A 7 - 0 thrashing: the price of skulduggery

[Cuckoo Hill]

In the years since that 7 - 0, it's likely that quite a few local derbies around the world have produced the same scoreline, but few can have had as grubby a sub-plot as the one I'm about to recount.

60 kilometres downstream (or along the coast) from Buenos Aires is the city of La Plata (population 600,000). Two of the city's football clubs, Gimnasia y Esgrima ("Gymnastics and Fencing") and Estudiantes, play in the top division of the Argentinian league. Gimnasia are a trophy-free zone but Estudiantes have won the domestic league and the Copa Libertadores (the South American Champions League). In the 1960s they defeated European Cup holders Manchester United over two legs; Estudiantes' shirt has displayed the motto "Campeón del Mundo" ("World Champions") ever since.

In 2006, the Argentinian "Opening" Season championship, which ran from August to early December, ended up being a two-horse race between Estudiantes and Boca Juniors, the country's biggest football club. Gimnasia y Esgrima of La Plata were due to meet Boca Juniors. A victory for Gimnasia would boost their neighbours Estudiantes' title bid. Come half-time, Gimnasia were 1 - 0 up against Boca Juniors. During the interval, a pistol-toting Juan José Muñoz, Gimnasia's chairman, confronted the referee, who quite reasonably refused to officiate the second half. The remaining forty-five minutes would have to be played at a later date.

The delay gave Muñoz time to impress on his players the need to "throw" the "second half". When Muñoz met the squad at the training ground, he was accompanied by armed members of the club's barra brava. Every Argentinian club has a barra brava ("tough gang"): a group of heavies who do the chairman's dirty work in return for privileges that usually include free match tickets but sometimes extend to the club paying the top hoodlum's rent. The Gimnasia players were scared stiff: the hooligans know the players' addresses and would have got at any who "sang".

Eventually, Gimnasia and Boca took to the field to complete the fixture. In the first five minutes Gimnasia conceded two goals. Boca scored two more, without reply. The referee later said that he sensed something was wrong. The Gimnasia players were summoned to appear before a magistrate, but by then Muñoz had brought in a lawyer to coach them in the giving of identical, anodyne, statements.

Muñoz's ploy failed, though. In the face of this blatant attempt to prejudice their title chances, Estudiantes maintained a diplomatic silence, knowing that the La Plata derby was only days away. Estudiantes delivered their reply to Muñoz on the pitch: Estudiantes 7 - 0 Gimnasia. Estudiantes caught up with Boca on points on the last day of the season. This meant a play-off between Boca and Estudiantes, which the latter, inspired by a rejuvenated Juan Sebastián Verón, won 2 - 1. Despite Muñoz, Estudiantes had won the league.

Gimnasia then suffered a mass exodus of players and Muñoz, the chairman, went off on a year's sabbatical. Why had he gone to such drastic lengths to queer Estudiantes' pitch? The answer is probably politics. Muñoz was an ally of the then mayor of La Plata, whose party had infiltrated Gimnasia but been less successful at Estudiantes. This mayor's administration had repeatedly rejected Estudiantes' applications for permission to redevelop its stadium, which had become outdated and unsafe. At the same time, the city council gave the green light to the promoters (as yet unidentified but suspected of being chums of the mayor) of a new stadium called, bombastically, the Unified Stadium of La Plata, the profitability of which would be increased if both La Plata clubs played their home matches in it. The trouble was that Estudiantes were not keen to do so. In the end, arms were twisted at the highest level: Estudiantes' application to redvelop its stadium was approved, but in return the club would play in the Unified Stadium until work on its own ground was completed.

At the end of October, 2007, just before the end of Muñoz's sabbatical, Gimnasia held its AGM. Muñoz's allies on the board announced that the club was in profit, a claim that was immediately challenged by members of the club's audit commission. Matters then got heated: club members in attendance showed increasing dissatisfaction with the evasive answers offered by the stage and accusations began to fly. The beleaguered official faction of the board then got the barra brava (which had no right to attend) to settle matters with fists. In the uproar, veteran club member Óscar Montesino, a critic of the administration, was repeatedly insulted and suffered a heart attack. He died in hospital. The AGM was abandoned without approval of the accounts.

That, however, was Muñoz's swansong. In November, 2007, voters decisively defeated his ally the mayor's bid to extend his 16-year term at the helm of the council (despite a transparent attempt to smear the candidate who eventually won, who the press in the run-up to the election claimed was allied to a handful of members of Estudiantes' barra brava arrested on suspicion of murder of three police officers guarding a telecommunications facility. The suspects were released after the election result was announced.) A few weeks later, one of Muñoz's opponents was voted new chairman of Gimnasia. A repeat of the sort of skulduggery that preceded the 7 - 0 defeat now looks a lot less likely.

[SoulBamRab]

Wow, that's quite a tale and we thought the old firm were corrupt.

[Cuckoo Hill]

I'm glad you liked it. At one point in the "Real Football Factories" episode about Argentina, narrator and West Ham ****** Danny Dyer pulls a face as he briefly mentions the fact that the Gimnasia chairman once instructed his players to lose a match. That was the match against Boca Juniors that I described above.

[SoulBamRab]

Originally Posted by Cuckoo Hill
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I'm glad you liked it. At one point in the "Real Football Factories" episode about Argentina, narrator and West Ham ****** Danny Dyer pulls a face as he briefly mentions the fact that the Gimnasia chairman once instructed his players to lose a match. That was the match against Boca Juniors that I described above.

Does that little stumblebum not always look like he's chewing a wasp?

[SG7nil]

Originally Posted by BionicRab
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Wow, that's quite a tale and we thought the old firm were corrupt.

Despite the Argentinian and Uruguyan leagues having a long history of corruption and of the bigger teams effectively "buying" the league, their top teams have still not won their championships as often as either Celtic or Rangers in Scotland (which is supposedly an honest and straight competition)...

Strange huh!
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[Cuckoo Hill]

Yes, it does seem strange. The Argentinian clubs involved in the Copa Libertadores (the South American Champions League), which is is contested in the Spring, tend to save their best players for that competition. The reserves that they send out in the concurrent "Closing" domestic championship are often mediocre. It is rare for a club involved in the Libertadores to win the domestic league, and this gives a chance to the smaller fish. I reckon this may change before long, at least as far as Boca Juniors are concerned. Their squad, already the best, is getting better, and the money they stand to earn from the World Club Championships currently under way in Japan will give them even more spending power. Before long they could become like Manchester United - able simultaneously to put in a serious challenge on the international and the domestic front. Given that forty percent of Argentinian football fans follow them, it is strange that they are not already in such a position. I don't know much about Uruguayan football, but I do know that Peñarol have been in turmoil since they were hit with a massive points deduction for a fatal fight that took place half a mile from their ground - how on earth can a football club be held responsible for what happens half a mile from the ground?
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[Keepitgreen]

Cracking post cheers for that
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South America does seem the maddest place for fitbaw on earth... Would love to go to a Boca-River Plate game...
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[HibeeAnderson]

Great post, cheers for that. Yeh a Boca-River Plate game would be unbelieveable.

So many countries have these kinds of polictical influences within football clubs and intimidation from psycho fan groups to boot. I wonder what goes on at Kaunas with Mr romanov involved.

[Cuckoo Hill]

Well .... Boca vs River is a bit "Old Firm", and we're not keen on that round here, are we?
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From what I've seen on television, the "maddest" and most dangerous derby in Argentina is Newell's Old Boys vs Rosario Central.