Trip to the intimacy of the city where everything goes through the ball

Bell Ville, in Córdoba, is the National Capital of the Ball. The reasons and a claim of the manufacturers who ask for support to "consume" more Argentine balls.

Pablo Calvo

02/13/2020 - 6:41

• Clarín.com
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The center forward finished at dawn. Rubén Gutiérrez already had the stiff fingers of sewing the 20 hexagonal and 12 pentagonal segments , but he fulfilled the task in time and left the ball ready with that same afternoon he was going to make a goal .

The attacker knows that Argentines buy four million balls a year , but not even ten percent are made here , but come from China or Pakistan, produced in series, with cheap materials and low resistance. Or they are fancy balls produced by sports brands, which invade the leagues with millionaire agreements and leave out the smaller competitors. The ball that Rubén makes, however, has the dedication of the handmade component.

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Trip to Bell Ville, National Capital of the Soccer Ball

The "9" of the Barrio Argentino team is one of the most talented ball sellers in Cordoba . “I am also a mason, but I am unemployed. I survive sewing balls, which was my first job when the money was worth it. Today I get paid 100 pesos per unit . I started at age 13 and the truth is that I like to sew the fulbo. Now I am 34 years old so I have been stitching for five World Cups ”, says Rubén, who says“ fulbo ”to the ball because he feels they are synonyms .

Rubén Gutiérrez, "the Messi of the needle". He is a ball sewer and forward (Photos of Juano Tesone / special envoy to Bell Ville).

Those who have seen him play say he is a lethal scorer , short as Coco Basile liked and fast in the area as Kun Agüero. No one can say that “I descend it” , an expression that was used in the time of René Pontoni to describe those who treated the ball as the gods. Rubén does the opposite.

Those who have seen it sew consider it "the Messi of the needle" , as the manufacturer Fernando Fuglini of the Dalemás company calls it , which receives orders on a phone that looks like the Superagente 86 series: the device is shaped like a ball. And walk.

Life is round in Bell Ville , a city that is at the epicenter of the soccer constellation, 200 kilometers from Paulo Dybala's Cordoba, 200 from Roberto Fontanarrosa's Rosary, and 500 from Buenos Aires.

Center of the universe, in the 25 de Mayo square of Bell Ville. (Juano Tesone)

The city was declared National Capital of the Soccer Ball in May 2017 by Congress. The reason? Here, in 1931, Superball was invented, a ball without a temptation, that is to say without that band of hard cowhide that jutted out of the ball and hurt the forehead of the headers and the hands of the archers , who didn't wear gloves until Amadeo Carrizo decided to put them on, in the 50s.

Touch. Leather strip that hurt, until, in 1931, Antonio Tossolini, Romano Polo and Juan Valbonesi created a suture that cannot be seen.

The invisible seam of the ball and the valve to inflate it by puncture were Argentine inventions that were projected to the world and the factories were concentrated in Bell Ville in the 1960s because here they were the best growers of a flourishing Argentine industry.

"Not like now that we have a dozen signatures left , because the import of balls from Southeast Asia, cheaper but of much lower quality, is slowly drowning us," warn the United Manufacturers , a group of small and medium entrepreneurs who They ask the Government for help to revitalize the production of national balls .

As in the halftime of a game that they are losing, they want incentives to be able to “work more and give work”, for example “an official plan for the country's schools and social clubs to receive Argentine balls , ” a decision that “should accompany the provincial administrations when they prepare their budgets for the purchase of sports equipment ”.

The United Manufacturers also warn that the containers that flood the local market with Chinese balls " are also causing the job of the bearer to be lost , which historically was transmitted from generation to generation." According to Fuglini, there are more than 5,000 people who could earn a living if the national ball industry is reactivated.

Bell Ville has 35,000 inhabitants. All together would not fill the Bombonera, or the Monumental, or the Avellaneda Cylinder, or the Mario Alberto Kempes Stadium, in Cordoba, which has a capacity for 48,800 spectators.

