In the last two weeks, and despite the unsuccessful attempt by the Barcelona Football Club and periobarcelonismo, only Spain and the rest of the world talk about the scandal that the Catalan club spent twenty years billing with a company of the active vice president of the Technical Committee of Referees. And that tsunami has blurred what, until Negreira and his son’s arrival into our lives, also had Spanish football in its sights, that is, the racism. A racism, if I may use the expression, selective, surgical, so much so that the harassment, the xenophobia, the escrache were reduced to a single person, Vinicius Junior. Harassment towards Vinicius has gone into the background because the Negreira scandal, as he said, is worldwide, but it will return. Yesterday, for example, it was known that the Permanent Commission of the State Commission (wow, what a commission!) against violence, Racism, Xenophobia and Intolerance (what a long name!) is useless; it was also known, although this is less important, that the Commission of the Commission of the commissioners of the Commission had fined four thousand euros for those who uttered racist insults against Vinicius in Mallorca and that he was going to be prevented from entering sports venues for twelve months, but the first thing that was known, as he said, is that this Commission is useless, it must be changed or the law must be changed. Four thousand euros? And a year without being able to access a sports venue? For that amount of money and that period of time, it is just as worth it for a Ku Klux Klan millionaire to go to a football field and yell at a player “black shit.”
Today I read in Relevo an interview with Ivan Alejo. This footballer from Cádiz is, together with Maffeo and Raíllosomething like the Holy Trinity of World Sports Values for a large part of Spanish sports journalism. Vinicius is, for them, a provocateur, someone who needs psychological help and a bad teammate while these three players, who probably have not been interviewed as much in their entire professional career as they are now, are an example for children to follow. Spanish girls and boys. When reading Alejo in Relevo three months after his fight with Vinicius (three months later!) you fully realize that the whole controversy was programmed, who knows if even trained, and you also come to the conclusion that Iván still doesn’t really realize what he did because he doesn’t regret it at all. this: “I was clear that the first ball he touched was going to make it necessary for him to tell him that I was there, that if he wanted to play in the World Cup he should be calm. Obviously you are never going to injure a teammate, but that he should not cross the line “. What is crossing the line? Is playing soccer crossing the line? Do a dribble? Scoring a goal against Cádiz is for Alejo going over the line? What exactly does crossing the line consist of for him?
If we know what Alejo said to Vinicius, which clearly sounds like a threat, something like “this town is too small for both of us, stranger”, it is because he already recognized it in his day and now, three months after, does it again. We know it because of Alejo, not because of Vinicius, who did not say anything about what had happened on the pitch. So that the new acknowledgment of what Iván said so much time later means that he does not regret it, that it seems normal to him to tell a colleague to be careful and not to cross the line if he wants to play in the World Cup, that he will has assumed as a part of football. This is the moral referent. This is the exemplary lighthouse that should guide us all through life, someone who suggests to a fellow professional that he not play too well, lest he be left out of the world championship. Is this the first time that this has happened in a field? I sure don’t. But it is also the first time that you only know what one person says and not what the others say… except with Alejo. We haven’t heard Maffeo and Raíllo but, thank God, today there are cameras everywhere. Let’s imagine for a moment that it would have been the other way around and that Vinicius would have said that to Alejo. Real Madrid should have transferred the player to City.
