A confrontation between brave bars and the riot police of the Buenos Aires Police is likely to end badly. If the clash takes place at the –closed– gates of a stadium with the match started and the radical fans try to get in however they can, the result is one dead and a hundred injured. The pitched battle was Thursday night in La Plata, where Gymnastics and Fencing faced Boca Juniors on matchday 24 of the Argentine league. The violent fans who wanted to enter without a ticket detonated the incidents but the excessive response of the provincial police force also affected peaceful fans who came to the stadium with children and who had to dodge the rubber balls. The latter had tickets but the stadium was already full. Everything indicates that there was overselling of tickets.
The chaos was experienced inside and outside the field, as the large amount of tear gas caused the smoke to reach the interior of the enclosure. The referee suspended the game in the 9th minute of the first half and dozens of fans jumped onto the pitch to get as far away from the fumes as possible.
The game was played at the centenary stadium of Lobo, Juan Carmelo Zerillo. Yesterday, while, as usual in Argentina, all parties – clubs, the Professional League that depends on the AFA, police and authorities – blamed each other for the disaster, there was also a debate about why a risky game was not played in the modern Unico stadium de La Plata, which can accommodate 53,000 spectators, almost double that of the Zerillo stadium. The deceased, César Regueiro, 57, was the local fan who suffered cardiac arrest amid the incidents. For his part, Fernando Rivero, a cameraman for the TyC Sports network, was hit three times by rubber bullets while recording the riots. The Buenos Aires governor, the Kirchnerist Áxel Kicillof, dismissed the head of the police operation and recognized that the public force "was not capable of providing security to those who attended" the meeting.
