Soccer fans can sometimes be very extreme, but this goes way over the top to the tune of murder. An Argentine soccer fan has been pronounced brain dead after a 5-year feud lead to tragic in-game maliciousness from a family rival.
Emmanuel Balboa was just 22-years old and attending a soccer match for local teams Belgrano and Talleres. Unfortunately for Balboa, his family rivals, the Gomez family, were also in the stands via Deadspin.
As La Nacion describes it, in 2012, Gómez ran down Balbo’s brother, who was on a motorcycle with a friend, while Gómez and another person were in the midst of a street race. The cars flying by made Balbo’s brother crash (the reports I read didn’t clarify if Gómez’s car hit the motorcycle or not), and the brother and his friend both died. Because of this, Balbo and Gómez shared a grudge.
A friend who was with Balbo in the stands on Saturday recounted his version of what happened there to La Nación (translation via Google Translate):
For Lucas, 27, the sadness barely allows him to speak. He was with Emanuel when everything happened. “We always went to the Gasparini, but as we did not get tickets we went to the Willington.” [Note: the Gasparini and Willington stands are different sections of the stadium.] As we were heading up we saw Gomez. He screamed at us: ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ and insulted us. We just kept going up and we blended into the crowd. At the end of the first half, many of them [in the crowd] sat down and he saw us again. “Come on, come on,” he shouted. And then he came to us with others to fight. I grabbed him [Gómez], but the others went at Emanuel. Then they threw him, they pushed him,” he told LA NACION.
Flip the page to see the video of the horrific event.