How fans are caught in the middle of a mess

The current state of things around our national team poses a dilemma and have many fans, like myself, suffering as the real and only innocent victims of a history of bad decisions, mostly driven by selfish personal interests that have a complete and pretty evident disregard of the well-being of Argentine football as a whole and the national team in particular.

Ever since Julio Humberto GRONDONA took over as the Argentine Football Association (AFA) in 1979, our football has suffered from his unscrupulous operations and his mafia-like policies. A sort of 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' kind of system that he established between him and his accomplishes, the presidents of the Argentine clubs that gave him more power, in order to take their cuts and become powerful men at the same time.

I vote for you in every presidential election at the AFA from here to eternity and you help my team get promoted or avoid relegation or even have every controversial decision in every important match go my way.

That is the kind of power Julio GRONDONA has build up during the last three decades. He shook hands with the de facto military presidents that were responsible for the disappearing of 30,000 Argentines. He then shook hands with the democratic Presidents elected after them and they come and go, but GRONDONA seems to be perpetually in that powerful position of his.

I think the only good decision that GRONDONA took in his entire tenure as the big chief of Argentine football was to appoint José PEKERMAN as Youth Coach, when the man had no pedigree or fame and he was competing for that job with people with a notably higher profile than him.

One good decision in 30 years gives him a worse ratio than TEVEZ's goal-scoring record in this World Cup Qualifiers.

Along the way...GRONDONA (now 77-years old) is to be blamed for the following cancers in our beautiful game:

- The Barrabrava culture: By the time hooligans were being controlled in most countries around the world, the Argentine barrabravas began their golden era and GRONDONA was never able to come up with a solution. Why? Because many of the clubs' presidents use the barrabravas as a tool to pressure the regular fans to vote for them. They are pretty much a mob that will sign for the best bidder and will paint flags and banners with the name of the candidate that gives them free plane tickets to follow the team abroad or in the provinces or extra match tickets for them to re-sell and make a small fortune out of it.

In many notable cases like River Plate, for example, the barrabrava has taken such an uncontrollable power that they even took a cut in Juan Pablo CARRIZO's transfer to Italy. Not that CARRIZO is guilty of it, it was a very filthy business going on between the club directors (those shameless criminals that are killing one of Argentina's most prestigious clubs) and the barrabrava (another kind of criminals).

The fact that some players (like at Independiente) had meetings with the bosses of their barrabrava to arrange how the players will pay for the firm to travel to the World Cup in South Africa, without the AFA intervening to put an end to such aberration. Violence and the violent firms are like a cancer that has spread all over in Argentine football and sometimes it is almost impossible to draw the line as to whether the violence really comes from a small and organised group of 'fans' or whether it comes from those wearing suits and ties and carrying big briefcases full of dirty money while they make decisions that keep ruining our game.

A fact to help me put this into perspective: Since GRONDONA took over as President of the AFA, there have been 141 football-related deaths in Argentina. An average of 4,7 per year.

- The crazy league in Argentina that nobody understand (and hence don't care about):
In 1981 GRONDONA decided that it wasn't enough with the refereeing decisions going the way of River Plate and Boca Juniors, so he introduced the 'promedios' (point average system) that prevented big clubs to get relegated if they had a bad season and finished bottom or near the bottom of the standings. With his new system, if River Plate or Boca Juniors had a bad campaign, they were surely going to be able to get enough points the following season to enrich their 'promedio' and get out of jail. As early as in 1983, the system proved efficient for River Plate as they escaped relegation even when they finished in the bottom two, so they got to stay up.

GRONDONA and his business were smiling. Fair play and justice are still crying.

Not happy with those changes, in 1989/1990, GRONDONA decided that he was going to play two tournaments in one season. The Apertura and the Clausura. The reason behind it? Shorter tournaments will give many teams a shot at the title and will prove to be more exciting. To some extent, he was right, but it was hardly fair when a team won the Apertura playing most derby matches at home and avoiding travels to the provinces. Qualification to the Continental cup competitions was never clear and proper fans in Argentina have to have a major in maths to understand whether they are in good or bad positions when it comes to qualifying for the Copa Libertadores or Copa Sudamericana.

