Athens achieved promotion to El Metro on Friday by winning the semifinal series against Capurro 2-0 in a conquest that was questioned by all the other institutions of the Third Promotion Division (DTA) for the lack of sportsmanship that the club had on the occasion of a game played in the regular phase in which Athens deliberately went out to lose to choose a better crossing in the playoffs and thus avoid Welcome in the semifinals of the contest.
“What Athens did it was a shame”, described the president of Capurro Martín Santaello in dialogue with Referee.
“What Athens did has been done an infinite number of times in basketball and even in the recent World Cup, it is not something that is prohibited by law,” replied the president of Athens, Edison Lanza.
What happened? It all started with an excessive use of bass drums. How? Just as you read it. On November 15, Athens received Welcome for the regular phase and the match was suspended by judges Cristhian Hirigoyen, Gonzalo Paz and Diego Gómez de Freitas because the local fans repeatedly played the drums in the stands and ignored several warnings to continue doing so, given that this interfered with the arbitration work and the normal development of the game.
When the shortlist withdrew, through the fans of Athens, they received insults from the supporters. One of them went over the judges totally out of it.
That generated a disciplinary file that cost Atenas lose the game with Welcome, suffer a two-point deduction and be punished with four court closures.
In Uruguayan basketball, court closures are redeemable by paying a fine. Each game, in the DTA, costs $6,000. Athens paid $24,000 and was able to continue playing at home.
in dialogue with RefereeLanza stated that this arbitration had “lack of hierarchy” and that the sanction that the club received was “excessive”.
“There is no rule that prohibits the use of drums on the pitch. He could have stopped the game and asked for them to be removed. But he decided to suspend it. It was unusual. After that we made a request for the decisive matches to have a referee as head of judge of first or second category and there were no more problems”, he explained.
Judge Hirigoyen received a two-party punishment because he did not expand on the complaints initially made.
That two-point removal meant that if Athens beat Yale as a visitor on the last date, they would finish as number 3 for the playoffs. His first rival, in the quarterfinals, was going to be Bohemios, but his potential opponent in the semifinals was going to be Welcome, who was winning 50-43 in the suspended game.
The DTA awarded two promotions to the winners of each of the semifinal series.
What did Athens do? He played to lose the last game with Yale to finish fourth in the regular phase and thus avoid Welcome in semis. Due to the composition of the teams, both were the great candidates to go up and define the tournament.
Athens made the move in a very striking way. Before playing the game issued the next statement whitewashing the situation.
Athens’ statement before playing with Yale
On November 24, on the Yale field, Atenas then presented itself with five juveniles and the coach Martín Sedes. But instead of going out to play, the juveniles deliberately went out to cut the game to charge themselves with five fouls and have to be excluded without having replacement options. When only one player was left on the court (two is the regulatory minimum for a team to continue playing) the game was considered over. Seven minutes and 43 seconds were played. Yale won 27-13 by free kick.
That set up the next playoff bracket for the quarterfinals. All the series were defined in two games.
Capurro 2-0 Youth
Welcome 2-0 Layva
Yale 2-0 Bohemians
Athens 2-0 Auriblanco
In the semifinals, Athens defeated Capurro 98-86 on the road on Tuesday of last week and 98-94 last Friday, achieving the goal of promotion.
Welcome, for his part, defeated Yale 77-52 on Tuesday in the third and final match, settling the series 2-1 to also return to El Metro.
The president of Welcome, Ignacio López, said this Wednesday in Sport 890 that will ask Athens not to play the final on Fridayset on the court of Larre Borges, “For strict security reasons.”
Lanza, for his part, had told Referee before that manifestation of his pair of the W that Athens is arranged to play the final and to pay to extend the security device.
However, Athens did not want to play with Welcome in the semis for security reasons: “We had already detected that a group of fans had begun to write on social networks challenging themselves ahead of an eventual decisive match. Welcome had already told us that he was going to play at home without visiting fans. So we chose to go the long way to the playoffs giving up home-field advantage. In addition, we have adopted several tough measures to guarantee security: not bringing the public to away games and playing closed at home,” the president reported.
The remaining 12 clubs presented to the Federation ora note repudiating what Athens did labeling his behavior as “reprehensible, reprehensible” for violating “the fundamental principles and values of sport, in particular, ethics, fair play and good faith (fair play), the safeguarding of the sporting spectacle and sportsmanship in general terms”.
Note from the clubs on the Athens case by Pablo Benítez on Scribd
The president of the Board of the DTA, Víctor Correa, submitted his immediate resignation.
“The clubs understood that he should not resign. The only thing they told us was that we could request an urgent Extraordinary Assembly before the FUBB and ask for the disaffiliation of Athens but we understood that this was not the solution”, expressed Santaello who denounced that in the match against Athens as a visitor, his players and coaching staff were permanently insulted by the local fans.
“That day there were no drums but there was one with a trumpet that was there throughout the game until the judges made him take it out,” he added.
Lanza, for his part, said: “Athens, like all the big basketball teams, has some complicated fan sector. But we are working on it. We have already adopted measures in this regard. With Monday’s newspaper what we did could be have done otherwise, but the truth is that we wanted to do it in the most transparent way. It can be branded as unsportsmanlike or unethical, but it is something that has been done countless times in our basketball: choosing a better cross to meet a sporting objective. In addition, there was a very important background security issue. It is not something that is prohibited. We apologize to the gurises who played and if they came out to cut the game so that it would end quickly, it was to avoid losing because of a score that was too big”.
Athens ultimately achieved its goal despite violating a mother principle of sport, which is to go out and win a game. Welcome too. Now it only remains for them to decide whether or not they want to play the final and if the Federation accepts them.
