The owner of this blog SUPPORTS

Racing Club (Argentina) and Queens Park Rangers (England).

The first one is the team my father (RIP) and my grandfather supported since they were born and I kept the tradition of supporting them through thin and thin! (yes, because we've never been too good after 1967 -ten years before I was born-).

Racing Club has the same colours of Argentina (Albiceleste) and it hails from the city of Avellaneda, just outside Buenos Aires city limits to the south.

It was founded on March 25th, 1903 and it's nicknamed "La Academia" (The Academy) because back in the days before football became a professional sport in Argentina, Racing won 9 leagues (7 consecutive) and was the best team around.

It was also the first team to win 3 league titles in a row (1949-1950-1951) and the first Intercontinental (European-South American Cup) champion from Argentina, beating the famous Lisbon Lions team of Glasgow Celtic in the final in 1967.

After that, we spent 35 years without winning the title with 60 managers (yes! 60 managers!) trying to and failing to win the damn thing all those years.

We were relegated in 1983 and came back to the first division in 1985. We've won the first edition of the Supercopa in 1988 (a tournament played between all the Copa Libertadores champions) and finally in 2001 we stopped that bloody curse and we won the league with players like Diego MILITO amongst our stars (even though he was mostly a substitute back then).

The biggest pride during all those dark years in which the league title was so elusive with us was to have the most loyal set of fans. The "hinchada" of Racing overcame everything and kept the club alive (with the help of some politicians to be fair) when the economic crisis and a lot of corrupt members of the board threatened to end with Racing Club as we know it .

Mariano GONZALEZ (now at Inter), Diego MILITO (Zaragoza) and Lisandro LOPEZ (Porto FC) are amongst the players who started their careers at Racing in the recent years.

In history, Alfio BASILE, Roberto PERFUMO, Quique WOLFF (all of them playing for Argentina. PERFUMO (1966 and 1974) and WOLFF (1974) playing in World Cups, Orestes Omar CORBATTA and Ubaldo Matildo FILLOL are amongst the key figures and the main icons of Racing Club.

Here's a pic of the World’s biggest flag and this is the link to the Racing Club's official website (very nice and worth visiting): http://www.racingclub.com

As for QPR (Queens Park Rangers), I started supporting them after playing a couple of seasons of a Championship-Manager-like game. I was attracted by the name and the shirt and I was hooked forever. It was back in 1997 and I soon started looking for results, news and club’s history on the internet.

I became a regular poster in a QPR-related messageboard and the people there couldn’t believed that an Argentinean was so fanatic about a rather small London club.

Thanks to QPR and its wonderful fans, I’ve got to live what was (and still is) one of the highlights of my life.

After we secured promotion back to the Championship (England’s second tier) with a win 3-1 away win against Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, a QPR Irish fan came up with the idea for all the regulars in that messageboard to gather some money to fly me over the London and get to watch QPR for the first time in my life. After 7 years of loyal support from across the ocean, they did it and they made me the World’s happiest man!

So September 11th, 2004 was the long-awaited date. QPR were playing against Plymouth Argyle at Loftus Road in what turned out to be my first live, on-site QPR experience. We won 3-2 after a run of terrible results and we started a series of 7 wins in a row after that! But the brightest of my memories from that day was to be introduced at halftime on the pitch!

I’ve got to play a little competition called round the pole. You had to go ten times round the pole and when you were all dizzy you had to take a penalty kick and try to score (avoiding falling on your back side, of course). I scored a great goal (top-right corner) and all the crowd was celebrating. Even the Plymouth fans!

After the match, I’ve got to meet the players and fellow Argentine Gino PADULA gave me the shirt he used just minutes before, while Big Danny SHITTU (now playing in the Premiership for Watford) gave me an honest praise after he saw me scoring from the penalty spot!

I even got to meet QPR legend Stanley BOWLES and I got an autographed copy of his biography at the club shop and I was interviewed by BBC London before the match!

The other magical thing about that whole experience was that thanks to that wonderful initiative by my fellow QPR supporters, I’ve got to meet again with my mum and my two brothers. And most importantly, I’ve got to meet my newly-born niece in Spain where my brother Martin was living at that time (with the help of my mum paying for the tickets from England to Spain). I was set to miss her birth and follow all those moments from afar, but QPR (its fans) made it possible for me to be there with my brother and live a wonderful couple of days with him and his lovely baby.

Some idiots (the minority) started calling me names in that messageboard and it really affected me. Some were saying I was not a true QPR fan and that I just wanted to get into England as an illegal immigrant! So it stopped me from posting so often because no matter what I wrote in there, I was being abused anyway. That was the only downside of my life as a QPR fan. That and being knocked out of the cup by Vauxhall Motors a few seasons ago! Haha!

But my love for QPR remains intact and I’ll always support them!

Amongst QPR highlights are the League Cup title in 1967 coming back from a 2-goal deficit against West Bromwich Albion at Wembley (while Racing were beating Celtic) and finishing second being pipped to the league title by Liverpool in the 1975-1976 season. Oh...we were so close! Will we be back? Honestly, I don't care!

Website: www.qpr.co.uk