Tucuman Rising E2: A Message from Venezuela
Episode 2: A message from Venezuela
It’s 3 days after our defeat to San Martin. I’ve slept for around 8 hours and Mario and Mancuso keep looking at me with a pitying look. Which I hate. The city of San Miguel De Tucuman is already beginning to get to me, as I’ve no interest in sightseeing or the local penchant for trying War Criminals.
I look over the notes I scrawled from our performance, and whilst we were disappointing in a number of departments (particularly winning only 17% of our tackles), I’m encouraged by Guillermo coming off the bench and Mario’s improvement after sticking him onto the left wing. With his pace, he won’t be able to make many lung busting runs, but the ones he does make might be a difference maker out there.
With this, I set about searching for some ammunition. Oliva would have been perfect, but I still haven’t seen him since the groin strain incident and every time I phone him, it’s one of (it think) seven different women that answer. I’m aware I still have the three foreign slots open to me, so I set about frantically phoning round agents, friends and acquaintances with pretty much nothing to show for it other than a rejection list longer than Tiger Woods’ black book. Eventually, out of desperation I phone a premium rate number in Venezuela advertised in the back of the local handout paper and when asked “Do you want to know what I’m wearing?” I reply “Hopefully something with the number 9 emblazened on the back?”.
Welcome Jose Luis Dolgetta. El Gigolo.
He certainly looks like a footballer, and with 7 international goals he immediately becomes overqualified for the position of Tucuman striker. Which is the way I like it. He walks into my office on the first day and after a conversation in broken English about his career, we agree to never mention the Premium Rate phone number meeting again. If anyone asks, it was my crack scouting team.
More reinforcements follow in the shape of Ramon Antonio Moreno, a 12 time Colombian cap with more 11s and 12s than a professional blackjack player. He might go straight into my side as the Argentines I have at the moment are still looking woefully unfit. In an attempt to boost this fitness, we take a run through the Parque 9 de Julio, an massive park that reminds me of the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Only its 35 degrees here and full of scantily clad people. Not 4 degrees and full of pensioners and harassed mothers with shitebag children.
We run back to the training ground and Milton, my Ecuadorian general, starts getting very excited about something he has drawn up on a whiteboard. He points and gets extremely animated whilst garbling Spanish at me. I pick up the numbers Cuatro y Dos and realise he is trying to encourage me to play 4–4–2. Its at this point I walk away and place Beavis in front of him to listen to his mad ranting. I am not playing fucking 4–4–2.
In fact, we come to the next game and I make very little in the way of tactical changes at all. I’m comfortable that the first game was an aberration, a mistake. With a little bit of fitness and team cohesion we can make it happen with this team. I collar Mario and Mancuso after Friday’s training session and fill their hands with Pesos, telling them to take the full squad out for a beer whilst I pore over the analysis of our next opponents. They are too polite to tell me I’ve given them the local equivalent of £12, so they jump in a pickup truck, and return pitchside 20 minutes later with 2 kegs and a load of glasses. I don’t know how and I don’t want to know. But we sit at the training pitch until the sun sets as a group, drinking this questionable liquid and laughing and joking.
Its Gameday, and Racing De Cordoba are the visitors for my first league game at the Jose Fierro. I look around the dressing room pre-game and I see warriors. Not mere players. They look hungry, ready to right the wrongs of the previous week. We step out onto the pitch to be greeted by nearly 7000 fans, baying for Racing blood, and as I sit in the dugout, I feel confident. My lineup, whilst still in varying degrees of fitness, looks meaner & leaner in every department.
It’s an even start as both sides have headers saved in the first 10 minutes. We then start to get a grip, with Walter Pico in a deeper position probing the defence. We create 4/5 chances with varying degrees of off targetness before in the 23nd minute, Cabrol pings in a cross that Pico dives to connect with. The keeper saves, but parries it straight into the path of Guillermo following in at the back post. 1–0!! I run down the touchline screaming and slide on my knees towards the ultras, underestimating the dampness of the turf, and sliding straight into an advertising hoarding for the local chemist.
2 minutes later, I’m still wiping the damp grass of my tracksuit when I hear a shout from Beavis as Guillermo picks up the balls and skims a shot in. The keeper can only parry it out as far as Pico, who steadies himself and fires home. 2–0. I set off down the touchline on another mad run of celebration towards the ultras, but i’m struck by the bemusement, as opposed to ecstasy on their faces. I turn to see an offside flag, and I furiously berate the 4th official, at one point calling him a bag of ham and cheese. My Spanish insults still need work.
As I stew on the sideline, nothing else happens up to halftime, and I spend the entire 15 minutes break knocking on the referees room door shouting ‘Ham and Cheese’. A touchline ban is probably an inevitibility but I don’t give a shit.
We kick off the second half and immediately we get on the front foot. Yet again its Pico as the orchestrator, and in the 52nd minute, after Guillermo again caused havoc, Pico follows in yet another rebound to put us 2–0 up.
The rest of the half follows a similar pattern, we have shots and their keeper makes a hash of them. My attacking players are in generous mood however and at 90 minutes its 2–0. When we get back into the changing rooms — I grab the aux cable and chuck on an album called ‘The Greatest Bagpipe remixes EVER’ — and head back out to the stands to invite the ultras into the changing room to celebrate with the team and drain the remainder of the questionable kegs. A squad of around 60 head out into Tucuman after the stadium closes and it’s a messy night. After a stunning rendition of ‘Islands in the Stream’ at the local karaoke bar, starring me and Navarro (who has a beautiful falsetto as it turns out) I retire back to my apartment to sleep for 2 straight days.
