MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil mocks Argentina after “super-match” was cancelled because of power failure

Governor Capitanich publicly apologized for the embarrassment

Chaco Governor Jorge Capitanich publicly regretted and apologized on Thursday for the major embarrassment caused by the suspension of an Argentina-Brazil friendly match scheduled for Wednesday night when the stadium floodlights failed.

The Brazilian press mocked Argentine organizers and said that the “Super duel match of the Americas” turned into the “Super embarrassment of the Americas”.

The teams, picked only from domestic leagues, were due to meet for the second time in two weeks after Brazil won 2-1 in the first match of the “Superclasico of the Americas” doubleheader in Goiania on September 19.

The players took the field and lined up for the anthems but Chilean referee Enrique Osses delayed kick-off until full lighting could be resorted after a generator failed. The teams spent more than half an hour on the pitch warming up and chatting among themselves until they were led off again.

With no back-up generator available in the vicinity, Osses abandoned the match an hour after the scheduled kick-off, embarrassing the Argentine Football Association, who had organised the match in Resistencia, capital of Chaco.

AFA sources said no new date was immediately available for the match since the international calendar was packed until the end of the year.

Governor Capitanich said the fans would receive refunds and announced an administrative investigation into the whole incident.

Capitanich made the announcements next to Omar Judis, head of the province’s power company who blamed the failure to poor material in cables and the control board.

“All the tests during the previous week could not anticipate what happened”, said Judis.

Meanwhile Brazil had its own less publicized embarrassment when the country’s power corporation Electrobras electricity provision failed in five states and for several minutes, reaching distant cities as far as Rio do Janeiro and Curitiba.

According to the official report from the Brazilian regulator a peak of consumption ‘misbalanced’ the normal power supply from the huge Itaipu hydroelectric dam, causing problems at a distribution centre in Foz de Iguaçu next to the Argentine and Paraguayan borders.

The blackout hit the states of Parana, Minas Gerais, Rio do Janeiro, Acre and Rondonia, mainly in metropolitan areas. Power was restored half an hour later.

Unrelated to the incident in north Argentina that forced the suspension of the super match, Brazil has a vulnerable power grid and major blackouts such as that occurred Wednesday night are not uncommon.