Elio Rossi: his strange drift from Buenos Aires to Puerto Pirámides and from TV to ostracism

To those who criticize him on social networks, Elio Rossi responds like this, vehemently, as if he had no problem meeting on a corner to slap each other: "Lobotomized Nazis, mentally toothless, fascistoid flakes," he tells them, among other praises.

-Don't you get tired of confronting soccer?

-Sometimes yes.

In football there is a lot of ego.

He is full of looks.

And many times it goes from the discussion about football to personal issues.

That's why, from time to time, when I feel like I'm not giving more, I need to distance myself.

-And what are you doing?

-I drop everything and I'll split.

Elio Rossi, in his beginnings in Córdoba.

Now it's Tuesday, it's three in the afternoon.

It's hot.

In a cafe in Patio “Bullshit”, as he himself defines the mall located on Posadas street, in Recoleta, Elio speaks: if he refers to former coach Alfio Basile, he says “Le Cocó”;

if he mentions his colleague Fernando Niembro it is "El Tío" or directly "The Uncle".

Hand in hand, Elio is friendly, the counterpart of the chronicler with the spirit of scouting.

A tired soul in search of affection.

-Do you always come to this mall for coffee?

-Yes, I do it as a technical stop.

From my house in Las Cañitas I have an hour and ten walk.

-You have timed it.

-Yes, I arrive, I have a coffee and I start to read for a while.

If not, I go to the movies.

I recently saw a very good French film about the Nazi occupation of Paris:

.

Do you go for a walk every day?

-As much as possible.

At one time I was walking to the Tournaments and Competitions building on Balcarce street.

I started doing it when I discovered the benefits of walking against cholesterol.

As I walk, I can drink this coffee with this slice of cake.

Elio, you can see, he has time.

Without scheduling problems, he looks like a tourist enjoying leisure in his own place of residence.

It is that he has been relegated from the big media.

In 2021 he was fired from C5N and Radio 10 and from that moment on, neither on one side nor the other of the "crack", rather on the margins, he tried to reinvent himself.

program

, which is streamed at contactonoriega.com, Monday through Friday from 7 to 10 and on Sundays at the same time.

He also collaborates with the Diario Jornada, from Chubut.

And he produces content for his own YouTube channel.

“I am at a stage where I can go back to talking about football eight hours a day, as I did before, but I can also advance in this format of having several jobs at the same time, and spend seven months in Buenos Aires, three in Europe and two in Puerto Pirámides”, summarizes Elio, who has become, "in freelance mode", a kind of SME of his own, an itinerant seller of his words.

-Why did you get fired from C5N and Radio 10?

-I had planned to go to Paris for about three months and, later, to the World Cup in Qatar, accredited by the Diario Jornada... In the Rial program on the radio, they aired President Alberto Fernández.

So I asked him about the complex relationship he had with Chiqui Tapia, head of the AFA...

-AND?

Alberto got upset.

And he told me: "I don't know Chiqui Tapia, Elio."

How could he say something like that to me?

If Chiqui Tapia had just won the Copa América with the Argentine National Team... That dialogue I had with Alberto Fernández was on a Thursday.

On Friday I didn't work anymore... Rial sent me a message:

Totally insane thing... I got kicked out!

It can't be so important that you ask the president something to get kicked out!

This is what annoys me so much...

-During the celebrations for winning the world cup it became clear that the relationship between Alberto Fernández and Chiqui Tapia is not the best...

-Of course. 

A few hours after leaving radio and television, Elio got angry with Gato Sylvestre, host of C5N and Radio 10. "Can you be such an asshole?", he dedicated to him without any diplomacy.

“Sylvestre manages the editorial line of these media”, Rossi advances.

“They give it to them as progressives, as free thinkers... The most curious thing is that the right never threw me out for saying something... And here, yes.

When I worked at

, which belonged to the establishment, we showed the flying checks of Fernando Miele, former president of San Lorenzo.

Miele called Negro Ávila, who was the owner of the company, but Ávila didn't tell me anything.

He understood the game.

The right never forbade me to say anything.

