Argentine fans emerge as an awsome force in the Davis Cup (Feature)

By Sebastian Fest Sep 22, 2008, 16:53 GMT

Madrid - Feliciano Lopez is afraid of them, Emilio Sanchez respects them and Rafael Nadal is a bit jealous: Argentine fans have emerged as an awe-inspiring force ahead of the Davis Cup final pitting host Argentina against Spain in November.

Quick-witted, creative and often hurtful in their singing, Argentine fans know a great deal about tennis, but in a country where football is the great national passion it is the culture of football stadiums that pervades any sporting event.

Nadal and his Spain team may well find the stadium full an hour- and-a-half before the game, with thousands of barechested fans singing at the top of their voices while they swing their T-shirts over their heads. And Argentine football legend Diego Maradona is likely to be the head cheerleader.

The drum-backed singing will be unrelenting, while Argentine fans have a particular sensitivity to know exactly when they are most needed.

It happened on Sunday, in the game that David Nalbandian lost against the Russian Nikolai Davydenko, when the spectators pushed the exhausted Argentine to the tie-break of the third set.

There will be no bottles of urine poured from the higher stands - something that is relatively common in football stadiums - but if the final does take place indoors and with the stands right by the court at the Orfeo stadium in the city of Cordoba, the weekend is likely to become a particular version of hell for non-Argentines.

And it is bound to be a great pleasure for the host players, as Nadal knows full well: he has confessed that he would some time like to feel like an Argentine sportsman.

'The atmosphere that there is at the Davis Cup in Argentina is hard to match anywhere else. I would like to be able to feel that some day, although it is obviously impossible,' Nadal told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in February.

Nine months later, the world number one can get close to that feeling, with the small detail that the spectators will be shouting against him.

Spain definitively beat the United States Sunday in the semifinals, but the possibility of playing the final against Argentina seemed likely throughout last week. In such a setting, the enthusiasm of Argentine fans was widely discussed.

'Playing in Argentina can be hard, very hard,' Lopez told dpa. 'The fans there are very strong.'

Sanchez, who knows the Argentine fans very well, smiled late Sunday when it was confirmed that Argentina would seek its first-ever Davis Cup title November 21-23 against Spain.

'It is going to be very interesting. The Argentine spectators can be a factor if the matches are even,' Spain's Davis Cup captain told dpa.

A day earlier, Sanchez graphically dismissed Andy Roddick's complaints about the behaviour of fans in Madrid.

'He cannot complain about the fans. Let him go to Argentina to find out what it's like to have hostile fans,' he noted.

In November, Spain will have to deal precisely with those spectators if they want to win their third Davis Cup trophy since 2000.