IN FULL BLOOM

Lights is still well South American football’s lesser JOHN LYONS says that one of worth a visit...

Football in Bolivia

IF YOU are a football fan keen to travel around South America, then Bolivia might not strike you as a key location to visit.

But you’d be foolish to ignore it. Okay, you’re not going to see the best players on the continent or the best teams (though Bolivar did cause a shock by reaching the semi-finals of last year’s Copa Libertadores).

However, what you experience in terms of quirky or downright bizarre incidents could more than make up for that.

Of course, if you think of Bolivia and its capital La Paz, one of the first things that springs to mind is altitude.

Just ask Diego Maradona whose Argentinian side were on the end of a 6-1 humbling in a World Cup qualifier in 2009. The Argies had the likes of Lionel Messi, Carlos Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Gabriel Heinze, Maxi Rodriguez and Martin Demichelis in their starting line-up. It was hardly a team of mugs. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to see that game – though I did walk on the pitch at the rather dilapidated Estadio Hernando Siles a couple of years later.

I took a stroll up to the stadium, some 3,600 metres above sea level, one afternoon – and just walked in. The gates were open because there was some athletics training going on, so, as no one was remotely bothered, I walked on the pitch and took a few pictures as a souvenir.

It’s not often you get to see the President of a country playing football either, but I was able to witness Bolivia’s Evo Morales playing in a charity game at the same venue another day.

In a match to help those who had lost their homes due to flooding, Morales lined up alongside players from Bolivia’s World Cup squad of 1994 against current day players.

The portly President’s popularity was waning at that time, so there were plenty of boos from the packed out crowd every time he touched the ball, which wasn’t often.

Returning to altitude, I’ll never forget going to see the Potosi derby – Nacional Potosi versus Real Potosi – though I didn’t end up watching much of the match.

I asked a couple of Belgian tourists if they wanted to go to the game with me and they said yes. Things started to go wrong when we got stuck in massive queues outside the ground on a boiling hot day – this was a game everyone in Potosi wanted to watch.

We eventually managed to get in, but the Belgian girl started to feel a bit rough. She went to lie down in the little shade she could find behind the hoardings and then began to have trouble breathing, which only made her panic more.

We rushed to get her some