Mariano Verrina
07/04/2020 - 10:14
- Clarín.com
- sports
Diego Grecco just found out that he was out of a job. Look at the message and tap the retweet button with comment. " I still have 4 months of debt," he writes. Deportivo Español decided not to renew any of the contracts that expired on June 30, including Grecco's.
“Since March, not a single person from the club has contacted me. I found out that it was not followed by the statement that the club published. And the same thing happened to most of my colleagues. During this time we wondered when they were going to pay us the four months that they owe us and now they came out with this, ”he tells Clarín .
He played in Villa Dálmine, in Estudiantes de Buenos Aires, in Midland, in Ituzaingó and until Tuesday he defended the Deportivo Español jersey that when football came on hiatus he was last in the table of the First C Clausura tournament. At 36 years old, He says that he is adrift but that he is more concerned with the situation of young people, those who dreamed of pursuing a career and will not be able to.
"The picture is this: without money and in quarantine . " Now she is taking care of Benicio, her son. You also cannot open a clothing retail store you have with a partner.
"I'm going to wait and see if they call me these days," he warns about the debt that he carries in the club. If not I will have to resort to Guild members. They told us that we were going to receive aid from here to December. It would be 20 thousand pesos. That will not reach me to live ”.
I still have 4 months of debt present !! 🤔🤔🤔 https://t.co/qaDpcdoY6a
- Diego Grecco (@ diegui2683) July 1, 2020Los Andes released 14 players. All Boys did the same with 13. In Miter in Santiago del Estero only four footballers have assured their continuity and more than 20 left, among those who ended their bond those who broke up by mutual agreement. San Miguel released the entire squad and San Martín de Burzaco announced the same measure, although he announced that he will negotiate the continuity of four footballers.
On June 30, 2,100 of the 3,800 soccer contracts that are registered with the AFA expired. More than 1,300 belong to the categories of Promotion: First National, Metropolitan B, Federal tournament A and First C. To them must be added an even more bleak panorama, that of the First D footballers, where there is nowhere to hold on and everything is still amateur.
"We always stay out , " says Sebastián Ferrario, Deportivo Paraguayo midfielder.
When the first days of isolation passed and the picture was even more uncertain, Ferrario and his teammate Julio Gauna wrote a letter to make the reality of the last category of Argentine soccer visible.
“We train from Monday to Friday, in the morning, and we hardly charge a per diem. Match dates are generally during the week, which takes away the possibility of getting a 'blank job' with a full paid day. ”
The first part of the letter from Sebastián Ferrario and Julio Gauna, from Deportivo Paraguayo, from Primera D.
The per diem is three thousand pesos a month. They have no social work, retirement or ART. And since they do not sign contracts, they cannot be backed by Guild Argentine Soccer Players either. If they don't play, they don't get paid. And since March they don't play. Go to know until when .
Gonzalo Márquez, technical director of Cañuelas had to connect to Zoom on Tuesday and tell six players that they would no longer be taken into account. "It was horrible. You want to at least look at their faces, give them a hug . ” And he clarifies that these footballers will continue to share the work they do from here on, so they remain active, waiting for a new destination.
Behind the doors of his squad there are players who live in a small apartment, without space to train; others who are divorced and cannot see their children; many who were unable to continue their other jobs.
"The pandemic is hard for everyone, but having a five-figure salary is not the same as having a six-figure salary, " says Márquez to Clarín . There are guys who are going crazy. We have been helping them, we bring them merchandise, but it is difficult. And it is not known how long it will continue like this. "
Immediately it marks that it is not possible to complain about the present of Cañuelas, which keeps them up to date and without cutting wages. At this point there is a key fact: although the team is second to last in the Clausura, it was champion of the Apertura and under normal circumstances it should play a final for promotion.
If at a national level there is so much talk about the economic reality linked to health, in Argentine football the pandemic coexists with one more sphere, sports. No category knows how the promotions will be defined, but in turn they already know that there will be no descents. This decision by the AFA pushed to accelerate terms within each club.
And it was clear on June 30: those teams that do not aspire to rise in category, that do not have a chance to access a hypothetical Reduced or a final, shrunk their rosters, did not renegotiate the contracts that expired and will wait to see if they have action in the remainder of the year to find out whether or not they sign new links.
Meanwhile, the Guild lifeguard plays a key role . For footballers it will be only a palliative, but for clubs it represents the ideal setting to take your feet off the plate . Between the AFA and the union they agreed to create an assistance fund for footballers of all categories who have run out of a club. "They will be guaranteed, in the period between July 1 and December 31, 2020, a maximum of five payments, each equivalent to the basic agreement of the category corresponding to the last club with which it was linked" . If, before December, they sign a contract with another club, attendance is immediately cut off.
