"To some this might look like madness"
Getting to know Rosario Central
When a man with a spider-web tattooed completely over his bald head tells you something is too dangerous, you listen.
I had wanted to visit this stadium for a while, and until my paths crossed with the aforementioned spider web headed man, everything was going relatively smoothly.
If you think of an Argentine football club who play in blue and yellow and has mental fans, you almost certainly think of Boca Juniors, and quite right too. However, as many Argentines had told me - there is another. Rosario Central.
I was based in Buenos Aires for my latest trip to Argentina, but had managed to get a place on a minibus filled with other foreign football fans who wanted to get a taste of the action in Messi’s hometown. In addition to myself the Welshman, there was also a Scottish guy, three Italians, and a group of Dutch guys who were listening to a Spotify playlist which was presumably called “The 100 Worst Techno Songs Of All Time”
Newell’s Old Boys are probably the more famous club of the two biggest teams in Rosario, partly because it was where Lionel Messi started and where Maradona played briefly, but (in my opinion) mostly because of the fact their badge looks like an English slang word for penis.
As part of the organised trip up to Rosario, we had the opportunity to stop at Newell’s ground first, before the main event of Rosario Central vs. San Lorenzo later that evening. During the tour of the stadium, I discovered that all of the stands were named after former players, with three of them names I recognised.
Lionel Messi Stand- Greatest player of the modern era, checks out.
Diego Maradona Stand - Greatest player of all time, fair enough - even if he only played for them 7 times.
That’s a pretty high bar to get a stand, who could the player be to go alongside these greats?
Maxi Rodriguez.
A good player, no doubt, but it’s like comparing a dream two-week holiday to the Maldives to visiting your Uncle in Porthmadog for a weekend.
The final stand is named after Gerardo Martino, who has the most appearances for the club of any player in history, and won four league titles, with three as a player and one as a coach. He was also part of the only two Newell’s teams to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores, although they did lose on both occasions.
After the tour, there was time for a quick visit to the club shop. We were warned very intensely that if we did buy anything, it was essential to keep it completely hidden when we went to watch Central later on, with the rivalry between the two a particularly intense one, even by Argentine standards. As tempting as it was, I decided against purchasing a shirt - there are plenty of jealous people in my hometown who already think I’m a nob without broadcasting it further.
Back onto the bus we went, and those who had made purchases hid their shirts under seats and coats. The organiser once again gave a firm warning about not mentioning the fact we had been to Newell’s, as doing so might result on you ending up being cooked on one of the dozens of barbecue grills that can be found outside Argentine football stadiums.
Instructions followed, all was going well…until the minibus driver couldn’t find the right car park, pulled out his phone to show someone the booking…and had the Newell’s badge as his lockscreen. Things were looking extremely ropey for a moment, but in the end it was laughed off and we were able to park in the car park, rather than at the bottom of the huge river which runs through Rosario.
With that incident survived, it was time to get inside the stadium. From chatting to the fellow passengers on the way up, I learned that they had all bought VIP seats in the hospitality section.
Not me, my ticket was in the most hardcore section of the ground - after having to email the club and plead with them that I knew enough about football culture to go in there without getting into danger/the afterlife.
Buenos Aires, Moscow, Belgrade, Sofia, Warsaw - I’ve seen games in all of these cities and hundreds more, and had never once been turned away from a stadium because it was too dangerous for me to enter. That was about to change, as I reached the front of the queue and met the man from the opening line of this article. He was the head steward for the section, which you never would have guessed if he wasn’t wearing the uniform. He was without a doubt one of the scariest people I’ve ever seen in my life, looking like he would be more suited to running an underground bare-knuckle fight night in a small town in Russia, where the only rule is you’re not allowed to die.
I knew speaking English meant my chances of getting inside the stand would drop to zero, so I cracked on in Spanish despite still very much being a learner. Here’s a rough recreation of the conversation, with some creative liberties taken to cover for the holes in my Spanish:
World’s Scariest Man: You’re foreign, right?
Me: Yes, I come from Wales, but I’ve been to a lot of matches in Argentina, so I know how it is.
World’s Scariest Man: Sorry, but you cannot come in, it’s not going to be safe for you.