 He could say something and we knew that, in the middle of the programs, they were going to call us: Maradona, Julio Grondona... ”.

Elio, with the commentator Fernando Pacini.

Seen from a distance, some of Rossi's fights were, why not, funny.

A compilation of bizarre sketchs, one of those that feed cycles like 

.

"You are a madman," accused the journalist Ernesto Cherquis Bialo.

"You make journalism a show to destroy people."

Elio didn't shy away: "Go get dye," he recommended.

Cherquis, then, counterattacked: "I wear dye because I have what... And I don't use shooters because I have a sense of the ridiculous."

At another time, Rossi discussed with Ricardo Caruso Lombardi, coach and now panelist.

"Caruso went to B to sell smoke with Quilmes," he pointed out, to the bone.

Caruso did not forgive him:

. "

In a similar vein, and far from adapting to the new paradigms, especially those linked to gender issues, Oscar Ruggeri also tried to attack him on the side of his sexual preferences: "Elio, you are a chirolita... But now you should be more don't worry.

I mean, because of the new law...", the Cabezón asked him, referring to the sanction of equal marriage.

Rossi, from that episode, began to call him "Le Grand Button".

As part of an imprint that does not lack adrenaline, the journalist was also very hard on Ángel Cappa and Guillermo Barros Schelotto.

Even with Marcelo Bielsa, a character who has majority support.

Does Rossi get along with anyone?

Has his job given him any friends? 

"The best rapporteur is Mariano Closs... He is light years ahead of the others," he says, with appreciation and admiration.

“He understands soccer, he plays well... Even if he put his mind to it, he would be a great referee.

And with the passage of time he found a tone to say things ... ”.

Another colleague whom Elio affectionately names is Enrique Macaya Márquez.

"Old man dear!" He dedicated to her.

A toast with the producers Walter Llanes and Rafael Di Bello and the rapporteur Mariano Closs.

Rossi, who will turn 60 this year, was born on May 4, 1963 in Córdoba.

On his Twitter account, however, he says that he came into the world "in the heart of Palermo", in the City of Buenos Aires.

"I did it as a wink," he clarifies, and laughs again.

"It was at a time when I began to deny my condition as a Cordoba because of the fascism of many people in my province."

With a few hours to live, Elio was given up for adoption.

, he describes without hesitation.

And he deepens: "My biological mother left the maternity hospital and gave me Elena, my adoptive mother, who enrolled me in the church, where they trouted the papers, and I remained as if I were her biological son."

They raised him in Bell Ville, about 200 kilometers from the Cordovan capital.

Rossi's adoptive father was named José.

They called him Tolo.

He was a meat worker, "an old-fashioned Peronist."

.

"My dad always said:

... Over time, I read that same sentence to Gordo Soriano."

In the spare time that the refrigerator left him, his father also stood out as a soccer player.

"He was a crack, a 6 who threw Chileans ... And he was a teammate of Mario Kempes's father at Club Atlético and Biblioteca Bell", Elio defines him.

-And you played in any team?

-Yes, at the other club in Bell Ville, River, which wears a shirt the same as Boca's.

I played 4, 2, 6 or 3, always on the bottom line... It was half a hard leg.

Fernando Fuglini, known as La Chueca, met Elio at the age of six, in the first grade of the San José school.

He considers himself a "brother of life".

In addition, they played together in River.

"Elio was spicy, a full-back with a good brand and projection, a kind of Gordillo Stopper," says Fuglini, owner of Dale más, the company that designed the first ball without touch in Argentina.

“And he also drew attention at school.

Since he had very good diction, the teachers entrusted him with all the readings.

He went to the front and showed off.

Besides, he was given to sing.

His great hit was

, a folklore classic that was part of the Los Fronterizos repertoire.

Elio only found out that he had been adopted at the age of 27.

They told him about it at the house of a "half-girlfriend friend", Gaby Monjo.

It was a major shock, one of those moments that are not easily forgotten.

Over time, Elio reconstructed his mother's story: he learned that her name was Virginia, where she had lived, and in which family home she had worked as a maid.

But he didn't get to meet her.

