For those of you studiously checking off your Argentina 2024 bingo cards, the head of state all but laughing at a fainting teenager and cracking off-colour jokes during a ceremony to mark the beginning of the school year was at this point probably an easy one to predict. Carlos Tevez donning a beret and taking to the Sierra Maestra after a Tuesday night draw in Parque Patricios, though, may have come as somewhat more of a surprise.
The former Boca Juniors and Argentina star declared open rebellion against football's reigning powers this week after seeing his Independiente side held against Barracas Central, in a match peppered with dubious refereeing decisions he interpreted as going against the Avellaneda club. Barracas, of course, is the personal fiefdom of none other than Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia, the president of the Argentine Football Association (AFA, and Tevez's stinging words after full-time put him on the warpath against Viamonte.
“Before the game I told the boys we'd be playing against 14 men. We got screwed. We knew it was coming and it happened,” he fired to reporters in a fiery rebuke of referee Pablo Dóvalo, who (along with the VAR officials) failed to sanction Alexis Domínguez's stamp on Iván Marcone with a red card and also overlooked an alleged handball from Carlos Arce in his own area.
“It's as if a thief lets you know that he's going to rob you and then he goes and robs you... I always ask that we don't get screwed, I don't want help, it seems to me that Argentine football is very much broken,” bemoaned Tevez.
As the scandal continued in the hours following the game, powerful voices lined up on both sides. Tevez received the full backing of the Independiente board for his outburst as well as ex-Rojo star Sergio Agüero and, more unexpectedly, cartoonist Cristian ‘Nik’ Dzwonik, who accused Tapia and his AFA allies of being the “ruling caste of Argentine football” – a comment that won the online approval of President Javier Milei after borrowing from his eclectic bucket of stock phrases.
The AFA itself, meanwhile, closed ranks against the Independiente coach, with treasurer Pablo Toviggino embarking on a bewildering rant that managed to accuse Tevez of slacking off on his coaching courses, getting away with horror tackles himself and making money off wind farms in the space of the 280 characters X/Twitter affords for non-paying users to let loose. The Argentine Referees' Association then upped the ante by promising to take the ex-Manchester City and Manchester United star to court for defamation and incitement to violence, while its head Federico Beligoy maintained that Dóvalo's refereeing performance had been perfectly acceptable.
One of the most curious things about this bloodthirsty spat is that to date Tevez and Tapia have always enjoyed a cordial, even warm relationship. Indeed, just under two years ago the AFA chief was said to have been a key mover in the negotiations that brought Carlitos off the golf course and back into football with Rosario Central. But, of course, the coach is also a close friend and associate of Mauricio Macri, whose attempts to get back into Boca in 2023 and pursue his cherished dream of private investment taking over the game proved rather less successful than his support in getting Milei into the country's 'hot seat.' In a society currently at loggerheads with itself on essentially every issue big and small, the temptation to read this conflict as another attempt to break the AFA and its unshakeable commitment to member-owned football is enticing.
Not that such a conspiracy should let Chiqui off the hook. The rise of his Barracas teams up the divisions, and more recently that of Deportivo Riestra, was marked by endless accusations of favourable treatment that left a bad taste in the mouths of countless observers, and were systematically swept under the carpet. Years of organisational incompetence, moreover, have left us with that Frankenstein's monster of a top flight and an even worse mess further down, further alienating fans; not to mention that one of the game's most joyful moments 15 months ago was marred by the AFA's literal inability to organise a proverbial piss-up at the Obelisco.
Mistakes happen, even with VAR, but if the AFA is now reaping the consequences of its rampant unaccountability and failures in decision-making it really cannot blame anyone else but itself for such a sorry state of affairs.
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