Back in 2001, Aussie soccer fans were left in tears when the Socceroos were bundled out of the World Cup qualifications after a heartbreaking 3-0 loss to Uruguay in Montevideo. I laughed my dick off because soccer is a game for teenage girls and the physically handicapped, and Aussie soccer fans are the sort of ponytailed wankers who deserve to be tipped into bins, so when in Montevideo I just had to visit the scene of the hilarity.
The Estadio Centenario was built in 1930 for that year’s World Cup, and doesn’t look like it’s been renovated since then. The stadium is old fashioned, run down… and utterly fantastic. Despite being an oval, every one of the 60,000 seats has a great view and is right on top of the action. There are no corporate boxes, the seating is basic, there’s no roof, I couldn’t find any toilets and the Wifi is rubbish, but it has more character than any billion-dollar modern stadium. The atmosphere would be awesome during a big game (as long as you ignore the soccering happening on the pitch).
The razor wire and security moats that separate the various sections of the stadium give some indication of how wild things get during matches, but when I was there on a Monday arvo, the crowd was reminiscent of a Central Coast Mariners game. There were about six other people in the stands and a dozen or so bored-looking birds hunting about on the grass, and the only flares I saw were being worn by a fat bloke with an afro.
In the bowls of the stadium is the Museo del Futbol, which is full of photos of soccer players and World Cup trophies and other stuff I couldn’t give a shit about. I guess if soccerballing is your thing, you’d love it. Apparently the two World Cups Uruguay have earned are housed there, but fucked if I could work out which ones they were amongst the memorabilia, so here’s a trophy that may or may not be one of them.
As I wandered through the displays wearing my Kangaroos jersey, a couple of the workers started taunting me about how rubbish the Socceroos are and lisping “One-nil! One nil! Harry Kewell suck so bad! Juan Aloisi has faeces on his boots!”
“Boys, you need to settle down,” I said, pointing at the badge on my chest. “I don’t waste time watching limp-wristed tossers pretending to be hurt and biting each other’s dicks. I follow rugby league and the Australian Kangaroos, and we haven’t won just two World Cups, we’ve won 14 of the bastards.”
They were curious about what I meant, so I turned on the nearest Commodore Amiga and pointed them towards a few rugby league videos on YouTube. The fellas started hootin’ and hollerin’, slapping each other high fives and pretending to tackle each other. As I looked at some more displays, the crowd around the computer grew, and I chuckled as one little fella wondered out loud, “Why have we been wasting our time with soccer all these years?”
Pretty soon every computer in the museum was blasting out YouTube clips of the NRL’s biggest hits, the 1989 grand final, or Tina Turner’s old Simply the Best ad for the Winfield Cup. One bloke was getting pretty worked up over a compilation video of Nathan Hindmarsh losing his shorts. Another was using the 1928 Olympic trophy as an ash tray and trying to replicate ‘the bubbler’ as he watched some of Todd Carney’s career highlights. As I left I saw one of the fellas pulling down a photo of Diego Forlan and putting up a photo of Johnathan Thurston that he’d hastily printed off his Amstrad computer, saying, “Uruguay is a rugby league country now.” Expect the Montevideo Mud Crabs to join the NRL any minute now!
The Drunk and Jobless World Tour 