Since his adoptive mother had not been pregnant, Elio was breastfed by neighbors in the neighborhood.

It was, to define it in some way, a supportive chain of love and nutrients, a combination of breasts willing to strengthen the child.

"I had five milk mothers, all divine women, the Colorada, the Riva... I always felt a special attraction for them."

-Why didn't your parents tell you that you had been adopted?

-Because at that time it was like that: you didn't get used to it.

And I understood them.

Did it cause you any trauma?

-No, the other way around... I was overconfident.

In my case, one of the advantages of being adopted was that the whole world revolved around me.

-In what sense?

-In primary and secondary school, my father sent me to a very expensive private school, which he could not have paid for if it was not with the help of relatives and neighbors.

I, in a way, was the kid of the whole block.

Based on what he was able to piece together, Rossi is the eldest of three brothers.

He is followed by another male, who was also given up for adoption but maintained the link with his biological mother, and a female, who was never separated from his parent.

-So the meeting with those brothers is still pending.

-Yeah.

-And how much do you think about it?

-At this point, less than before.

It's like I've already resigned myself to the idea that it will be very difficult to find them.

But who knows...

Elio, in a debate on "Tribuna Caliente" with Guillermo Nimo.

Elio was married and separated four times.

He did not want to have children, as he himself explains, because he did not want them to feel abandoned if from one day to the next he decided to go live elsewhere, but he had them.

In 2000, at the age of 37, a woman called him at her work, in Tournaments and Competitions, and told him that her son Ricardo wanted to meet him.

"How?" she thought.

"If I don't have children...".

However, the journalist agreed to meet the woman and her supposed son, took a DNA test and ended up acknowledging his paternity.

With Ricardo, who is now 40 years old and works as a blacksmith, he has a very good relationship.

"And he already made me a grandfather: he has four children."

The surprise did not end there.

In 2010, while covering the World Cup in South Africa,

.

The message said that they wanted to talk to him about an important matter.

At first, the journalist thought it was a complaint related to his work.

“But no, when I came back from the World Cup I found out that it was something else.

Thus, at the age of 47, I found out that he was the father of a 17-year-old woman, Jennifer, ”he recounts.

“Between one marriage and another I was with some women.

But at that moment it seemed impossible to me because I was with Jeny's mother only once and we had taken care of each other... Bah, halfway”.

With another DNA test, Elio confirmed his new paternity.

Jeny, who is about to turn 31 and works in a catering company, has two children.

"When Ricardo found out about Jeny's story, he wanted to meet her and there was a great family meeting," Elio advances.

-And now you're in a relationship?

-Yes, for some time, with a skinny... But each one lives in his house.

While in his fourth year of high school, Elio landed his first media job at Union Radio in Bell Ville.

“He was reading the news”, he recalls.

He later went to study Information Sciences at the University of Córdoba.

"With just turned 19 years old", his debut on television was as a presenter on Channel 10.

Restless, in 1990 he became a kind of

correspondent : he sent videos with the comments of the matches that Talleres played.

Two years later he settled in Buenos Aires.

The peak of his recognition came on Channel 13, when he worked as a "playing field" in the broadcasts led by Marcelo Araujo and Macaya Márquez.

Elio, in Paris.

In 2002, after the crisis that Argentina suffered, Elio went to live alone in Madrid, Spain.

He rented an apartment (“I paid a year in advance”) and looked for work.

But that enthusiasm did not last very long: a week and a half.

In the end he preferred to disconnect, “boludear”, “walk the Castellana”.

To support himself, he used the savings that he had generated "during the good years of Torneos", working on programs such as

and

.

“In one-on-one they paid me $18,000 a month.

And he spent 2,500... Imagine.

I came to buy, as an investment, two BMWs.

The BMW is a car that you can buy for $20,000 and, even if everything goes to hell, it will always be close to that value."

When his funds ran out, Rossi returned to Buenos Aires.

He went through the América channel, La Red radio, C5N... In 2011, during the second government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, they hired him to be part of the commentary staff of Fútbol

.

