them to warm up urgently. As if by magic, Delgado and El Gigolo link up and the Venezuelan hits his 12th of the season. I still change the front two and it’s one way traffic — Pico, Adolfo, El Bivouac, Bressan and Cabrol all miss chances in the last 30 minutes and it finished 18–2 in shots, but 2–0 on the scoreboard. A good win again. As I glance up to the Directors box, PLP is clapping and drinking from a flask, which I presume is probably blood or fucking Pernod or something else suitably creepy.

We’re certainly back in a good place after a couple of poor performances and we take the party out to a local hostelry called Tetas y Cerveza. It’s a very sincere and sedate evening obviously, that definitely doesn't end with Pico and Cabrol RKOing a rather portly nude lady who tried to charge them 40 quid for a beer. That’s my statement and all the squad stick to it. On our way out, the manager beckons me over and says ‘It’s fine, PLP owns this place’…WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY?!

I wake up hungover and Carmen comes over and makes enough french toast to feed the town of Strasbourg. I peruse the fixture list and I’m relived to see that remarkably we’re going to avoid a trip to Buenos Aries for another couple of weeks as our next fixture is a short 761km trip to Godoy Cruz — who are second in the group and have a striker in Carnero that gives me a heart attack just looking at his 27 in 30 record this year.

But no matter, we are Tucuman and we are fucking ready to destroy whatever is in our path, probably with a hammer and a great deal of fire augmented by a Venezuelan Gigolo. We have a clean slate of both injuries and suspensions, so I go with our regular 22411 formation and its our strongest team. The changing room is as calm and focused as I’ve ever seen it before a game, so I trip Beavis up and he goes flying into the shower block at the back of the room, leaving a couple of players still laughing as we enter the pitch.

Navarro is called into action early with a save from a Carnero shot in the 3rd minute. We go straight down the other end and Delgado and Guillermo both test their keeper in a frantic start to the game. It’s end to end but Godoy strike first through veteran midfielder Peinado who waltzes through the defence and scores from the edge of the box. I’m just in the process of going La Volpe when Pico plays an aimless ball forward which their keeper comes to the edge of the box to claim. Amazingly he overruns it and can only get fingertips to it — Delgado runs beyond him and touches it into the net. Its an incredible stroke of luck — to the extent that the referee decides to disallow the goal for offside.

I don’t take this well and have to be held back from taking on the 4th official. Begbie and Milton grab a leg each and haul me back to the dugout where I sit stewing for the remainder of the half and for the entirety of the half-time break. I tell Genar to say some generic bollocks at them and then as they come out the tunnel I shake every single one of their hands before the start of the second half and stare each one of them in the eye. “We’ve got this” I tell every one of them.

I’m rewarded for this temper tantrum/unorthodoxy in the 52nd minute when we win a corner. Whilst its headed to the edge of the box, it only reaches Guillermo — who hits it harder than a Povetkin uppercut into the top corner. I initially celebrate in a cool calm manner until just before the whistle blows to restart the game I yell at the 4th official “GET IT RIGHT ROUND YE”. Best yellow card of the season.

However Godoy arent finished and they batter us for the next 15 minutes in search of a winner. I look at the players and they’re trying hard, but this isn’t their day. So I do what Levein wouldn’t do, and go to 3AMs and our attacking formation, bringing on Adolfo and El Bivouac for the quiet Cabrol and Hugo Corbalan in a complete hail mary…

AND WOULDN’T YOU FUCKING KNOW IT — 2 MINUTES LATER ADOLFO SCORES. It’s his first goal for the club and he runs over to the touchline so we can celebrate together. We push and actually look a bit better until Carnero gets a header at goal in the 88th minute…but Navarro tips behind. I breathe a sigh of relief until the corner comes in and Mercado gets onto a loose ball and its 2–2 in the last minute…which is annoying but on balance..probably fair.

I would say I’m bordering on magnanimous in the post match interview, as I only criticise the referee twice and praise Godoy for their performance. I don’t even leave a shit anywhere. It happens. Champ happens. Tactically, it probably should have been the 3DM lineup for a game like that and i make a mental note of this for later in the season. Which I will forget but it’s the thought that counts.

Brilliantly we get to play Independiente Rividavia do Mendoza again, only a few weeks on from beating them 6–2 in a game that was as even as prime number. Remarkably they are now third in the mini-group but there are no bronze medals in Argentinian football — only chaos, hostility and the worst refereeing seen outside a betting scandal.

We’re back at the Jose Fierro so it’ll be business as usual with a couple of exceptions. I bring back Begbie as I’ve missed his ultra-violent tendancies on the pitch, and El Gigolo moves back central with Guillermo up top and Delgado on the bench. Barreto plays on the left. In the game build up, I even have two youth propects brought into my reserves. They are both terrible and it wastes my time to even look at their stats. Still, I invite them both to sit in the stands for the game and watch how the Pro’s do it. Which is immediately a stupid decision when I forget to include Begbie and he starts firing a spud gun at them.

It takes all of 4 minutes for El Gigolo to repay the faith I’ve shown in him as he meets a Pico cross to head past the keeper from 8 yards. He nearly adds a second 3 minutes later but he hits the post. We are playing well, but after 25 minutes we seem to switch off and suddenly its all IDRM. Navarro is busier than a chocolatier on Valentines day, making a string of fine saves to keep our 1–0 lead intact.

Luckily the bollocking I give the players on this occasion does the necessary and we come out fizzing and crackling, pinging passes about and creating a host of good openings. El Gigolo misses a couple and I decide to go for the Adolfo experiment once again looking for the same impact. Straight from the sub, Bressan plays it down the wing to Pico who finds Barreto. He returns the ball to Pico who plays a sharp ball to Adolfo, and his first touch curls the ball delightfully past the IDRM keeper to make it 2–0 and put us on easy street, smoking cigars and drinking shots of Agave. I bring on El Bivouac as well for his usual 30 minutes of battering ram time but its Adolfo again who meets a Cabrol cross to head in a 3rd goal in the 80th minute and clinch the game — 3–0 at Full-time.

Bloody Adolfo Hodas, what a beautiful man. The crowd sing their adopted saviour a stunning adaptation of Abba’s ‘Fernando’ with his name as the titular superhunk. I’m delighted for the boy after his tough start — I hand him a small brown envelope in the changing rooms in extra thanks — he’s playing for peanuts as usual.

I retire to the office and send a quick text to Carmen to confirm dinner reservations for 22:00 at El Chorizo Gordo, a charming little restaurant hidden 50 yards down the street from the local Irish bar. I review the day’s results and see that we’ve managed to qualify for the latter stages of this bizarre secondary tournament.

Given whats happened so far, I would expect each tie to be 3-legged and away goals to count for half of a normal goal. I pour a large Lagavulin (smuggled into the country by Linton) and here my phone vibrate on the desk. To my surprise it’s not from Carmen, but from an unknown source.

“I hope you aren’t forgetting our little deal. Open your Trophy Cabinet.”

I slide over to the trophy cabinet, a rickety contraption with the runners up trophy from La Segunda 1990 and a participation trophy from Masterchef Argentina.I open the bottom segment, revealing a large holdall locked tight with a padlock and a note.

“To Buenos Aries, with Love. PLP”