Football Ball Monument. On Route 9 and San Gerónimo, next to the restaurant '78. (Juano Tesone).

Kempes was born in Bell Ville, came to play for a sting of salami and mortadella, scored goals with national balls for the Athletic Club and Bell Library and met the golden age of the industry, when 100 stalls sold their production on the side of the Road 9 . Today, on those same benches, only three seats are visible , but the photo of El Matador still shines in the workshops as a kind of amulet .

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Even the autograph of the scorer of the '78 World Cup is printed on special leather balls, as a gift, like the one displayed in the football showcase of the Vatican Museum, next to Michelangelo's frescoes and in honor of Pope Francis, a fan of San Lorenzo , a club that founded a priest around a soccer ball.

Made in Bell Ville

The balls are born from a rectangle. It is true that Bell Ville is a curious and original city, because it has its own Obelisk, two monuments to the ball and a team called River that wears the Boca shirt , because 97 years ago its partners braided in full foundation and resolved the Shouts the name and colors of the club, in a surreal way. But in the whole world it is the same: from a polyurethane sheet , already with the commercial drawing printed by pressure and heat on one of its faces, nine balls are taken out .

How? First, this material is glued to a "nonwoven fabric support", the future inner layer of the ball. That material is unbreakable with the hands and makes the ball resist until the kicks of Héctor Horacio Scotta . “Quality is inside,” says Ernesto Cámara, a Dalemás operator who demonstrates for Viva magazine.

Ernest Chamber. The most experienced worker in arranging and making balls in the country. (Juano Tesone).

Through the hands of Don Cámara, who has been working on this since he was 11 years old, hundreds of thousands of balls passed , but he never paid attention to football: “I did not give him a ball, haha, because I am crazy about the pedal, I went cycling as my siblings".

Follow the production. Already glued the two sheets with contact cement, they pass talcum powder, because the latex never finishes drying, revives with heat and you have to separate those future interior walls of the ball from the rubber chamber, because if not, it they would merge and burst at the abuse of a defender or the treacherous edge of a pot.

Attentive geometry teachers: 180 hexagons and 108 pentagons will come out of the rectangle, which will serve to assemble nine spheres. It is possible through a matrix system, which carries out a process similar to that used by the footwear industry to make shoes.

"The quality is inside," says Ernesto Cámara, ball expert.

“The matrix has an edge that operates on the planchuela and achieves the die cutting. In addition, with some spikes, it marks the gaps where the seamstress has to give stitches, ”explains Germán Fuglini, Fernando's brother and son of Roberto Fuglini, who pioneered the item. Bell Ville's ball factories are family businesses .

Round decoration. The manufacturer Fernando Fuglini attends an order on your phone / ball. (Juano Tesone).

A grandson of Fuglini also prepares packages with the 20 hexagonal segments and the 12 pentagonal pieces that make up the classic ball. Then the seamstresses take them to their homes to start sewing, a task that can take up to three hours, depending on the strength in the fingers and the experience they have.

Scattered on a green table, the segments of the balls look like casino chips . Rubén Gutiérrez, the scorer of Barrio Argentino, joins them fast, because the more balls he makes, the more he charges.

Likewise, the factories are half machine. Dalemás made 12 thousand balls per month in the 1980s, and now, hopefully, two thousand years ago.

The last section is open. It is the window through which Ernesto Cámara will accommodate the “inner orange balloon” (gambeta not to repeat “camera”), align the air valve to the invisible mouth with a kind of knitting needle and call a new seamstress for stitches late. The "definitive closing" of the ball is paid 30 pesos .

With no windows, the balls are inflated with a spout and a compressor. “The time has come for molding on a pelotometer , an invention made by my father, who is turning every ball between two semicircular aluminum molds, impeccably hollow, to put them at 100 pounds of pressure, that is, 10 times more than You need air to be fit for the game.

"Pelotometers". In these molds, the balls get perfect roundness. (Juan Tesone).

