Taking our lives in our hands... (Part 1)

As you probably know, soccer is huge down here, and it's always been so. There's a story my parents brought me to a game when I was about two. In cheering for his favourite Chilean team, Audax Italiano,  my dad would holler to the top of his lungs, wave his arms wildly around and jump for joy, like all the other young fathers at the soccer stadium then.

The story goes that until I started to cry and sputtered: "You have me all scared..!" my dad hadn't even realized my mom had handed me over to him, and I was sitting on his knee, throughout all this cheering.

In the ensuing 40+ years, soccer's popularity in Chile has not diminished one bit, but the games themselves have changed dramatically. Since being here, all we've heard about when it comes to soccer, centres on the hooliganism that now dominates the live games.

Just as it was in England years ago, it's now mainly bands of young men who go to the games and trash everything in sight -- before, during and after. Stories of violent fights between fans, rocks being thrown at the police, and tear gas being used to disperse the crowds are common. This is even more pronounced when two arch-enemy (and top-ranked) clubs face each other: Colo-Colo and Universidad de Chile.

Politics is also more predominant than ever in the sport. For example, Colo-Colo at some point changed from being the team of the working poor classes, to now representing the middle- and upper-classes. Meanwhile, U de Chile has become "los de abajo," or the lower-class underdogs. So clashes between these two teams (which happen only a few times each year) are both anticipated and feared.

One of the things my brother Fernando wanted to do while down here with us was to take Nicholas and Carmen... to a soccer game. Three years ago he'd been to a Colo-Colo vs. U de Chile game and although he's over six feet tall and has travelled the world, he said he'd felt very uneasy being part of a crowd of more than 40,000 people leaving the soccer stadium afterwards. So, the game he had in mind would not involve either of those teams, but two tamer (and bad) teams... like Audax against San Luis.

I should mention here that through his friends and involvement at school, Nicholas has become a rabid Colo-Colo fan. His grandpa -- who's now deathly afraid of setting foot in a soccer stadium, but will forever support any and all underdogs -- was not happy with this news and tried to dissuade him, by telling Nick that "only the worst of people" like Colo-Colo. However, if Nick insisted on being a fan, then, he should buy himself a knife, just so he could defend himself against attacks from other fans. ; )

A few days later, one of my dad's friends, Luis, gave Nick a large Colo-Colo flag as a gift (grandpa was once again not amused, but took it graciously by reminding Nick about the knife business). Then, my brother bought Nick a Colo-Colo shirt, which Nick was also thrilled with.

So, there we were, my brother and I, looking online for a tame soccer game, when we realized a huge match was coming up, on April 25 -- a "Superclasico." And which teams were involved? You got it: Colo-Colo against U de Chile. After much debate we decided that yeah, this was the game.

Since Fernando had previous experience, he had ideas on how to minimize the risks (arriving and leaving early, sitting near an exit, covering up any Colo-Colo paraphernalia until we were safely seated with other Colo-Colo fans, buying that knife after all....kidding!)

As for me, I just refused to believe that a family could no longer attend a soccer game in Chile, safely.

There just had to be a way....

(Here are Fernando and Nick, getting searched as they attempt to enter Monumental Stadium:)