Shadow games - Diego Vivanco

RAMPLA JUNIORS FC
I
t is a damp Saturday morning on the
Bay of Montevideo. The weatherbeaten Estadio Olímpico, home of
Rampla Juniors FC, is one-third full, with
fans sipping their mate in an attempt to
warm up on the cold concrete seating. Rampla were regarded as Uruguay’s third club
after Peñarol and Nacional in the first half
of the 20th century, having players in the
squads that won the Olympics in 1924 and
the World Cups of 1930 and 1950. They
were also the first Uruguayan team to win in
Britain, beating Portsmouth 3-1 on a European tour in 1956. But unless their fortunes
improve they will celebrate their centenary,
on January 7, 2014, in the second division
– where they were relegated to last season.
In a nation where 90 per cent of football fans support one of the big two, Rampla
Juniors have a relatively strong following.
The season opener against Villa Teresa
attracted 2,000 fans, as many as the seven
other Segunda División games put together.
The ground possesses a unique charm – the
port warehouses of Montevideo are visible
in the background, there are people fishing on Humphreys Island in the bay a few
yards away and lapwings land on the pitch.
Just as the blue and yellow of Boca Juniors,
The wooden stands are
long gone, replaced after
a monumental effort to
chip away at the existing
rocks and build concrete
seating shaped as
armchairs
on the other side of the River Plate, came
from a Swedish ship, Rampla took their red
and green colours from the ensign of a Portuguese vessel that had docked nearby when
they were formed in 1914. Finding a venue
in the city was no mean feat. The Primera
División currently has 14 teams from Montevideo out of a possible 16, surely the highest number of any capital city in the world;
the total number of professional clubs is close
to 30. Rampla Juniors’ home district, Villa
del Cerro, was a centre for meat processing
in the club’s heyday with the industry flourishing from exports to countries embroiled
in the First World War. Most of the players
lived locally and worked in the cold storage
plants. This led to the club and their follow-
Shadow games
Tradition is vital to one of the many Uruguayan clubs
unable to compete with the giants Peñarol and Nacional
By DIEGO V IVANCO
ers being called friyis, a Spanish adaptation
of the word fridges.
In 1923 the club moved to the ground
where they still play their games today. John
Miller, later Rampla’s honorary chairman,
owned a dry dock which he gave over to the
club, his only condition being that the new
stadium be called Estadio Nelson in honour
of Admiral Lord Nelson. The contemporary stadium name was introduced in 1980
at the request of one of the club’s sponsors, a
Greek ship’s captain who wanted the ground
renamed after Mount Olympus.
Rampla won the League in 1927 and
were moderately successful for the next few
decades but the presence of a particular
local rival stif led their development. Legend has it that Peñarol directors became
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The descendants of those
first followers, who
would cross the bay on
steam boats and moor
on the dock next to the
stadium, still make the
trip to the Olímpico
DIEGO VIVANCO(5)
increasingly concerned with Rampla’s rise
and sensed a threat to their hegemony. To
counter this, they approached members of
Rampla Juniors unhappy with the way their
club was being run and provided them with
sufficient funds to establish a new team:
Club Atlético Cerro, founded in 1922. Rampla found themselves competing for support in their own district at a time when
food exports dropped, leading to the closure
of the meat processing plants. The rivalry
became known as Clásico de la Villa, the
second-oldest derby in Uruguay after the
Superclásico, and it divides local families.
Back in the present and Rampla are losing 2-0 to Torque, a newly promoted side,
at half time. “Rampla is the best cardiologist around. If your heart can withstand a
Left The supporters’ view of the action and the
Bay of Montevideo from their concrete armchairs
Above A ground view through the harbour wall
Rampla match, then you know you are in
good shape,” Edison Pérez, the club’s fivea-side coach, says. The fans f lock to the
stand serving tortas, pancakes traditional
in the River Plate estuary. A coffee seller
walks up and down the grandstand, carrying an antiquated dispenser. The stadium’s
wooden stands are long gone, replaced in
1966 after a monumental effort to chip away
at the existing rocks and build concrete seating shaped as armchairs. The fans became
known as the Picapiedra (stonebreakers) and
have adopted the term, even putting up flags
with drawings of Fred Flinstone on, known
as Pedro Picapiedra in Spanish.
Club secretary Miguel Aguirre Bayley has written a book on the team’s rivalry
with Cerro and during half time he sums
up the Rampla Juniors following: “Villa del
Cerro is a humble working-class neighbourhood. Fifty per cent of picapiedras are from
here, the rest from other parts of Montevideo. The descendants of those first followers, who would cross the bay on steam boats
and moor on the dock next to the stadium,
still make the trip to the Olímpico.”
Meanwhile the wind has begun to pick
up. Sometimes the afternoon sun illuminates the bay on matchdays but more often
players and spectators have to endure unrelenting Atlantic gales, which inf luence the
game and damage the stadium. Just before
the season started, part of the wall separating the pitch from the river was knocked
down by storms.
The 1970s, spent entirely in the Sedunga
División, nearly proved fatal for Rampla.
They recovered for a while but last summer was their third relegation from the top
tier in the past 30 years. It is not easy living in the shadow of Peñarol and Nacional
either. Flags of these two teams hang from
apartment windows and are widely on sale
in the city’s shops and f lea markets, while
abundant graffiti shows their territorial
control. “When they ask me which team I
support I say Rampla and then I am always
asked which is my second team, Peñarol or
Nacional,” a young supporter explains. “I
always tell them that my second team is also
Rampla, it is something that they simply
don’t understand.”
Pérez knows what needs to be done: “We
have realised that in order to survive, we
need to develop young players. Inevitably
they will be sold to bigger clubs but will ultimately guarantee our economic survival.
We are slowly introducing a youth policy
that fans can relate to and have new training facilities.” After an unlikely Rampla
comeback the game ends 3-3. Everyone is
focused on a return to the Primera División
to coincide with the centenary but the club
knows it faces an uphill battle to retrieve its
old place. As the stadium empties and the
last supporters take down their flags a lone
dog walks around the stands. A middle-aged
man leaves through the gates, up towards
the Villa del Cerro, wearing a distinctive
red polo shirt and a green jumper.
Top, left to right The view from the commentary
box; Fred Flintstone, the club’s unofficial emblem;
home fans and their banners behind the goal
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