The relegation of Athens impacts all Argentine basketball

Atenas de Córdoba, the most winning team in the National League, the historical symbol of this competition, went downhill. Shocking, for what this club means for Argentine basketball. Also paradoxical. The same neighborhood club that dominated in the most outstanding sections of the league history, the one that emerged the winner over much more hierarchical opponents, could not sustain itself in this era of devalued sporting level and full of deficiencies. The same neighborhood club that for 25 years spread sports talent and economic strength, could not stand this stage of sporting and financial precariousness to which the tournament has been subjected for a decade.

It is difficult to accept, for locals and strangers, that Athens will not be in the elite of Creole basketball. Even when this ending could be sensed for a couple of years, in which the decline was evident and the answers (slaps of drowning) were wrong and therefore ineffective.

Atenas was always a neighborhood club, from the Bustos neighborhood, in the capital of Córdoba. Today, from within, they argue that it is difficult to sustain themselves in professional sports with a very low contribution from the membership fee, as the people of Cordoba have. Was the situation different when you won very often? No, and no title altered that status. By way of confession and with a lot of ironic humor, someone from Athens reflected, after beating Benetton Treviso from Italy and French Racing de Paris and having played the powerful Olympiakos from Greece on an equal footing in the McDonalds Tournament in Paris, in 1997, surrounded by the luxury and glamor generated by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls: “If these Europeans saw that they lost against a neighborhood club like ours, they would kill themselves…”.

By dint of titles, but above all well-played basketball, Athens became a reference and an example. It was the team from all of Córdoba. It was the pride and representative brand of an entire province. At the same time it was the rival to beat for those who aspired to the maximum. If you were looking for the title, you had to fight with Athens. Here and at a regional level too. Of course, those were the years in which he was nourished by several of the main local figures, as well as from Cordoba, such as Marcelo Milanesio, Pichi Campana, Fabricio Oberto, Germán Filloy, Diego Osella, Carlos Cerutti, Leonardo Gutiérrez, Luis Villar or Mario Milanesio, added respected and even feared foreigners such as Donald Jones, Thomas Jordan, Kennard Winchester, Jervis Cole, Steve Edwards or Wallace Bryant. All directed, mostly by Walter Garrone and Rubén Magnano.

What was the secret of that winning dynasty? Preserve those good native values ​​that ensured frequent celebrations. How were these figures financially supported? After overcoming a very deep crisis at the end of the eighties, with the management that President Felipe Lábaque, almost personally, carried out. But with a peculiarity: only what was needed was sought. When the number set by the budget was reached, in the Cordovan style, the board of directors would get together and toast with fernet. Another feature? They never valued the coach very much. In private, the leadership boasted of giving the coach the armed team, because they knew basketball… That’s why the relationship with Rubén Magnano was never good and the coach, who in the nineties endured some rudeness, on his return to the club, already loaded with glory and prestige, made him champion again in 2009 and shortly after he left them planted due to another meeting with the managers (read Lábaque).

It is that Felipe Lábaque has a great affection for Athens and a character and some not easy ways to live together. In 1992 he faced the same Association of Clubs, whose president was a man from his club, Rubén Fantolino, whom he had removed from office to get an economic advantage with television rights.

When the sporting level of the players began to decrease, he maintained his same personal style for the assembly of the team and the appointment of the coach. He thought he knew how to do it, like in the golden age, and this time he missed much more than he hit. The choice of the coach was once again a critical issue, not only because he never agreed with a coach who could develop a good project, but because he put together teams of dubious hierarchy and then criticized and fired them, when the results, as expected, they did not appear.

That generated him to put himself against none other than Marcelo Milanesio, the club’s greatest idol. When he fired his brother Mario as coach, Lábaque declared: “We gave him a Ferrari and he drove it like a Fiat 600”, for which Marcelo, hurt, made the cross for him. There is another of the peculiarities of the fall of the Cordovan giant and that is that almost all the great players who passed through the club today are away due to their differences with Lábaque. Nor did Campana or Oberto remain in a friendly relationship with him.

It has always been recognized that Athens had a prolific quarry. Even before the start of the National League, the leader Héctor Audano, today facing Lábaque, toured the country looking for kids for the training divisions. Thus, the people of Cordoba made use of some of great quality, such as Oberto himself, Leandro Palladino, Andrés Pelussi or the son of the president, Bruno Lábaque, while they scattered kids from their inferiors in many other teams. The curious thing is that this seedbed continues to give players to the minor teams of Argentina, but when they get older, Athens cannot keep them. And almost all of them leave angry with the leadership.

Thus, adding complications, it was expected that the debacle would increase. That is why this descent came with a notification letter. Many erroneous decisions, lower-ranking players for whom that historic shirt was too big, ditto coaches and a public with a black palate, which gradually became disenchanted. Is Felipe Lábaque solely responsible? No, because of what was highlighted at the beginning of this paragraph. But he is the main one, for handling himself with a marked individualism, for believing that he knows a page more than the book, for his bad manners and for not recognizing, even in the chaos that was this season, not a single mistake of his, if not placing the blame on others.

Going downhill hurts, but it is not the death of anyone, nor a dishonor. Absolutely. It’s just an argument that some use for stupid jokes. What yes, it will force those with driving responsibilities to a greater effort. Everyone must participate in this, those who put the club in this situation and want to add their contribution from now on. The glorious history of Atenas de Córdoba demands them.