Boca Juniors, thronged the neighborhood, waving flags, playing trumpets, and chanting in unison. The streets and sidewalks radiating out of the team’s stadium — one of the most venerated in Argentina — became a blur of yellow and dark blue, the team’s colors.
The euphoria on display was a reminder that in this country of World Cup champions — like Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona — no other cultural institution can bring people together the way soccer can. That’s true even during difficult times.
Having just finished his first year in office, far-right President Javier Milei has enacted ambitious fiscal reforms and spending cuts. Those measures successfully tamed runaway inflation, but they came at a cost. Unemployment is up and GDP is down. And Argentina recently tallied its highest poverty rate in more than 20 years.
“This is part of the folklore of Boca.”
Andres Escobar, soccer fan
Those troubles were not top-of-mind for soccer fanatic Andres Escobar, who drove 250 miles to attend the gathering in La Boca.
“This is a party,” he said. “This is part of the folklore of Boca.”
On game days, fans like Escobar rally in the street for hours and then head toward the team’s home stadium, which doubles as an iconic Buenos Aires monument. It’s called La Bombonera, or the “box of chocolates.”
Painted blue and yellow, the Bombonera isn’t modern or glitzy. It’s not even the city’s biggest stadium. But this 84-year-old structure has built a legacy as the liveliest place to watch soccer. Its unique architecture has something to do with it. The stands are dizzyingly steep, which allows fans to pack in close to the action.
Many people in Argentina say soccer is the country’s national religion. If that were true, then the Bombonera would be its Holy See. It helps that the stadium was, for a long time, the professional home of soccer legend Maradona.
Maradona passed away in 2020, but there are shrines in his honor across the country.
In adjacent balconies facing the Bombonera, a life-sized replica of the revered soccer star stands next to that of another famous Argentine: Pope Francis.
Pablo Lisotto covers Boca Juniors for Argentina’s biggest newspaper, La Nacion.
In his view, attending a game at the Bombonera is a near-religious experience. Fans get so excited, jumping and cheering, that they shake the stands.
Tickets can be very expensive. “But it’s worth every cent,” Lisotto said.
Perhaps no one embodies the devotion of the fans inside the Bombonera better than Carlos Arnaiz. A 72-year-old accountant, Arnaiz first watched a Boca game in the stadium in 1968. Since then, he has missed only a couple of the more than 1,000 games held at the Bombonera.
“It’s like Sunday mass,” he said. “The Bombonera is a mystical place. It’s a temple. To miss a Boca game, for me, it’s sacrilegious. It’s a stain on my resume as a fan.”
During games, Arnaiz doesn’t just sit back and watch. Instead, he belts out pro-Boca chants. His singing has earned him a nickname: the tenor of the Bombonera.
So, can sporting fandom be compared to a religious faith? Rebecca Alpert, a professor of religion at Temple University, said the answer is yes.
“It gives us what I call the three B’s. It’s a place to believe, it’s a way to behave and it’s a way to belong. And if you think about religion functioning that way, then sport absolutely, for many people, functions as a religion in their lives.”
For diehard fans like those in Argentina and elsewhere, stadiums can hold extraordinary meaning.
“I watch people walk into baseball parks and just have this experience of feeling like they are in a place where they experience transcendence,” Alpert said. “They speak of the beauty of the place and the meaning of the place.”
Sport is like religion in another important way, Alpert said. Both institutions give people a space where they can come together and commune with one another.
Back outside the Bombonera, Boca fans said that love for their team transcends class, politics and generations.
“We don’t treat people differently here,” Boca fan Manuel Alfaro said. “We all have the same jersey. We’re all blue and yellow.”
Whenever he gets to witness a win at the stadium, Alfaro said he feels like he’s floating for at least a week afterward.
Arnaiz, the tenor of the Bombonera, said he feels drained. Happy, but drained.
“The emotions are too intense.”
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