Argentine football faces libel violence

Last Saturday, the many supporters of the Argentinian club River Plate converged on the Monumental stadium, stronghold of their club for the final return counting for Copa Libertadores, a small gang of offenders attacking the bus that transported the team of the Boca Junior Club. As a result, players received shots in the face, causing the hospitalization of some elements of the Xeineze formation. The leaders of Conmebol preferred to postpone the meeting.

Our French media that deal with sports news and football have denounced his violence putting everything on the count of the unhealthy passion that the Argentines have for football. A habit when it comes to South American football. We find the same dialectic made of ineptitude, ignorance and talk that borders on the red line.

Football become a national treasure

To understand and decipher the hyper violence that gangrenes Argentine football, we must go back to the source. At the creation of football in this country.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, under the impulse of many immigrant communities from Europe, sports associations appear and spread across the country. The clubs all bear the name of Club Atletico. These sports associations are run and owned by supporters. Socios. This system that regulates the clubs will endure permanently. It is even strengthened under Peronism. Argentine football is enjoying its golden age. The clubs are endowed with sports city and stadium adapted to a public, always more numerous. To their misfortune, the Argentineans created with their football and their club, a cultural giant who finds only English football and its base of origin to rival it.

Liberal wind

In the mid-sixties, Argentine football was confronted with the liberal question. The generals who took power – installed by Washington – have orders to "spurn" Argentine society and its football with. This is the beginning of a slow deconstruction. Although the country sails under the thumb of military and repressive regimes, violence is gradually settling in the stadiums.

We have seen it above. Clubs are sports associations that belong to their supporters. The liberal power can not tolerate this impediment that prevents private funds of any kind from getting their hands on football. Some players and not least leave the country for Spain and France. Liberals want export-based football. In a situation of incapacity to dismiss the socios of their right for the benefit of doubtful investors, the power decides to resort to the violence to put the tribunes in step.

It's a simple, effective process that works every time. Thugs create small groups and base themselves in the turns held by the "barra". Little by little, they install terror. Intimidation, drug trafficking, racketeering, all under the benevolent eye of power and big capital waiting for his time. In the face of such devastation, clubs – the socios – eventually laid down their arms. Some clubs being looted and bankrupt by corrupt leaders covered by power. Football is dark in the image of Argentine society in the abyss.

Boca Junior, the best example

The very popular Boca Junior was the first targeted by the Liberals. The club undermined by debts and violence ends up changing status. A certain Mauricio Macri, businessman puts his hand on the venerable sports institution. Resistance is organized within the supporters, but the fight is uneven. Through intimidation and threats, the club changes skin. The popular Boca mute. The club becomes a tourist attraction for people in need of sensation. Subscriptions at gold prices are issued to the camp that accepts this change and the barra held by people that is not good to cross.

The River Club has weathered the Liberal drift better. A few years ago, a group of thugs who wanted to get their hands on the platform was eventually driven out of the stadium by the fans. You would have understood it. Not by the leaders!

The Argentinian football clubs that by the action of their supporters are trying to resist the liberal power are grappling with this hyper violence, institutionalized by various governments of liberal tendency …… ..and today, Macri is in power.

Predictable

What happened on the sidelines of the encounter between River Plate and Boca Junior was predictable. Macri had announced the color declaring that this contest between the two rival clubs was "An opportunity to demonstrate the maturity of our country". One way, once again, to show how much the clubs run by people elected by the supporters only generate violence and disorder. A nice shot mounted, but that works again and again …

You can be certain. The thugs arrested following the attack on the bus of the players of Boca Junior will be sentenced to small penalties or relaxed.

Recently, River Plate's president-elect Rodolfo D'Onofrio has put the possibility of building a new stadium back in place of the mythical Monumental. Socios have been hostile to this eventuality. The River Plate club is under pressure from all sides.

Faced with this new attack of a system that does not disarm, the vast majority of supporters of River Plate will have to show a strong determination, if they want to see their club remain somehow independent. Far from the possession of private groups, linked to mafias of all kinds …