Last Sunday, in the northern Argentinian city of Santiago del Estero, Platense beat Huracán 1-0 to win Argentina’s Apertura, the decisive goal a beautiful dipping effort struck at the top of the bounce by Guido Mainero. It was the first title in the club’s 120‑year history and provoked scenes of extraordinary emotion.
Platense are one of Argentina’s quirkier clubs. They are nicknamed the Squid because their original ground was built on a marsh and the story grew that they played better in wet conditions when, as the journalist Antonio Palacio Zino put it, “the boys moved like squid in their ink”. The boggy conditions are also supposedly why they wear brown after an early director thought it would help to hide mud stains; the real reason is probably that their first members agreed to wear the colours of a jockey who won a particular race.
