BUENOS AIRES — They are seductive, those images, those snapshots of a place where the colors shine brighter, the noise rings louder.

It is all so vibrant, so alive — the sight of tens of thousands of fans mounting a pilgrimage just to see their team train; the sound of 70,000 in full voice, basking in glorious sunshine, hours before a game; the smell of the cordite; the smoke of the flares.

But what makes the scene so mesmerizing — at least to the weary eyes of a European, or a North American, resigned to the corporatization of sport — is the sense that this is something that we have lost, or that this is how it should be.

Those images are true, of course: Argentine soccer is vivid, pulsating with life in a way that, certainly in Europe, seems to have been condemned to the past. The stadiums shake with the noise, and the country with the fever of its obsession.