In addition, always on Public Television, he was a member of the panel in debate programs such as

, whose hosts were Alejandro Apo, Alina Moine and Nacho Goano.

But nothing is for ever.

In 2015, when Mauricio Macri assumed the presidency and decided that the transmissions of the parties would return to private hands, Elio took another swerve: he left Buenos Aires and settled in Puerto Pirámides, Chubut.

“I didn't wait for them to throw me out of

... I left earlier.

, recalls Elio.

Thus, three days after arriving in Puerto Pirámides, the owners of Cadena Tiempo, from Puerto Madryn, summoned him to host the second morning of their station.

And he started again, as if the only way to move forward was, as he puts it, "going in and out."

Away from the noise, his main concern, he says, was knowing what time to light the fire to throw something on the coals.

“Pirámides is an impossible place to wrap up in the world.

On a 'nectar' day, as they say there, when there is sun, the sky is blue and there is no wind, you can dive and, even if you are four meters deep, you can see everything with natural light”.

Geologist and diving instructor, Juan Manuel Casal was the one who taught Elio to dive, to snorkel with sea lions and to swim with dolphins.

“At first, Elio was a typical bather: he went into the sea only up to his ankles.

But later he began to cheer up and even bought his own neoprene suit”, says Casal.

“With less football than Lita de Lázzari”, Juan Manuel did not know that Elio was a journalism star.

And Elio didn't take it upon himself to clarify it either.

“When we had been friends for two months, my brother-in-law came and asked me:

Juan Manuel and Elio had met in the Las Dunas complex, a neighborhood of six duplexes.

They were neighbors.

One day, Juan Manuel helped Elio to fix a punctured pipe in his house.

And Elio, as retribution, invited him to eat a barbecue.

"We started talking and we immediately realized that we have many things in common, above all, a love of travel," continues Casal.

-Rossi always says that Pirámides is a paradise. 

-Pirámides is a village of 400 inhabitants, with laborers, municipal employees, workers from the electric cooperative and people who live from tourism.

We are located within a protected natural area.

And that is a privilege and sometimes a karma.

-Because?

-Because we are 100 kilometers from everything.

It's like living on an island.

And sometimes the logistics and supply are complicated: the water is desalinated, the gas is from a bottle, the internet is satellite... If there is a storm, for example, several light poles can fall.

And you spend two days in the dark.

Or depending on your own generator.

-You have to be prepared for everything.

-Yeah.

When Elio arrived at Pirámides he was driving a BMW.

And I said to him:

.

So he bought a Toyota Hilux, much more useful for Patagonia: here you are always moving a broken water heater, an oven that no longer turns on... Over time it was stolen in Palermo.

With a primary care medical room and some pantries to get food (“there are no supermarket chains”), winter in Pirámides is very harsh: temperatures can reach eight degrees below zero.

“In this area - Juan Manuel details - there are days when the temperature can vary 30 degrees from morning to night.

For this reason, if someone comes to visit me and asks me what clothes I keep in my suitcase, I answer: scarf and flip flops”.

In 2018, like someone who cannot stop changing their routines, Rossi returned to Buenos Aires.

His motivation was to cover the World Cup in Russia and get to know that country that he otherwise had not planned to go to.

“I was a special correspondent for the Diario Jornada and also as part of the Beto Casella program on Rock and Pop”, he details.

Shortly after, with Kirchnerism once again in power, Elio joined C5N as a sports columnist and accompanied Jorge Rial in

, on Radio 10.

In order for him to cover the World Cup in Qatar, the Diario Jornada managed his accreditation and Elio took care of the travel expenses.

“With the 'micros' that I was able to sell in different media, I came out done, which is a feat.

Between a plane ticket and a stay in Qatar, it was a trip of around 8,000 dollars”, explains Rossi.

Carlos Baulde is the director of the newspaper Jornada and the radio station Cadena Tiempo.

"In his reports for the radio and for our newspaper's website, Elio always made a difference. His questions at press conferences were different and quickly became a trend on Twitter," explains Baulde.

-The comments, in general, were not to praise him.

-No.

In the networks it is full of haters who hate and insult Elio, and that is because on those platforms it is easier to express rejection than approval.

