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The slow and painful death of Argentine Football

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Argentina loves football. My home nation has produced some of the sport’s greatest players since its conception more than a hundred years ago. From some of the heroes of the first World Cup in Uruguay 84 years ago to Lio Messi, passing by no others than Di Stefano and Maradona.

The passion for the game can be seen in every match, be it the Superclásico or a small match from a lower division. People from all over the world come to watch matches because of the degree of excitement that can be found at an Argentine stadium on match day.

The reason why such passion and talent have been a given throughout our history is almost impossible to pinpoint. Today’s Argentina as a whole has very few aspects in common with that of the early 1900’s. A combination of natural talent, tradition, passion and structure make up some of the elements that makes a country that produces football stars. While we still possess the tradition and passion we’ve always had, and arguably talent is still out there waiting to be found in every potrero, the structure is broken. For real. Our football is broken, and there’s no easy way to fix it. Here’s what’s happening today.

1979, or the beginning of the end.

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Grondona with de-facto president/dictator Jorge Rafael Videla

Julio Grondona took charge of the Argentine Football Association in 1979. That’s more than 3 decades ago. I’d like to think about that for a moment. When Grondona took over, Argentina was being ruled my the worst military Dictatorship in its history, Brazil had "only" 3 World Cups in its trophy case, the Soviet Union was not only still a country but also a superpower. France and Spain had yet to win a world cup, while Nottingham Forest had just won the European Cup, and was preparing for a repeat. Can you think of any institutions, sport-related or otherwise, that have been ruled by the same person for over 35 uninterrupted years? I can’t.

Of course the first years of Grondona’s government were very successful. Argentina managed to reach two world cup finals under his reign, winning in 1986. He orchestrated a change in the form of national competition to include teams from all the country, thus federalizing football more than ever.

In the national team, he chose well. César Luis Menotti continued to coach the team after the 1978 home conquest. And after failing in 1982, he was succeeded with the other great coach in Argentina history, Carlos Bilardo, who reached the aforementioned finals and guided Maradona to his highest level defending the national crest. While the philosophical views of these two coaches will continue to divide football fans anywhere forever, everybody will agree that they are the greatest football minds our nation has had, and the almost opposite styles of approaching football are still present today worldwide in every major competition.

Clubs were still producing top talent and selling them to post profits every year, even when the prices paid back then where nothing compared to today’s. Of course some clubs had problems, but overall, they succeeded in international competitions. Players with star potential played at least for a couple of years in their clubs before leaving for Europe and the national team had a combination of players from abroad and those who played in our League. But all this was not meant to last for long.

The Godfather

Grondona held to power by controlling all clubs economically. He managed to do this by almost discretionally giving out the TV funds to the clubs he favored how he wanted. Referee tampering has always been a suspicion, though never proven. Alternating national government complicity with businesses with private companies, he managed to get a stranglehold on every peso that went in and out of Argentine Football. Grondona was reelected 8 times, and has never faced real opposition in any of those terms. He has been member of the executive committee of FIFA since 1988 and is now a Senior vice-president.

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As time went by, things started to go wrong. When this started to happen is not only hard to say but almost irrelevant at this point. Sometime, somehow, things started to fall apart. The form of competition was changed again. And again. And again. The top-tier clubs in the Argentine League have played in at least 7 different national competitions in the past 30 years. The system changes were never publicly discussed, nor were convincing reasons for the changes ever given. This has affected the competitiveness of the league and the teams, as long term planning became obsolete, and thus the quality of play deteriorated slowly.

Corruption charges of football top men have yet never been proven, but much damage has been done by too many presidents in too many different clubs. As of 2014, all clubs in the First Division owe millions. At least half of them lose money every year. Just 3 or 4 clubs have been consistently profitable over the past 5 years. Has money just run out?

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The AFA renegotiated the TV rights some years ago, increasing the nominal income more than ten-fold over 6 years, though that is a much longer story, involving a fallout with the old partners and a national intervention that makes today’s football transmissions free to watch for everyone, creating Fútbol para todos, or Football for all. It is a form of political propaganda for the country’s governing party at a not unimportant fiscal cost and which has come under heavy criticism from the political opposition and their supporting masses.

Clubs are in trouble

So why, if more money is coming in now than ever to the AFA, are clubs broken? Clubs have borrowed TV rights money from future years, leaving future presidents with less income. They fire coaches 2 matches after a contract is signed (no matter how ridiculous this sounds, this has happened more than once in more than one club). Some clubs have payed 4 different coaches’ salary at the same time, as the contracts for the previous 3 coaches had not yet expired when the current coach was working. They have begun to sell players at younger ages.

