With just five games to go and Boca Juniors running away with the Argentine championship, there's only really one story filling the sports pages. OK, maybe two, if you count the resurgence of River Plate bursting back to the top flight after suffering the first relegation in their history a few months ago.

No, the really big story is the imminent clash between the former head of the Boca Juniors barra brava, or hooligan element, Rafa Di Zeo, and the man who stood in for him while he was serving time in prison but now refuses to stand down, Mauro Martin.

Di Zeo last week attended a Boca home game accompanied by hundreds of supporters and filled one end of the ground. Martin and his entourage filled the other end. Both made threatening gestures to one another, all captured by the media.

Both men were banned from the Boca game this weekend away to Velez Sarsfield but most believe that this has merely delayed the inevitable clash for control of the Boca barra brava, La Doce. With elections for club president due at the beginning of December, the authorities are tip-toeing around the issue like it's a dispute over which kind of cup cakes to serve at the village fete.

The newspapers openly discuss the links the two thugs have with the candidates in the same way they reported on the national elections last month. Yet the politicians are scared and when politicians are scared of criminals like Di Zeo and Martin it ends in the kind of tragedy being lived every day of her life by people like Liliana Suarez de Garcia.

Her son Daniel was killed by barra brava at a game between Argentina and Uruguay in the Americas Cup back in 1995. I met her at the office of a pressure group called Salvemos al Futbol – Let's Save Football which campaigns against football violence and is made up largely by families of the victims.

She knows the names of her son's killers. She knows where they live and where they work. But although 16 years have passed since Daniel was stabbed to death outside the ground, the killers continue to move around freely, any possible legal proceedings bogged down in bureaucracy, ineptitude and a lack of political will.

Daniel Garcia was a Boca fan who traveled to Uruguay for an international game. He was traveling with Platense supporters, a Buenos Aires club now languishing in the third division. They'd been involved in some spat with followers of Tigre and Moron– a petty,convoluted dispute about perceived rivalries and insults that reminded me of something being garbled by Matt Lucas's Little Britain character, Vicky Pollard. That team called me a slag but I'm friends with a different team which used to be friends with my best mate's team, at least he was my best mate until I caught him snogging behind the bikeshed with Tracy. These are grown men, don't forget.

Those battling for control of the Boca barra brava treat their conflict like a game. Similar disputes are being played out at clubs all over Argentina. The end result is often innocent fans like Daniel Garcia bleeding to death outside the ground.

Liliana heard about her son's murder on the radio. She and her husband drove to Uruguay and arrived in time to see a botched investigation which was followed by prevarication and indifference from both the Uruguayan and the Argentine authorities.

"Our fight will continue because all we've got left is his memory and the wish for justice," she said. "The fight is not easy because it's very uneven. We're alone. We can't count on the support of the state. They've got their interests … I shall not rest a minute of my life until those responsible, whose names I know, are exposed, are repudiated by society. That's what I'm going to do … make sure that everyone knows who they are and what they did."

Liliana was dignified and determined. She's just one of many fighting to change a system that rarely brings those responsible for the violence in Argentine football to justice. Because there's too much money and too many vested interests entwined in the game for anyone to act.

Graciela Muniz, who works with Liliana, said: "What we're seeing now is general violence supported by the sporting authorities and the politicians in which the judges are looking the other way. And we say to the authorities, to the government, please take the necessary measures to prevent this happening. That they send a message condemning violence in football."

I wish them luck but I don't hold out much hope that we're going to see any radical changes any time soon.

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