If there was any doubt that South America is the most passionate footballing continent on the planet then this should end that. Boca Juniors sold out their opening training session last night ahead of their Copa Libertadores second-leg with River Plate this weekend.
A training session. 49,000 people watched a bunch of blokes do some light stretching and some two-touch. A few more thousands stuck outside. When Boca Juniors and River Plate booked their first ever Copa Libertadores Final date, the last to be played over two legs, people suggested it could be the biggest, most intense footballing spectacle of all time. Looking at these scenes from last night, it's hard to disagree.
The tie is nicely poised at 2-2 after the two local sides met in the first leg at La Bombonera last Sunday. Tomorrow, they meet again across town, and Boca Juniors fans were keen to give their players one colossal send off by creating a cup final atmosphere in the open training session. People climbing barbed wire fences, risking their lives balancing on the walls of the top tiers, just to get a glimpse of one of their heroes run around a series of cones. Try telling us European football comes anywhere close to this.
Maybe, there isn't much to do on a Thursday afternoon in Buenos Aires? Or maybe, the world is truly beginning to understand the immense passion, loyalty and obsession these two sets of rivals have for their teams, and this fixture. Tomorrow night. 8pm GMT. Expect nothing like you've ever seen before.
If you're in the UK the match is live on FreeSports for free. Freeview (64), Sky (422), BT (64), Virgin (533), Freesat (252) and TalkTalk (64). Sorted.
Expect toilet roll sales to go through the roof in the next 24 hours in the Argentinean capital – if they're not lobbing it from the terraces they'll be using it elsewhere, don't you worry about that.
The scenes at full time tomorrow. Ecstasy meets catastrophic heartbreak, meets everything else in between. If you're a fan, you're in for 90 minutes of torture. If you're a neutral, you're in for one hell of a ride...
