“Why am I going to invest in a 12-year-old boy, if I will only be in the club for three or four years?” Claudio Borghi, Argentinos Juniors idol, revealed that the comment in quotation marks was said to him by a Chilean soccer businessman when the former player asked him if he could help a child who couldn’t continue playing soccer because he didn’t even have enough to eat. “From the arrival of the public limited companies, the owners invested very little in the lower divisions,” explains the former coach of the Chilean national team, one of the reasons to explain the crisis that that country is experiencing.
On the other side of the Cordillera, Argentina is going through a defining period: on November 19, the people will choose whether to follow Peronism or if the national government will remain in the hands of the extreme right. Football, the undisputed pillar of our idiosyncrasy, will not be immune to the result of the ballot.
Massa’s movements
In the middle of the campaign, the two candidates for the second round made room in their agenda to refer to the plans they have for Argentine soccer. Sergio Massa, former director of Tigre, said that in his eventual government he will insist on “the return of the visitors”, which would imply a return to a postcard as iconic as it is old: two fans watching the same game on the same field.
In Primera, this scenario has been obsolete since 2013, while in Ascenso, the period is even longer. The last match dates back to 2007, when the Police murdered Daniel Cejas, who was celebrating the promotion of, precisely, Tigre, who was playing in the Second Division, outside the Nueva Chicago field.
The other, more specific measure will not even have to wait until December 10, but will govern in a matter of hours. This is the famous decree 1212/03 that guarantees clubs a special regime of tax exemptions. It was in force twenty years ago and was modified by a certain Mauricio Macri, who tried to take resources from the clubs to improve fiscal accounts. The regulations, according to what some baseball executives told Página|12, imply relief for non-profit societies, in terms of the contribution they make to the salaries of players, medical staff and auxiliary staff of the schools, whether first division, like any other AFA category.
Soccer SA
Milei, former Chacarita Juniors goalkeeper, is also no stranger to his interests in the world of football. For several days now, the far-right deputy has been trying to put his foot in Boca, a club of which he said he “is no longer a fan”, with the aim of returning flowers – or favors? – to Mauricio Macri. “I’ll only come back if he comes,” he said, in what he tried to be a stick to Juan Román Riquelme.
The Macri-Milei bond in Boca can materialize in the figure of Edgardo Alifraco. As this newspaper reported, Alifraco inherited the “Super Boca” group from Alberto Salvestrini in 2019, right-hand man of the first presidencies in Macri’s club. He held several positions, including the fan subcommittee, and was prosecuted for illicit association with the Rafael Di Zeo bar. Milei did not care about this link with such a particular type of “caste” and gave him a privileged place on the La Libertad Avanza ballot so that as of December 10, the director would be a legislator of the City.
But Milei’s greatest wish is for football to adapt to its only God: the market. In his logic it is incomprehensible that there are non-profit associations. And although the proposal is below the waterline, the signs have already begun. On September 18, when at his events he was emboldened by winning in the first round, Milei retweeted a note from Guillermo Tofoni, a businessman always attentive to maximizing his profits from soccer. In the opinion column in El Cronista, Tofoni (in charge of organizing the National Team’s friendlies for some years) said that the arrival of La Libertad Avanza “will be a unique opportunity to create a law for the management of Clubs with national investments and international, a pending issue in Argentine soccer”.
In the same note, Tofoni cited the cases of Blanquiceleste SA and the management of Mandiyú, commenting that they were “half measures” and that there should be economic and legal guarantees. Nothing said that those efforts ended up bankrupt and those two clubs, with the worst crises in their history.
A couple of days before the national election, the far-right bloc redoubled its bet. Interviewed by Julián Alvez for the same economic portal, the now elected representative for the province of Buenos Aires Juliana Santillana publicized a bill to make the arrival of Sports Joint Stock Companies (SAD) possible. “The soccer industry is no stranger to Argentina’s general backwardness scheme, in terms of private, national and international investment,” she said. And she even used Milei’s workhorse for a possible privatization of the clubs. “Dollarization will reconfigure investment and growth schemes: we must open and let in,” she concluded.
The same representative recognizes Tofoni as one of her advisors for the Lower House. And as journalist Alejandro Wall revealed, the businessman is not satisfied with that and appears at different meetings with the following nickname. “I am Milei’s man in football.”
Behind a Milei, there is a Macri
– Mauricio, we lost.
It was 1999, in the full agony of Menemism, and Macri was trying to reap the harvest of Carlos Bianchi’s unbeatable Boca. In those years, whoever was the xeneize president pressured and pressured for the AFA to include in its Executive Committee meetings his wish: that corporations enter. Julio Grondona, an old fox, delayed the request until he guaranteed that no other leader would accept Macri’s initiative. The election came out 19 to 1, and whoever was the lord and lord of Argentine soccer made the above comment.
Son of a Calabrian, Macri did not hesitate to carry out his vendetta. Already with the irons of the national State, the founder of the PRO returned to the charge to implement the SAD. To do this, he empowered Fernando Marín, former manager of Racing and who at that time was scrapping Fútbol Para Todos. The businessman turned public official tried to put his boss’s desire for privatization on the agenda. “SA are spare wheels that football has,” he commented at that time.
The clubs resisted the attack. This is how Augusto Costa, former director of Vélez at that time and now a candidate again in the Liniers club elections, remembers this newspaper. “The pressure from the Government that the teams suffered was tremendous and constant, for years,” he says, adding that “the stop was achieved because the majority of the leaders maintained a conviction: the clubs belong to the members.”
The now Buenos Aires Minister of Production clarifies that the privatization desire hovers over the PRO and La Libertad Avanza and called on the leaders to continue defending the social role of the clubs, which goes far beyond Sunday’s game. For example, the integration and support of children in vulnerable situations, two characteristics that do not seek monetary gain.
Penalties
In less than three weeks, Argentina will define its future in the runoff between Massa and Milei. Football also waits expectantly for the penalty shootout.
2023-11-07 18:07:52
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