The president of Argentina Mauricio Macri has blasted the state of football in the country. Macri said that the game was in a state of “terminal crisis,” adding that he would not offer any state assistance to the game anymore.
The 1978 and 1986 World Cup winners have made it rough with the country for a while and football that everyone turned to did not do the required good. Macri, who was voted in 2015, was a former president of Boca Juniors but now opines that the sport could not afford to pay for the market rate free to air broadcasting of the domestic football league. Clubs who usually have hooliganism incidences agreed to use their funds to settle them and pay off their debts while the government continued payment for nationwide broadcasting.
Since clubs remained drowned in debt and the Argentinean AFA was in trouble Macri has decided to back out of the deal setup by former president of the AFA Julio Grondona. Grondona – who was also FIFA vice president – died in 2014 and with the dream of the arrangement not working Macri decided to pull the plug.
Despite being one of the top football nations in the world the country has suffered administratively and it seems the centre is falling apart. The domestic league has remained the selling point of the game as it allows players to be noticed and sold. The current deal is set to expire in 2019 but Macri has said he would not send any more money into it.
Clubs tried getting international agencies to market the league but none have yielded fruits. There could be a football strike but Macri has said that he would not bow to such pressure. With the debt the country is owning AFA being $22 million, players have not been paid salaries worth over $30 million, according to the Players’ union.
- Log in to post comments