Sadly familiar scenes in Retiro. Two hours before Wednesday night’s Copa Libertadores match between River Plate and Club América, the internal squabble enveloping River’s barra brava, Los Borrachos del Tablón, blew up yet again at the train station in the northern barrio, and a man was hospitalised.

The fight was between two of the factions already battling for control of the terraces in the Monumental, one from the zona Oeste and the other from the Norte, and it left ‘El Colimbo‘ Dimuzzio, one of Adrián Rousseau’s right-hand men when he had control of Los Borrachos, hospitalised with multiple trauma injuries and a cut to his head. Three members of the Oeste gang, among them the ringleader Marcelo ‘Franky’ Martínez, were arrested and are accused of causing the injuries.

One curiosity is that Dimuzzio and Martínez have worked together as recently as September, when they were seen before River’s match against Racing touting tickets. How quickly allegiances change. Yesterday’s fight has its origin in the fact that the gang from the zona Oeste, made up largely of barras who were turfed out of the central circle when Rousseau was capo, control the terrace when River play away from home, whilst the ‘banda oficial‘ (that’s ‘official section’) have control in the Monumental. Both, of course, want to be the sole purveyors of violence at River’s matches. And neither lot are going to let a little thing like public order get in the way. (hasta el gol siempre)