Landed in Belo Horizonte about an hour before kickoff and were lucky to find charter buses set up to haul folks to the stadium over 30km away. As we neared the stadium, the police presence became more and more pronounced to the point they were simply everywhere and everyone wearing full riot gear (including the horses and their eye/face shields).
Like Maracanã a few days ago, they'd set up an outer perimeter beyond which they only allowed ticket-holders. The guy I ran into went the extra step and asked for my passport to check it against the name on my ticket, the first time this has happened to anyone from our group going to a match (Ryan's convinced it's because I wear an al-Qaeda beard). Once we got past them, and then through regular stadium security (a pox on their houses!), we finally got near our seats right after kickoff. It's what we found there that went a long way toward explaining the show of force by The Man. Sorry, O Homem.
To say that Argentina fan is...enthusiastic would be a start. Of the 50K-ish announced attendance, I'd estimate 49.5K of them were Argentine supporters. And roughly half of them had jammed themselves into the area of our seats, about 8 rows behind the goal Argentina was attacking in the first half. About 10 minutes in, a while phalanx of polícia militar came in to shoo off those that didn't belong there. And most of them stayed away after that, for at least the next 10 or 20 minutes anyway.
This was actually a great experience for most of the game. They lived and breathed with every touch of the ball. They sang songs and chanted throughout, and even appeared to good-naturedly (mostly) call each other out based on home club allegiances. Short of sitting in the student section with the Cameron Crazies at Duke or maybe the Black Hole in Oakland, I don't think I'll ever find myself that enveloped in pure sports fan insanity (and even then, with Duke and the Raiders were talking rowdies in the tens or hundreds; here I'm talking thousands of them). Things started getting a little tense late in the game, though, when Argentina could not get through Iran's defense. Some Brazil fans in the stands started needling the Argentines as they got more and more frustrated (real genius move, by the way; maybe I mentioned how many Argentina partisans were there?). Things were getting more than a little tense and I was about to suggest we decamp to a spot further from the pitch when, thankfully, Messi cranked the game-winner in in extra time.
Not only did the entire house erupt, but it ended the shite-talk between the Brazil/Argentina contingents, and moments later sent nearly everyone home happy. I finally got to see Messi play in person and he scored the last second game-winner in front of an insane crowd. What's better than that?
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