The South American candidacy for the 2030 World Cup revealed the harmony with which the Sports ministries of the governments of the four countries that are behind the centenary initiative work.
But also the
excellent moment
that the relationship between the president of
Conmebol
and the head of the
Argentine Football Association
is going through :
Alejandro Domínguez
and
Claudio Tapia
establish a bond that, since the days of
Julio Grondona
, has not had Argentina in the foreground .
Domínguez took advantage of the press conference to announce that he will propose to the Council that it grant Tapia the highest decoration awarded by Conmebol: the
Order of Honor
of South American football in the degree of
Extraordinary Grand Collar
.
The last leader who received it was
Arturo Salah
, president of the Chilean Football Federation, in 2017. The same award that Mauricio Macri received a year later, with retroactive effect to his 12 years as Boca's starter between 1995 and 2007.
During the act of relaunching the candidacy of
Argentina
,
Uruguay
,
Paraguay
and
Chile
in Ezeiza, Tapia and Domínguez used their words to praise the other, without euphemisms.
They buried the only short circuit they've been through since they first met.
It was the Paraguayan leader who evoked the exact date, even.
But the first compliment came out of
Chiqui
's mouth , to position the South American soccer boss as the figurehead of Argentina's recent World Cup achievement.
Domínguez's gift for Tapia: personalized boots with the photo of Chiqui and the Cup. Photo capture
"The (achievement of the Argentine National Team in the) world championship began with a political decision by Alejandro: to hold the Copa América in a pandemic to give the teams competitiveness
," said Tapia, looking at Domínguez, just a few meters to his right.
At the end of the praise, the audience applauded the head of Conmebol.
It was there that Domínguez remembered June 26, 2016 and spoke to the same audience.
“In that Copa América, Argentina was left without leaders.
They resigned, they were not.
The only one who was there at that time was Chiqui Tapia.
I told him, come please, we have to deliver the medals.
The only Argentine leader who had not left was Chiqui Tapia”
, he said and aroused a new round of applause, even more passionate.
At that time, Domínguez had only been president of Conmebol for three months.
The so-called "FIFA scandal" or "FIFA Gate" had left the soccer organization in a state of emergency, with the top leadership in jail or on the run.
With new names, the soccer business was rearranged.
In Argentina, that was a secondary issue: local leaders had spent two years trying to interpret which of the two political spaces - unprecedented in the life of
Don Julio
- inherited the vacant power.
Image of the team in New Jersey, the moment Domínguez met Tapia.
Photo Juano Tesone / archive (special envoy)
The anecdote of the man from Conmebol talks about a Tapia who was in New Jersey as vice president of the AFA chaired by
Luis Segura
, who right there and before the final found out that FIFA would interrupt his mandate to install a
Regularization Committee
, the euphemism of an intervention.
In this way, the relationship between Domínguez and Tapia was born.
A few America Cups later, Tapia had become president of the Association.
The intervention chaired by
Armando Pérez
and which had Conmebol embodied in Vice President
Carolina Cristinziano
, an official of the South American soccer governing body, had already passed.
Chiqui's status was such that he was elected vice president at Conmebol and represented that entity before FIFA.
They were the first vital signs of AFA after Grondona's death.
However, the idyll was broken in 2019:
Argentina was eliminated by Brazil in the semifinals of the Copa América edition that was played in that country and Lionel Messi questioned Conmebol in harsh terms
.
He spoke of corruption and ruled that the competition was tailored to the host.
The team finished third and he missed the medal ceremony for the last podium spot.
A few days later, Tapia took the words of the team captain and signed a statement so forceful that he condemned the privileges that the South American entity conferred on him as a representative before FIFA.
"What happened deserves a deep reflection that questions whether the principles of ethics, loyalty and transparency that you repeatedly invoke have been observed,"
said the letter that came out of the AFA.
The response that came from Asunción resolved the issue:
"WITHOLD, with immediate effect, the confidence in Mr. Claudio Tapia to exercise the interim representation of CONMEBOL before the FIFA Council"
.
Clean slate
Claudio Tapia, Alejandro Dominguez and Mario Kempes, during the World Cup in Qatar.
AFP photo
All of that was buried.
Is past.
The relaunch of the 2030 candidacy in Ezeiza showed Domínguez and Tapia more united than ever.
Today the main partner of Conmebol is AFA
, with its team champion of the last Copa América, of the Finalissima -first edition of the strategic association between Conmebol and UEFA- and of the World Cup, a trilogy that puts the Argentine team as the maximum exponent of the American continent.
“Sometimes one seems to be preaching in the desert. I got tired of saying that when you get used to losing, you get used to making excuses and if someone understood that message it's Chiqui Tapia"
, he pondered and went further when he pointed it out:
"there is the embryo of all this, who worked for to be champion and won the last three consecutive competitions”
.
As if more than words were missing, Domínguez gave him a pair of boots from the official brand that Argentina wears, with a detail of his image next to the World Cup engraved on the leather.
Dominguez and Tapia at the press conference to relaunch the South American candidacy for the 2030 World Cup. Photo AFP
The FIFA Gate is that turning point that changed things.
If before, Conmebol was an administration tailored to the measurements of the federations that make it up and the AFA had the weight so that its decisions marked the administrative pulse, today the burden is reversed.
The Confederation is positioned above each of its members.
The strategic partner, at the selection level, is Argentina and
Tapia seems to have found the tone to handle this new operation.
Before an audience made up of most of the world champion soccer players in 1978 and '86, part of the Qatar 2022 coaching staff, the leaders of all AFA categories and in the same place where the remains of Grondona and Alejandro Sabella were veiled , Domínguez also showed himself without taboos to banish everything that corresponds to "the old football".
Before leaving Julio Humberto Grondona, without mentioning that first and last name and quoting a phrase by Sabella that you saw on the wall of the futsal stadium, he suggested:
“I allow myself to propose that this property be renamed 'Thrice world champions'.
As the great Alejandro used to say: 'more us, less me'”
.
And then, there was no more applause.
look also
A symbolic memory and the third star of Argentina: the reasons that prop up South America for the 2030 World Cup
The anecdote between Alejandro Domínguez and Chiqui Tapia about the Qatar 2022 World Cup: "Where is Kiricocho?"
South America's candidacy for the 2030 World Cup was made official: "We dream of hosting it again"
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