The Passion for Boca Juniors Museum

All the Colors On any day of the week and in any season of the year, a blend of diverse Spanish accents and foreign languages seems to tour The Passion for Boca Juniors Museum. They share one feeling, a universal language: passion for football. As we approached the Boca Juniors Football Stadium, popularly known as La Bombonera (the Chocolate Box), we were surprised by its neat appearance and the explosion of colors playing with vivid chromatic shocks, a distinctive feature of La Boca neighborhood. From outside, the stadium seems to be part of the scale model exhibited in the museum depicting this famous neighborhood. Everything is intertwined and indivisible: not only is La Bombonera a part of a neighborhood which witnessed its creation but it also defines its identity. It was on this port suburb that football and Argentina were born.

More Than Colors The tour including a visit to The Passion for Boca Juniors Museum is, as referred by its name, more than the chance to get into the past and see the relics of the long sport life of this club. This is a museum focusing on the passion for football. Settled inside the football field building, this museum (with access through a gift shop with a wide variety of blue and yellow souvenirs) opens up through a long corridor where the pictures of all premier division players who have defended the T-shirt since 1931 are on display. This is how worship of the past begins. At the end of the corridor, inside a huge football ball-shaped room, we could live the 360-degree experience of going into the football field and stepping on the lawn of La Bombonera in a unique spectacular audio-visual event. Filled with signs giving information about the club history, starting at its foundation, including the matches won and a timeline featuring events at the club in parallel with facts in Argentinian and world events. The museum works very well even for those who are not familiar with the xeneize past. Both on the first floor and on the upper levels, we could find relics of Boca Juniors: the cups won by the club throughout the years; the pictures and paintings of old formations; a collection which displays the evolution of the blue and yellow T-shirt; and the flag displayed in the football field on the first club game as a professional team. The tour is closed with another audio-visual show in honor to the club idols. From Maradona and Rattín up to the feet of Boca players such as Riquelme and Palermo, the latest great idols of this riverside club. Blessed Bombonera After the museum tour, we reached the most interesting spot in the visit: the present of Boca Juniors, its glory still alive, a tour across the football field where week after week new games are played and this historical club seeks to add new victories. The Stadium Executive Boxes can be visited. Behind a glass is the lawn, anyone can almost feel it under their feet, smell it and imagine it during a game. The same lawn stepped on by the boots. Recently refurbished, La Bombonera has a somehow irregular shape: the piece of land available for building did not allow the development of a traditional stadium. The architect who designed the stadium knew how to take advantage of its limitations and how to maximize angles and space to erect a particular building: from any place of the stadium, there is an almost perfect sight of the field and players.