FIFA, its low blow and the Malvinas cause | Opinion

FIFA hammers with the idea of ​​not doing politics in football but everything it touches is politicized. Now he got his claws into the U20 World Cup and the names of each stadium. He gave the order to change their identity, although no one wants to take charge. If the colors of a shirt are the DNI of a club, the fields are like the ID. The one in Mendoza – one of the four venues chosen for the Cup – has been called Malvinas Argentinas since the end of the war in the South Atlantic in 1982.

For the international federation, the mention of the islands seems an unacceptable flag. He has a poor memory. In 2001 a group from that tournament was played there which was won by the youth team led by José Pekerman. It was made up of Ukraine, the United States, China and Chile.

Twenty-two years later he changed his mind. Perhaps because this time England qualified and not that time. A genuflection gesture with the United Kingdom and political overacting. Although the news of the demand was not made official, it reached the media and the controversy was published with some display. This chronicler tried to check if the Mendoza government had accepted the imposition – in short, it is the one that administers it – and did not receive a response from its Undersecretary of Sports, the radical Federico Chiapetta.

The Secretary of the Malvinas, Antarctica and South Atlantic Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guillermo Carmona, clarified on his twitter account that had not received “inquiries from the province of Mendoza in relation to the alleged request by FIFA to change the name of the Malvinas Argentinas Stadium for its designation as the venue for the U-20 World Cup”.

In addition to that 2001 World Cup, national team tournaments in another sport such as rugby were also played on the same stage: the 2005 M21 World Cup and the Rugby Championship.

According to Mendoza media, the province would have agreed in the context of a change of names that reached the four stadiums destined for the competition: Diego Maradona de La Plata where the final will be played -renamed after his death on November 25, 2020-, Santiago del Estero, Madre de Ciudades – venue of the opening match – and the Bicentennial of San Juan. The four should have the identity of their provinces and the Buenos Aires capital. As if politics were a matter of place names.

With the hypocrisy of FIFA and its leaders, a time line can be made that is accompanied by its partners for convenience: dictators, genocidal, exploitative kings or emirs, various characters who would not resist a modest file of respect for human rights. Soccer is innocent of this type of filth invoked in its name.

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