Christian Bragarnik, the Argentine striker without a goal owner of Elche

Argentine businessman Christian Bragarnik, current shareholder of Elche. DIARIO AS / DIARIO AS

On December 18, 1999, on the final date of the Opening of the First D -the fifth and last category in the organization chart of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) -, the least attractive game of Argentine football was played: Yupanqui-Atlas Not only did they close the tournament standings, but they were, and still are, two of the only three teams that ever crawled in the basement of the D, without any promotions in their showcases.

That last game of the last century was also the farewell as a player of Yupanqui's center-forward, one Christian Bragarnik, 28 years old. His club, which two years later would become famous in his country for an advertisement that presented him as "the team with the fewest fans in Argentine football", swept 7 to 2. But far from having been a sweet goodbye, for Bragarnik it showed that He would have no future as a footballer: the number nine of the last team in the last category did not score a goal in the game in which his teammates added seven. In the rest of the season he had not scored either.

The twist of the story is that, 20 years later, Bragarnik is the man who many describe as the most influential businessman in Argentine football and who this Sunday, in his new role as Elche's largest shareholder, made the leap to LaLiga . In Argentina he no longer goes unnoticed and more than once he was looked at from the corner of his eye, as if he were the man who moves many of the invisible strings of the AFA, a kind of puppeteer of power.

"Christian played as a central midfielder, more advanced than normal, but for that game I put him on nine because we needed to," recalls Darío Tonón, Yupanqui's coach in that game and personal friend of Bragarnik for several years. "He was a good player, but he got discouraged," he says.

Part of the influence of the Bragarnik empire is its relationship with almost all the teams in the First Division of Argentina: it represents 54 players and four coaches from 17 Super League clubs, including Diego Maradona -Gymnastics technician-, in addition to 32 other footballers. from different leagues in America, 11 of them in Mexico. His career in the offices skyrocketed - and controversies began to engulf him - in Mexican soccer, the intermediate point for his amazing leap between the dirt fields of his country to the league in which his new club will face Real Madrid and Barcelona in the next season.

The man who rented movies

After retiring as a footballer without anyone laying out a red carpet for him, Bragarnik accentuated at the turn of the century what had started as a parallel activity in the nineties: in a movie rental venue that he had with his friend Tonón, the future representative of Maradona edited videos on VHS to the representatives of soccer players with the best plays of his clients. “He was always awake. He had asked me for a job at my video store when he was 12 years old, in 1987, and we became friends. I had 10 for him, ”Tonón recalls.

In 2001, a Talleres player, Mariano Monrroy, told him about his agent's negligence and Bragarnik - who had been a lawyer in four years - offered to advise him. A few weeks later, he got a sale to Irapuato de México and the frustrated ex-player began a supersonic ascent not without comments that associated him with dirty money. The Mexican leaders noticed his speed and intelligence for business and in six months they took him from secretary of Querétaro - which had the same owners as Irapuato - to vice president and then president of the club.

“That is where my origin is discussed. Over time I learned a little that apparently the capitalists of the club, their money, came from drug trafficking. It is easy to talk. But I never had a trial. This is how that image of me was made, ”Bragarnik said in 2015 about that experience in Querétaro, one of whose investors, Tirso Martínez Sánchez, linked to the Juárez Cartel, in 2014 had been arrested and extradited to the United States accused of laundering money in their Mexican clubs.

Bragarnik had sporting success but, as he had already understood that football laws favor businessmen and not clubs, he decided to focus as a representative and not as a leader. He only agreed to advise other institutions as a counselor and thus fell to the Xolos de Tijuana, owned by Jorge Hank Rhon, a former mayor of the city arrested in 2011 at his residence with 88 firearms and 9,000 cartridges. “Obviously I had relationships with many people. I have to meet Jorgealberto Hank, the son of a very famous and controversial person in Mexico, with a lot of political power. And here we say Tijuana and we think of drug traffickers. Tijuana also has a normal life and a soccer club, ”he told the newspaper Tiempo Argentino in 2015.

Back in Buenos Aires, with a growing portfolio of soccer players and coaches, Bragarnik built a triumphant bridge between Mexico and Argentina. In his country, football clubs are non-profit civil societies and shareholders are not allowed, but due to a gray area of ​​the regulation, he presented in 2009 a project for Defensa y Justicia, a humble club in the southern area of ​​Greater Buenos Aires to That in a few years changed his life: under his guidance, and with most of his players and coaches, Defense went from promotion to South American competitions.

Maradona representative

Although he tends to keep a low profile, the first times that Bragarnik received journalists in his office in the wealthiest neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Puerto Madero, he fueled his controversial image. The journalist Roberto Parrottino interviewed him in front of the painting that in 2015 still decorated his studio, one of Al Pacino in the role of Tony Montana, accompanied by two real bullets on the frame. “I have not yet found a movie that represents me as Scarface . Obviously there is a bit of curiosity, because I lived in Mexico and close to that, ”he said then.

Strengthened in the north and south of America, in Mexico and Argentina, the rest of the clubs in his country, including two of the biggest like Boca and Racing, also turned to their contacts. In recent years he befriended the president of Boca between 2011 and 2019, Daniel Angelici, and earned the trust of the current AFA holder, Claudio Tapia, who opened the doors of the Argentine national team. When Maradona called him to represent him, Bragarnik dusted off his old contacts in Mexico to take him to the Dorados de Sinaloa - and in 2019 it was key to his arrival in Gymnastics. While his opponents accuse him of monopolizing the purchase and sale of footballers, the company that the former Yupanqui player opened with his partners, Score Fútbol, ​​expanded its power to neighboring countries: in Uruguay it has influence in a couple of clubs, in Chile He is a member of the board of directors of Unión La Calera and San Luis de Quillota, in Mexico he advises Xolos and Dorados and will soon arrive in Bolivia.

However, Bragarnik has long wanted to cross the Atlantic: of his extensive portfolio of footballers, which includes another 23 in the second category of Argentine football, only two play in the main leagues in Europe: Darío Benedetto at Olympique de Marseille and Lisandro Martínez at Ajax. In August 2019, he asked for conditions for Elche, he immediately yielded to a footballer from his team, defender Danilo Ortiz, and in October he got the Argentine team to play a friendly against Venezuela at the Martínez Valero stadium - Elche had 50 left One thousand dollars-. In December, just 20 years after his last game as a footballer, his company Score Club 2019 (Score Fútbol's Spanish subsidiary) bought 58% of the club.

The rest happened very quickly: Bragarnik, 48 years old and father of his fourth child 10 months ago, added more shares in May - he now owns 93% and wants to reach 99% - and Elche got this Sunday back to LaLiga after five years. With his coach, Pacheta , away at Score Fútbol's offices in Buenos Aires - now decorated by a Maradona painting in Mexico 1986 - it had been assumed for weeks that Jorge Almirón, one of the technicians represented by Bragarnik, would be his replacement. The Defense and Justice Twitter account, where Almirón has already directed, greeted the rise of Elche from a distance.