The Argentine players were singing the National Anthem prior to the start of the match against Brazil when they began to detect what was happening in one of the stands. In the middle of a green-yellow crowd, a group of albiceleste fans tried to protect themselves from the overwhelming repression of the local police.
“A riot began and a police cordon entered, but instead of separating the two sides they began to beat us to death with shovels,” recalled Eugenio, the young man whose image went viral when he was carried bloody on a stretcher.
His hands were handcuffed, covered in blood and a cut on his scalp.
He also said that when the uniformed men began to attack them, the Argentine fans began to retreat until they were “crushed.” It was during one of those pushes that Eugenio fell and hit his head on one of the uprights on the stands. “I lost consciousness. When I woke up in the kind of hospital that is in the Maracaná, where I never left until 4 in the morning, my hands were handcuffed, full of blood and a cut on my scalp,” the young man said in dialogue with TyC Sports. .
Both he and eight other Albiceleste fans were detained and delayed. Eugenio, who has been living in Rio de Janeiro for a long time, He said that there was a young man with the Atlanta shirt who had two fractures in one of his arms from being hit with the stick and a broken finger. “The same police officers took photos with the x-rays of our wounds as if they were war trophies,” he denounced. To be released, the man had to pay 200 reais as bail.
“Outside [antes del partido] The weather was warmer and nothing happened. We were singing together in favor of Messi. There were guys who wanted to change shirts with us. I didn’t care what happened. “It wasn’t to go with so much violence,” Eugenio added indignantly, minutes before returning to the hospital to continue with the treatments on his head.
Another man who experienced the tense moment said: “At one point, glasses and then chairs started flying.” Gerónimo said that the troops, clubs in hand, “went up only to the side where the Argentines were and began to hit” indiscriminately.
The young man related, in dialogue with radio Miter, that like every game of this type “there was the folklore of the fans.” In fact, He recalled that there were no problems, neither at the entrance to the Maracaná stadium nor around the field.despite the fear that existed after the incidents that Boca fans experienced weeks ago in the final of the Copa Libertadores, from which Fluminense emerged triumphant.
They took a person with blood on his head, there was a lot of beating
“We saw that they took a person with blood on his head, there was a lot of beating,” Gerónimo recorded with the images fresh in his memory. In his case, he was with a group of 11 Argentines located about 10 rows from the playing field, behind one of the goals. “They put us among all the Brazilian fans. We had it behind us, to the right, to the left. It was very strange, crazy“, he indicated regarding the organization.
Likewise, he highlighted the role that the players played in approaching the scene of the incidents just as the officers were hitting with their clubs despite the unsuccessful attempt by the fans, who asked them to stop. “Draw [Emiliano Martínez] I wanted to go up; Lautaro Martínez too. Lionel Messi was seen close until at that moment he said that it was not a game,” the man recalled.
The images of the beating spread for minutes, amid the desperation of some women who, as best they could, sought refuge on the Maracaná playing field to take care of their children. The players, meanwhile, tried to get on the stands to help.
Once the match in Rio de Janeiro ended, the Argentine captain criticized the Brazilian Police in harsh terms both in television statements and through a post on his social networks. “We saw how they were hitting people,” he said on the 10th about the first reaction of the team, which was to approach the stands to calm things down. However, he acknowledged that that was of no use and recalled what happened in the run-up to the Copa Libertadores final between Fluminense and Boca Juniors, where there were shots fired on the beaches of Rio.: “The same thing happened in the Libertadores final, repressing people with sticks.”
THE NATION / GDA
ARGENTINA
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