It is there when the reliefs of the seams sink and the sphere reaches a perfect roundness, weight and volume ”, describes Fernando Fuglini, who catches the 68.5 centimeters of the new circumference and makes it itch on the ground as did the Duck Fillol in the Selection area.

Fernandez has the ball

In the Old Gasometer of La Plata Avenue and in other summoning courts of the country the publicity of a sports house was heard that said: “Small balls, big balls, what balls Fernandez's!” . The voice of the stadium exaggerated the termination of the sentence and made it so famous that when people knew a Fernandez, the poor man had to listen to the picaresque recitation at that time without a joke.

It turns out that one Alberto Fernández, football fan and fan of Argentinos Juniors, went through the Dalemás ball factory five days before the primary elections known as “ LAS PASO”, last year.

Presidential ball. Alberto Fernández was interested in the claims of the producers. (Courtesy Fuglini)

They explained how a ball was made, told him about the needs of the SMEs in the area and clarified that it was not necessary to close the importation , because not even all the national factories together could make four million balls a year today, but that it was decisive that the public organisms referred to the sport, the education and the recreation respect the law of the "Buy National".

With that, the manufacturers told him, “we could grow our production and leave the well in which we have been for 12 years, ” meaning that they included the administration of Mauricio Macri and also that of Cristina Kirchner in the description of the time of crisis in the sector.

A graphic example: at the last G20 summit in Argentina, in December 2018, the leaders of the world's greatest powers received gifts of alpaca scarves woven in Catamarca, cuyane wines and balls ... Chinese ! Yes, the Chinese delegation took a Chinese ball as an Argentine souvenir, because the national manufacturers were not called.

At the G20 summit, Argentina gave away Chinese balls, even to the Chinese leader.

While Fernando Fuglini filled the presidential candidate of the Front of All with data, his brother Germán activated the tools and turned on the perfect roundness pelotometer. After a while, without telling him anything else, they asked Alberto Fernández to lower some levers and that was when the Buenos Aires leader saw his name in ink on a ball that had the shield of the Paternal bugs .

Excited, delayed on the proselytizing agenda that day, because he had been there for a while and stayed four hours, Fernandez took his ball and an overview of the steps he could take to revive the Argentine ball industry.

Today, the President of the Nation has not yet rescued, but he sees behind him the ball with his name, in television interviews.

Maradona, Messi, Pele

The balls of the program The night of 10 were made in Bell Ville. It was 2005 and the production of the program that Diego Armando Maradona was going to drive urgently needed a good quality jumping ball, suitable for soccer-tennis. There were only 48 hours left to design it and the solution was in Cairo.

“We almost had no margin, but in the end, I accepted the challenge, with the pride that a bellvillence feels of living in the city where the ball was invented without feeling. In addition, you had to customize that ball, that is, print a cartoon in colors that Diego had made. It was a challenge, ”says Jesús Ramón Cairo, who personally drove his car to Channel 13 to deliver the order on time.

But of course, we had to try it. “When I arrived with the sample ball to the production office, I was uncertain, but Maradona just arrived and a girl passes it to him and says: 'Diego, see if you like it.' Then he bounced her and replied: 'I like the behavior he has. Let's play with this one . Thank you, teacher, for bringing it here. '”

"The night of 10". In the Diego Maradona program, Cordoba balls were used. (Courtesy Cairo).

And so it was that balls with a stamped Dieguito shone in the driver's hugs with Lionel Messi, in a penalty in the studio with Sergio Goycochea in the bow and even as a souvenir for the guests. The program had 13 episodes and exceeded 40 rating points . Diego interviewed himself and even played a head with Pele. And Bell Ville's balls were seen all over the world. Even the great chess master Anatoli Karpov took one to his home in Russia.

Today, the five daughters of Cairo work in the factory , learn the trade and go to the provincial fairs to sell their products. There is also some skill to move and inflate "The biggest ball in the world" , which is 7.85 meters perimeter and 2.5 meters in diameter, another record they exhibit.