Me: Ah, but I spoke to the club, and they said that it would be ok (showing the email)
World’s Scariest Man: They should not have told you that. If you go in there and they see you don’t belong, they’re gonna f*ck you up, and then they will probably f*ck me up for letting you in.
This wasn’t like arguing with a steward who is trying to stop you going in because your flag is 1cm too long or you’ve got a bottle cap on your drink, so I gave in without too much of a fight. Thankfully, the World’s Scariest Man pointed me to a club official, who I explained the situation to. They then walked me inside through a door I definitely wasn’t supposed to go through, as we made our way through the very inner workings of the stadium.
Eventually, I saw daylight and we were in the stand next to the hardcore supporters, which on reflection is definitely the ticket I should have bought in the first place. Feeling both happy to be alive and pleased that I wouldn’t have to watch the match from a bar in Rosario, I got my first look at the stand that was supposedly “too dangerous for me”
A very wise decision from the World’s Scariest Man, as it turned out that he probably wasn’t actually the World’s Scariest Man after all, with about 10,000 strong contenders for that crown in the stand he was protecting. I don’t know your real name, but thank you very much, amigo.
However, I don’t want this to sound like I wasn’t enjoying myself. On the contrary, I absolutely love the feeling of stepping inside a football ground I probably shouldn’t be at, and Estadio Gigante de Arroyito (The giant of Arroyito, which is the name of the neighbourhood the club is based in) scores very highly on the list of best places I’ve ever watched a game.
Unfortunately the game itself wasn’t up to much, as two VAR interventions denied both teams a goal, finishing 0-0 as so many matches in Argentina tend to do so. Without the memory of a goal to take away, the thing I remember best about this game is just how crazy their supporters really are. Just take a look at the picture below, in which you can see several fans on the back of the stand, holding on to metal poles
If they slipped, it would be the very last thing they did, as it was a long way down and only an unforgiving concrete floor to break their fall.
They are highly respected by many other fanbases in Argentina - which is a huge compliment, as usually supporters like to say “Our support is the best and everyone else is rubbish”. I was told numerous times by fans of Boca that now I had seen La Bombonera, I also really had to visit Rosario Central to see some of the best Argentine support.
The derby is huge, and they dominate it. Most Argentine football experts say that this is the biggest derby outside of Buenos Aires, with others saying that it is probably the most dangerous derby of any in the country. One of the many traditions that exist in Argentine football centres around derbies. Imagine if the derby between Club A and Club B has been played 50 times, with Club A winning 30 and Club B winning 20, Club A would be said to be ‘+10”.
Rosario Central are currently +22, including winning the last four in a row and being unbeaten in 11. Newell’s last win was back in 2016, marking a decade of pain for the red and black side of the city.
When I was there this number was +21, and you could see it absolutely everywhere. Not even the world’s luckiest Blackjack player has seen the number 21 as much as I did that day in Rosario. It was on stickers and t-shirts, spray painted on walls and shop fronts all over the city, and on the back of shirts. If you can imagine a way to display the number 21, Rosario Central fans probably already thought of it.
Their nickname is ‘canaya’ which comes from the unique way people from Rosario say ‘canallas’, meaning scoundrels. Legend has it that this came from when the club turned down an invite to play in a match to raise money for victims of leprosy, although this story is sometimes disputed. The very same match also gave Newell’s one of their nicknames - The Lepers. If you hear of a football match which could be billed as The Scoundrels vs. The Lepers and you don’t want to see it, this page probably isn’t for you.
Finally, the club has many unique traditions, with my favourite being their tradition every December 19th. To understand this one you have to go back to 1971, when the Rosario Derby was played in the semi-final of the Argentine championship. Central won the game 1-0 on the 19th December thanks to a diving header from Aldo Poy.
Central went on to become champions of Argentina for the first time, and even now, fans of the blue and yellow team from Rosario will meet up on this date to celebrate and recreate this goal. Despite now being in his 80’s, Poy still attends the events and throws himself at the ball. Central have been champions of Argentina four more times since then (including a controversial one in 2025), but this first victory has remained the most iconic, still celebrated just as fiercely 55 years later.
Poy himself was quoted as saying:
“To some this might look like madness, but I think it is an outpouring of passion”
I don’t think there’s any better way to describe this club than that.