Did I mention that Boca Juniors and River Plate get annual invitations to the Copa Sudamericana and that they don't qualify on virtue of points gathered? Yes. You are right. It's non-sense.

- Deal with the TV: Since 1985, GRONDONA signed a contract with a company called Torneos y Competencias (they have the TV channel most of you know: TyC Sports) to give them the exclusive broadcasting rights for Argentine football. Ever since then, the TV company exercised a monopoly that prevented any other channel in the country to show the goals until Sunday at midnight (after they aired the famous show: Fútbol de Primera, which shows highlights of the weekend's games -similar to Match of the Day in England-).

Until last month, it worked for GRONDONA. He even renewed that contract with TyC two years ago. All of a sudden, the government -locked in a fierce battle with Grupo Clarín -owner of TyC- approached GRONDONA, offered him twice as much for the same broadcasting rights and that was it. GRONDONA tore up the contract with TyC and he began with his rants of saying how inconvenient the TyC contract was for Argentine football and how disadvantaged the AFA was under those terms.

- Lack of financial control of the clubs: Football clubs are always bailed out in Argentina. They mismanage. They don't go by the rules. They steal and they never pay taxes or honour their contracts, but still, there's always a way out for them.

Racing Club is a major example. Part of the Big5 in Argentina, the club was the living proof of what I said in the previous paragraph. Pressured by the fact that they couldn't win the league in 35 years, all sorts of desperate measures were taken and the result was a mounting debt of 40 or 70 million USD until the club had to file for bankruptcy.

The government then acted to make sure the club was kept alive and a private company was welcomed to rescue the club with a promise that the debt would be pay in 10 years. A decade later, that company itself went bankrupt and the corruption seen in their everyday affairs was even bigger than before.

GRONDONA first promoted and supported the introduction of private companies in Argentine clubs and when he saw it was clearly not working, he changed his mind, but the damage was done.

The AFA promise of punishing clubs with transfer embargoes or points deduction for a misuse of money or stadium closure for violence never actually happened and everybody is still at it as long as GRONDONA keeps getting his votes and his pocket money.

And us, the fans, are in the middle of this mess.

The appointment of Diego MARADONA was nothing else than a continuity of this decadent government that GRONDONA is running with no apparent and serious opposition.

How can you form an opposition if the man has everything covered and his henchmen do the dirty job for him?

There is no room for democracy under this totalitarian old dinosaur that keeps getting his own way time after time.

On one hand he appoints MARADONA and gives him total control. On the other...he doesn't let Diego pick his coaching staff because he doesn't like Oscar RUGGERI.

GRONDONA clearly picked MARADONA with the conviction that Argentina were going to qualify to South Africa without a problem and only because having Diego as the boss would mean heavy dollars coming his way (with TV money, friendly matches offers, juicy sponsorship deals, etc).

Now there is a feeling in the air that changes could come if Argentina miss out of the next World Cup and that a new order should be imposed in Argentine football if that happens.

Many of us, fans, who just want our national team to perform the way we know it can perform, don't know what to think.

If I was given a contract to sign in which I'm guaranteed that if Argentina crashes out and miss the World Cup in South Africa next year GRONDONA will be removed from his position (and none of his henchmen will get appointed to replace him), then I'll be really sorry that the price we're paying is rather steep, but I'll happily sign it in the search of a greater good.

Since there are no guarantees of that happening and my love for my national football team is still very strong, I've got no option but to wish Argentina well and celebrate the goals that could keep perpetuating GRONDONA in charge (for much as it hurts me to death).

A horrible situation to be in, but this story was something I wanted to share with you for a long time now. I hope I have helped you to understand what's beneath the surface in Argentine football.

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