But it's also full of people who share his views...

What was your collaboration about?

-Simply, his presence increased before and after each game of the National Team.

In the end, in 14 hours of radio programming, he ended up getting out a lot more than we imagined.

And we all win.

-And did it work on the radio audience?

-Yeah.

Because Elio is more than a sports journalist.

To expand, he already entered the world of streaming and influencers... Recently, my daughter Maribel, who studies in Buenos Aires, called me to tell me that she had fun listening to Elio in an interview that Luquitas Rodríguez did with her on Vorterix.

In Qatar, in addition to his chronicles for the Chubut media, Elio continued with the "envíos" on his YouTube channel.

“I still haven't monetized it.

For that, to be able to associate your channel with a bank account, you need a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours viewed.

And I still lack.

I'm going to get it ... ”, he comments to him.

No one accompanies him in this undertaking.

He produces it with his “Chinese” cell phone and a six-euro headset he bought in Paris.

“The best thing about the YouTube channel is that you don't have an editor and you do whatever you want”, he enthuses.

“I have two Elio phone numbers,” explains Adrián Noriega, driver of

.

“One uses it when he is in Buenos Aires and the other when he goes on a trip.

In my contacts he appears as 'Elio Vagabundo'”.

Noriega has known Rossi since 1992, when they worked together at La Red. "Elio has become an integral journalist: he gives his opinion on football but also participates in talks on other topics...".

Now it's Sunday.

It's 7:53.

"In 2000, when he worked at

, they exchanged two pairs of shoes per program for each of the panelists...he had so many shoes that he gave them away," Elio remembers longingly.

"Now, on the other hand, I only have two pairs, one brown and the other black, and I hardly ever wear them, unless I have an important event."

Rossi covered the World Cup in Qatar, where Messi won the cup.

De sport, elegante sport o de gala, Elio no se desprende de sus tiradores. ¿Cómo surgió ese look? Para la presentación de La última palabra, el periodista tuvo que hacer una sesión de fotos. Se cortó el aire acondicionado. Hacía calor. Elio se sacó el saco y se le vieron los tiradores. “Sacale la foto así”, pidió Federico Infante, que era CEO de Torneos y Competencias. “Y quedó para siempre...”, comenta Rossi.

-Al final, los tiradores se convirtieron en un dato distintivo.

-Algo así... Los primeros tiradores que usé los compré durante el Mundial de Estados Unidos, en el 94. Debo tener, en total, unos diez pares. Los compro, me los regalan... Siempre me gustó el estilo de Jean Reno en El perfecto asesino, con Natalie Portman...

A Elio le gusta el cine y a cada rato hace referencia a alguna película. También juega con el idioma francés y dice que esto o aquello es “¡estraordiner!”. “Eso es algo que me quedó del colegio, donde había tres o cuatro curas que nos leían en ese idioma. Y algo aprendí”, suelta.

Alguna vez, cuando se complicaba la clasificación de la Selección al Mundial de Rusia 2018, acusó a Lionel Messi de “fracasado”, “burgués millonario” y “evasor condenado en España”.

"Ser segundos en el Mundial 2014, perder dos finales seguidas con Chile (2015 y 2016) y no hacer un gol en 360 minutos se llama, en este nivel, fracaso", comentó el periodista desde el Cerro Olazábal, en el atardecer de Puerto Pirámides. Y remató: "Jorge Valdano lo llamó pánico escénico; Hugo Gatti, más simple, cagazo".

-

-It gave me great joy.

Messi overcame a series of difficulties and was even able to overcome himself.

This Messi is incomparable with the previous ones.

And I don't regret criticizing him.

He would be a fool if he wasn't able to observe the change.

-More than the criticisms you made of Messi, what you could be criticized for was the way you said it: the tone, the glass of champagne you carried in your hand...

-Yes, and whoever gets angry with my style is within their rights.

These are the rules of the game... If I say it, they cuss me because I say it, and if I don't say it, they cuss me because I don't say it.

It's not easy.

Although now, on the verge of turning 60, it would no longer be so strict.

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