"It is not enough at all," says Sebastián Anchoverri, goalkeeper of San Miguel. A First B player receives an aid of 23 thousand pesos per month, approximately half the average salary of the category. Anchoverri, who saved in Primera in Olimpo, does not understand what happened in between: the coach called him to tell him that he wanted to continue counting on him on campus and a day later he read on social media that San Miguel released the entire campus .
"What is happening is not unusual, it is normal, administratively it always happens," Marcelo Achile, president of Defensores de Belgrano, vice-AFA and representative of the National B, warns this newspaper.
“In June the same thing always happens: many contracts are cut. It is usual for us to leave players free. What's more, if you go to the AFA now you will see that in Defensores 70% of the players were left without a contract, but we already guarantee that they will continue. There may be clubs that take time to think or analyze what they are going to do, "he adds.
It is that according to the statutes, the date of the closing of the pass book is the one that marks the limit to present the new contract. That day, Achile says, there used to be a line at AFA to file papers on time. And when will this pass book close? Nobody knows. "Sometimes you bring a player and in the contract you put the date of the pass book closing as the start date even though he has been training 15 days before," says the manager.
At the same time, it recognizes an advantage of this time with intangible contracts. “Suppose a player from my club has an episode of gender violence or does something that we don't like; well, I don't renew him. ”
Defenders of Belgrano, of great campaign and escort of Zone B of the First National, is one of the teams that is waiting to know how and in what way the promotions to First are defined. He maintained the entire campus, although he agreed to a 30% reduction in wages through December. Atlanta, leader of Zone A, also prioritized sports and aims to climb.
In this scenario, the paradigmatic case is that of San Martín de Tucumán, the best team in the second division, leader of Zone B, which released 18 professionals and also lost its technical team. When the tournament was interrupted, the board of directors considered that the club had already earned the right to ascend and took its claim to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS). To present it, he had to pay more than three million pesos.
"I wasn't surprised by what they did," says Achile. They play their chip to the extreme, it is a strategy. When soccer returns, the first thing they will say is that they have no players. ”
San Martín de Tucumán was kicking alone. The other 31 teams came out to support Chiqui Tapia's decisions and are waiting to know how long there will be in football to define how the two promotions to the top flight are put into play.
"There are going to be two. It's all verse that four can go up. Hopefully we can have at least November and December to define everything, "they say.
Juan Cardellino is a Midland forward, with a good season in the First C. He lives in Mar del Plata and lives in phase 4 of isolation, with more relief than the strong restrictions that apply in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area.
In recent days, Cardellino was called by the leaders to rush him. He is one of the six professionals who want to renew the contract that expired on June 30. “I told them that I want to continue, but that I cannot answer now. I need to have some certainty of what's going to happen. I do not know when the situation is going to normalize, if I go to Buenos Aires I have to maintain an apartment and maybe there will be no football throughout the year ”, he explains.
"It is very complex. In theory there will be a Reduced and Midland is preparing for that, to try to climb. And at the same time there are many other clubs and players in a completely different situation. The resolution to remove the descents was very tough. Everyone shrinks the budget. And now it's not like you're free in Midland and you're going to San Martín de Burzaco. There is no movement, there is no market . "
The beauty of craftsmanship collides in these pandemic times with very fragile scaffolding. And it leaves bare the different social classes that coexist in Argentine soccer .
“There are boys who have already made their family and their environment understand that the day there is a game, there is a game. They have it so oiled that it is artistic ”, says the Spanish coach, Matías Modolo, to Bundeslumpen , a journalistic space that shows from the inside and with warm empathy the benefits of the most delayed promotion.
Meanwhile, the gymnasiums of the clubs are filled with beds to be prepared before an emergency. Next to the stands the popular pots boil and the residents of the neighborhood queue. Donations are received. Those who have the least in football roll up their sleeves like no one else to help those who still have less.
River and Atlas players share the table after the Copa Argentina match in 2017. (@CARPoficial)
Three years ago, Ferrario and Gauna, the two footballers who in March signed the letter reflecting the problems of the First D, played in Atlas and faced RIver for the Argentine Cup.
After the game that Marcelo Gallardo's team won 3-0, there was a camaraderie dinner for both teams. Ferrario was encouraged to make jokes to Nacho Fernández and the River players returned the charge saying that he looked like Luciano Lollo.
Gauna, a millionaire fanatic, was more prepared: he bought four Atlas shirts to be able to exchange them with his idols. And he stayed with those of Enzo Pérez, Alexander Barboza, Pity Martínez and Lucas Alario. He also keeps a photo on the field of play in which he is seen celebrating with Ponzio despite the defeat of his team. Ferrario also has the memory of that match immortalized in his profile on social networks.
That day, that time, everyone sat at the same table.