Down but certainly not out in Ate

Four consecutive wins have seen La ‘U’ climb away from the relegation zone. In their hour of need, the club’s fans have rallied behind the team.

There was a long queue outside the Crema Caravan, not a ticket office as such but rather a hired bus parked outside the ground from which one man was selling tickets for that evening´s game against Sport Rosario. The wait would be over an hour. Buses were flying past, packed full of supporters who were singing and banging drums as they made their way to the ground. So full were the buses that some fans were sitting on the roof. Ticket touts were rife, falsely telling people in the queue that the game was sold-out in order to boost their trade. Tired of waiting, I considered buying one from a tout but decided against it. How could I often complain about the informal nature of Peru if I helped to feed it?

The Estadio Monumental is the largest ground in South America, with a capacity for just over 80,000 people, and is notoriously famous for being hard to get to, located in an eastern district of Lima called Ate. The Monumental has been the home to Universitario de Deportes, commonly known as La ‘U’, since the year 2000, when the club moved from their former ground of 50 years, the Estadio Lolo Fernández. Lolo Fernández is La ‘U’s most revered player, a centre forward who spent all his career with the club, winning 6 titles as well as captaining Peru to the 1939 Copa América victory. Outside of the main stand at the Monumental there is a statue of Fernández, a reminder of past glories and a monument to the man loved not only for his goals but also for his loyalty.

Though La ‘U’s history is rich, the current season has been one to forget. They way the Peruvian league is organised is complicated, but the season is essentially split into three tournaments; the Torneo de Verano and the more important Apertura and Clausura tournaments. There is then an aggregate league table, with all the points from the three tournaments put together. The winner of the Apertura and the Clausura play each other to decide the grand champion and the team with the lowest number of points in the aggregate league table goes down. La ‘U’ had a disastrous Torneo de Verano and have been hovering dangerously close to the bottom of the aggregate league table for large parts of the season. Financial mismanagement led to a transfer embargo and, as the season approached its end, the situation had become tense as results failed to improve.

At the start of October, some members of the Trinchera Norte, a group of La ‘U’ ultras, forced their way into the club’s training ground and threatened the team’s Chilean manager, Nicolás Córdova. Córdova was told he had 48 hours to leave the country or he could fear the worse. Córdova stayed and to his enormous relief the players delivered a crucial victory against Sport Huancayo at a game played at the National Stadium. The win gave the team a confidence boost and was followed by triumphs against Unión Comercio and Binacional.

Tonight, La U were back at the Monumental and their opponents, Sport Rosario, were a direct rival for the drop; La U on 44 points and Sport Rosario on 41. A defeat would be unthinkable. A win would put them 7 points clear of the team from the city of Huaraz. Aware of the importance of the game, the club appealed to its supporters to fill the Monumental. One would have hoped that given the higher than usual expected attendance, a second or third Crema Caravana would have been opened yet this was sadly not the case.

Once in the stadium, we chose our spot and bought some popcorn from one of the many vendors who sell food and drink at football grounds in Peru. The game started cautiously, an opportunity for La ‘U’ and Peru right-back Aldo Corzo being the only clear sight of goal. The home side’s chances were helped by Carlos Beltrán’s stupid sending off just before the half hour mark, the Sport Rosario player receiving two yellow cards in the space of 4 minutes and leaving his team to play the rest of the game with ten men. That was always going to be a big ask and it was little surprise when Pablo Lavandeira took advantage of a bad clearance to send the home fans wild and give his team a precious lead at the interval.

Outside the Monumental, people were still queuing by the Crema Caravan and, as the second half started, fans were still entering the ground. Some were in suits, businessmen who assumedly work in the affluent, neighbouring district of La Molina and had come straight from the office to the game. Missing the whole first half wasn't important; the most crucial aspect was to show your support to the team in their hour of need, if only for 40 minutes. As the second half progressed, the stadium was nervous, everyone aware that 1-0 was a slender lead. Around me, Cordova was getting some serious stick. Every utterance by the man behind started with the Peruvian curse “concha su madre” and he pleaded for the introduction of Diego Manicero. Finally, the gifted Argentinian entered the pitch and soon made an impact. Minutes after his introduction, a cross from the left was headed in by Germán Denis, the 37-year-old former Argentina striker whose goals have been so crucial in La U's rise up the table. The Monumental erupted once again and the sense of relief was palpable. Three more points, edging them further away from the danger zone.

Fans celebrate La U's second goal.

It was in August that Córdova, after a defeat to Sporting Cristal that left La U in an extremely perilous position, said to reporters that the team needed “men, not kids”. Due to the transfer embargo, the previous manager, Pedro Troglio, had been forced to blood some of the team’s talented youngsters in the absence of more experienced heads. Cordova thought that a relegation battle required more experience and, when the club was once again given the green light to sign players in August, the wily Denis was brought in alongside Peruvian national team veteran Alberto Rodriguez and the Uruguayan Lavandeira.

Upon his arrival in Lima in August, Denis promised La ‘U’s fans that he would do everything in his power to prevent the team from suffering its first ever relegation. “A club like La ‘U’ can’t go down”, he told the newspaper El Popular, commenting on the size of the club and the number of fans it has in Peru.  “It’s logical that the fans criticise the manager sometimes… but I am sure that they will continue to support the team”. The fans took note and attendances have noticeably increased.

After the game, my friend and I went to a restaurant nearby as we waited for the traffic to die down before leaving Ate and heading home. If there is one thing that I miss about going to games back home in England, it is without doubt the pre-match drink in the pub by the ground and the post-match pint where you either toast a victory or drown your sorrows. By the Monumental, the pollo a la brasa restaurant was the best of our very few options. As we ate, Fox Sports was being shown on the TV and Germán Denis was interviewed. “The fans are a twelfth man for us. The Monumental is a really big stadium but today it was nearly full and that helped us a lot. I feel like I have been at the club for my whole life, happy for history that the club has and for being able to help”. Helping, he certainly is. In the space of a few months, the mood has changed somewhat. Pessimism has turned to quiet optimism and La ‘U’s many supporters are starting to think of brighter days ahead.

Lima, October 2018

(This article was originally posted on The Peruvian Waltz in November 2018. For more information about Peruvian football, go to:

http://www.futboldlb.com/)