Empowered. Sofia and Valentina, two of the five sisters who work at the Cairo ball factory. (Juano Tesone).

Other famous balls made in Bell Ville were those of the Estudio Fútbol program. With two of them a philosophical battle was fought over the essence of the game. That of the journalist Esteban Edul had a legend that described the path to sports success as the “Mechanics of the Work” , while that of Horacio Pagani had coined the most emblematic phrase of Dante Panzeri on football, which for him was reborn in each game thanks to the "dynamics of the unthinkable" .

Round Petition

"We have very little government support," says Nicolás Grella, who inherited his father's project and manufactures the Genik balls. He is one of the young entrepreneurs who meet with Viva in the Social Club to list the problems of the sector.

United manufacturers. Cristian Rey in the center, María Paula Gerbaldo, Nicolás Grella and Norberto Medina Gómez behind and the sisters Sofía and Valentina Cairo in front. (Juano Tesone)

“Without entering politics, because this is not a consequence of a neoliberal government or another populist, it happens to us that for a matter of costs we cannot compete with China. We can accompany and dispute a portion of the market, for example, with our high-performance balls, which are better and cheaper than good ones; but not with those that go to toy stores or those used for promotions in service stations, bad and made in unfair competition, ”he says.

For that wing Cristian Rey, second generation of those who carry out the Mariskal factory, notes: “The import killed us. Today, the reactivation of the ball is slowed by the production that comes from outside. The last straw was the G20. The Chinese delegation took Chinese balls! It's as if you were an official visit to Beijing and they gave you a jar of dulce de leche! ”

Norberto Medina Gómez, who leads Sportbell , remembers times of glory and sunset: “We got to sell them to Topper and Sportlandia . We went with my dad in the full truck to the Alpargatas roundabout, and we created jobs. 40 years ago we had 26 employees, now, two or three with luck ”.

“In Asia, there are governments that help their companies to sell and export and subsidize them. They are mega businesses that can pay fees because they make 10 million balls. Here, YPF makes its summer promotions with imported beach balls, with 51% of its shares being state-owned. Modifying that, enforcing the National Buy, it would give us enormous help, ”says Medina Gomez.

On the bench. Miguel Suarez is one of the few vendors left on the side of Route 9. (Juano Tesone).

Last year, they say, YPF commissioned 1,500 collection balls, a job that was distributed between six Bell Ville factories and one in the neighboring town of Morrison. In other words, each one made about 215 balls, an almost symbolic production figure . The United Manufacturers want more participation in the annual purchases of balls made by the oil company.

“ We are not whiners , but we understand that there are many other measures that the State can take. With only one accompaniment so that we can sell balls to the schools of Greater Buenos Aires, we would be like cats belly up ”, illustrates María Paula Gerbaldo, of the Lince signature, of Morrison.

For the producers of Bell Ville, “labor and material costs lead us to charge 700/800 pesos per ball , about 10 dollars, when imported ones come out a third. That is why we ask for a new incentive policy to maintain quality and be able to give work.

Choripán stand. And another tribute to the ball. (Juano Tesone).

Guinness record

Fernando and Germán Fuglini have the largest collection of different balls in the world in a warehouse, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records. There is one with Messi celebrating a goal, another small one from World War II, one of the amateur championships of 1926, plus one with a touch of 1930 and the same but without a touch of 1931, the year of the ball revolution .

Ajada, there is an Adidas Tango that was used in Argentina's game against Poland in the '78 World Cup. And there are also balls that passed through paddocks and schoolyards, protagonists of feats only remembered by their authors. If they talked, they would tell how nice it is to fly towards a goal of emboquillada.

There is also a ball that is a globe, where the silhouette of Argentina is pink and Brazil stands out a city called ... Balls!

The ball is a world. The piece integrates a collection that appears in the Guinness. (Juano Tesone).

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