The modest team competes in the Libertadores and took a meritorious draw from the River court

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Some clubs remain true to their origin. It is offered by the Club Deportivo Palestino de Santiago, Chile. It was founded in 1920 by people who had emigrated from the Ottoman Empire and who were therefore called (by custom is still called that the original of that part of the world) Turks. Former President Carlos Menem, son of Syrians, was also Turkish. But the Palestinians were Palestinians, mostly Christians, and wanted to reflect it in the name and colors of their shield, three bars of white, red and green, with a horizontal black stripe. The Chilean community of Palestinian origin remains attached to the club. My friend Xavier Abu Eid, a political scientist born in Chile and returned to occupied Palestine, adviser to the PLO negotiating team, does not miss the opportunity to remember his fervor for the Palestinian CD. He once said that the only thing that would make him return to Chile would be an offer to run the football club.

The Palestinian competes this year in the Copa Libertadores. Acceded to it by way of the repechaje (had to overcome two previous eliminatory before the Medellín of Colombia and the Workshops of Argentine Cordova) and it touched the group To him, the headed no less than by the champion, River Plate. He was considered dead from the moment of the draw. As its stadium, the Municipal Cisterna, can barely accommodate 10,000 spectators, disputes its international matches in the Catholic University. He lost the first game at home, 0-1, against the Brazilians of Internacional de Porto Alegre. But it tied the second: 0-0 against River Plate in the Monumental one of Buenos Aires, without public by the sanctions derived from the disturbances in the recent end Boca-River Plate. Palestinian is still alive.

Its leaders have launched a campaign to bring to La Cisterna land of all Palestinian fields and replant the lawn with it. They want "all the Palestinians of the world to feel local" in the Chilean stadium.

That is fidelity.

It is also, in a different way, that of Racing. The club of Avellaneda, born in 1901, was the first Argentine team founded entirely by criollos (citizens born in the country), without English directors. Although the names of those pioneers leave no doubt about the melting pot that was the province of Buenos Aires (Werner, Vidaillac, Viazzi, Lamour, Echeverri, Balestrieri, Poujade, Sepich, etc.), Racing was part of the teams that established the "style" Argentine "in front of the physical, direct and mechanical game of the English. The Argentine soccer, arisen from the "potreros" (clearings), was based on the gambeta, the pipe, the short pass, the pure skill, the obsession to win; it was also characterized by the unscrupulous defense (the hachera trip) and considerable difficulty for the collective game.

This is what Dante Panzeri (1921-1978), one of the patriarchs of Argentine sports journalism, defined as "dynamics of the unthinkable". For him, whole and uncompromising, fought with almost everyone, football was the players and what they were able to imagine at any time. Perhaps not by chance, Dante Panzeri belonged to the fans of Racing, that club that, so Argentine, wore the shirt with the colors of the national flag before the selection itself.

Racing played badly this weekend. He was anguished by the vertigo of his position as leader and the proximity of the goal. He had to resort to the dark part of the "Argentine style": the lack, the hubbub, the mischief, the will to win at any price. He defended with the teeth the goal of Lisandro Lopez in the first minute and managed to beat Belgrano. It already rubs the title.