As in other leagues, businessmen began to buy percentages of football players. How can someone own 40% of a player is really inexplicable to me (do you own his right foot or just from his hip up?), but this has been a world trend, and Argentina has not been an exception. This has led to clubs obscurely selling young players’ transfers for easy money now, again not caring about the long term.

The economical and financial management of the biggest clubs in our country has been a consistent disaster, though club presidents have left the clubs with much higher personal net worth than when they arrived, with very few honest exceptions. Almost no long term investments were made, players were sold poorly and rushed into decisions by financial urgencies rather than careful planning. The clubs owe more than ever, even when income has never been higher. The only way for clubs to avoid bankruptcy, since being honest is not an option, is to sell players. Thus, every year teams are forced to sell their best players, often for little value. Any offer is good enough.

As a direct consequence of this, the quality of football has gone considerably down. Generally speaking, Argentine clubs are performing worse in internationals competitions than 10 or 20 years ago. The First Division has developed a tendency to destructive and defensive football, as a lack of talent makes offensive philosophies hard to implement.

The league is extremely irregular: any team can be beaten by any other team on any given match. Since 2007, we’ve had 10 different champions in the past 14 championships. Of these 10 clubs, three were relegated just a few years after winning the title. Just one team managed to win more than twice (Velez got three championships). In this span, three clubs have won their first championships in history.

River Plate and Independiente, two of the biggest clubs in our country were both relegated for the first time in their centennial history in the past 3 years, due mainly to economic disasters from more than one president in its history. More than a decade ago, Racing Club almost ceased to exist, saved only by privatization of the club, which almost led to another relegation before returning to its fans hands. San Lorenzo was minutes away from relegation just two years ago (they have since won the league in 2013).

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The Five grandes' debt. In Pesos(1 US Dollar = 10 Pesos)

This must not be confused with equality, but rather mediocrity. No club has been able to consistently develop a team and a style or play, save for a few exceptions. Managerial changes are a given, and not many players get a chance to develop and show some of their potential, as most promising youngsters leave way before reaching at least a hundred games with their clubs.

The goal average per match is 2.13, which is depressing when compared to La Liga’s 2.75, the Premier League’s 2.77, Bundesliga’s 3.13 or the closer Brasileirao’s 2.47. TV ratings are going downhill, as 18 of the First Division teams combined have lower ratings than the country’s top two, Boca and River. Attendance has also gone down, with the now year-old prohibition for fans to attend matches away from home, motivated by "security reasons".

La Barra

Another very special "tradition" of our clubs that's worth mentioning is the barras. Though they have been compared to England’s hooligans, the situation is unfortunately much more complicated. Even though they do emulate the level of violence of our fellow englishmen’s old fans, their motivation is economical, not football-related.

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The barras control important cash-plenty parts of the football operation of every club. They charge people to park near the stadiums (yes, they charge you to park in the streets, don’t try to question what happens if you don’t pay) and they sell tickets when officially there are no tickets left. They sell transportation to away matches for regular fans and offer protection for such matches. If this sound similar to a gangster movie from the 70s or 80s, then you’re getting the right picture.

The main problem with this is not that these gangs exist, but that both the club’s and the government’s officials not only don’t prosecute them, but mostly just do business with them. When the barra resells tickets, they give out part of what was earned to the club authorities, who gave them the tickets in the first place. There is an ongoing judicial procedure against River Plate’s official barra, investigating former club president Daniel Passarella’s involvement in the affair. Some of this gang’s members have been linked with national government officials.

It is impossible to conceive this criminal activities happening without the involvement of the AFA and Julio Grondona himself. The AFA has never fought violence in the stadiums and has even funded barras’s trips and tickets to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Some of the criminals that were later denied entry to South Africa travelled in the same plane where Messi, Agüero and Maradona were, just a few rows further ahead. What Grondona gains by these relationships is left to the reader’s imagination.

Can it be fixed?

So, how, after all these problems, can Argentina Football save itself? Does it have a cure? Will it go even deeper into depression before a major change can happen? Clubs are broke, players are leaving younger than ever, matches are boring, less people are going to the stadiums, corruption is rampant and violence remains high. Is there any hope?

Grondona has said that he will retire after 2015, marking his 36 year in charge. Ironically, his supposedly last contribution to Argentine premier football would be to make that many teams play in the top division, disregarding the traditional number of teams per league throughout the world, since there is no major league who has 36 teams in a same division. Who will succeed him is a mystery, and a change of name does not mean that things will change the way they operate now.

Nonetheless, a change this big has not happened in the AFA since 1979. National authorities are also changing in 2015. Whoever rises to the challenge in the AFA will arguably have the greatest opportunity for change in its history. Wether he takes this chance as a opportunity for improving and fixing football or just continuing with the old establishment will mark the future life -or death- of organized football in Argentina. What will it be? I’d bet on the latter.

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