7 days later and we are at it again as we travel to Defensa y Justicia. I ask Milton where the bloody hell Defense and Justice is, and he tells me they are from Florencio Varela. I assume he is trolling me and ignore him for the rest of the trip. As it turns out, it is a suburb of Buenos Aries, and it’s all very nice and civilized as we warm-up and aren’t faced by the Judge Dredd clones I expected, but by mere mortals in Green and Yellow. We make precisely zero changes as we look to get our first away win of the campaign.
We dominate the first 25 minutes, and only an offside flag presents the Venezuelan Gigolo Dolgetta from putting us in front. But then all hell breaks loose. Prado tries to decapitate Moreno, and is sent off. From the resulting free-kick, Carbol picks out the top left corner and we are 1–0 up and playing against 10 men. Right on the stroke of half-time, Guillermo nicks in ahead of the defence to meet a Cabrol cross and its 2–0. Goodnight Fucking Vienna.
We add a third in the second half through El Gigolo, and play out the game creating chances and missing them. It’s a stunning performance. We dominate from first to last and when we go to greet the 150 or so away support they are chanting and singing as we slide in front of them in celebration. I catch the eye of a stunning brunette, who I find outside the ground after frantically changing into a fresh tracksuit. She says that her name is Consuela, and rather than jump on the team bus back, the boys cheer me off as I jump in the passenger seat of her battered hatchback and we drive the 1300km back to San Miguel de Tucuman, stopping periodically to drink Merlot by picturesque lakes and at motels to conduct ‘Tactical Review Sessions’…
I get to training on Monday morning and turn to Beavis and Milton. They tell me that the next opposition, Independiente Rivadavia De Mendoza, have just arrived ahead of a Tuesday game, and that they are shit. I proceed to ignore them completely and flog the players , with a run round the Parque Julio followed by several close quarter games. At one point, Moreno and Dolgetta run after the same ball and end up entangled at the side of the pitch, leading to a mini brawl. I nod to Mancuso and Mario to deal with it, while I sit in my pitchside deckchair and sip Mezcal straight from the bottle.
We get to Tuesday night and I plan for much of the same. No changes. A Clean Sheet. Goals. Mayhem. The Jose Fierro is going to become the greatest spectacle in Argentina since Eva Peron.
Moreno gets confused in the 25th minute, and attempted to snap the Gigolo in two, accidentally cuts one of the opposition in half. And with that we are down to ten men and I frantically shuffle the pack. We boss the game, but Hans Jorritsma, my Dutch coach, sits behind me and says “I’ve got a bad feeling about this”. I tell him he isn’t Han Solo and to fuck off. 0–0 at half time.
We toil away in the second stanza, which is more open but we are still on top. In the 69th minute, we pounce as Dolgetta gets on the end of a free-kick by Bressan to head into the top corner to put us into the lead. He follows this up in the 84 minute with an absolute thunderbastard of a free-kick from 20 yards out to make the game safe. I bring on Perez and Pisonero, who kick the IRDM players mercilessly for ten minutes until the final whistle. Another solid win, especially given the possibility of self-sabotage after the early red — and two more goals for our new cult hero El Gigolo.
Moreno takes the squad out to Nandos to apologise. I think its called Los Nandos. It could have been anything, I miss out as I go up to my office to find Consuela waiting wearing nothing but a smile and Mario’s used match shirt and the next few days are a bit of a blur, except for the occasional interruption by the janitor.
We get a flight to our next match after I complain about the back ache and the lack of an on-coach mini-bar. The board fly us back to Buenos Aries to face Almagro, who allegedly have a very strong team. I look at them with disdain through my dark sunglasses in the warm up as they struggle to string two passes together. We’ve got this. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder and its Milton, who turns me round to see Almagro. I had in fact indulged in the flight alcohol to such an extent I had been looking at my own side warming up. Not good.
In response, I make two late changes with Colusso coming in on the right hand side, in place of Moreno who I forgot was suspended and I mistakenly bought a ticket for him. Cabrol annoyed me on the flight so he is also out, so a shuffle the pack and bring in ‘The One Man Kicking Machine’ Pisonero in his place.
The late changes make a big difference as Colusso lays on an assist and Sergio throws himself about in central midfield. We torment Almagro, toying with them one minute, then ruthlessly exploiting them the next. Perez the selfish bastard gets his first goal for the club as does Mancuso. Pico also scores before Almagro decide they are at worst getting victims out the game and injure him for 2 weeks along with Bressan for 3.
I hand them some crutches and take a shit in the shower block of their changing room in revenge, before we head out into Buenos Aries to enjoy the night air. After a whirlwind 12 hours — we all stumble into taxi’s back to the airport — Andres Perez missing his eyebrows after an incident involving a drag-queen, a pint of Peach schnapps and a fire juggler. As I board, I take the free newspaper from the flight attendant, where I’m pleasantly surprised to see that we get a whole 2 sentences about our victory in the national sports round-up.
We’re making a dent boys. We’re making a dent.
