Argentine football could also be declared world champion of the most scandalous and incomprehensible tournaments. If Lionel Messi’s team was proclaimed world champion in Qatar 2022 and two-time American champions consecutively in Brazil 2021 and the United States 2024, the Argentine leagues descended to an underground level below the line of credibility. The Argentine Football Association (AFA) created a two-headed figure that from the symbolic begins to splash the heroes of Qatar: street murals in honor of the world champion team were vandalized by fans of different teams angry at the cataract of suspicious arbitrations and sudden changes in the regulations that corrode the day-to-day life of the tournaments, an emotional refuge for millions of Argentines.
The first great symbolic image of repudiation on a First Division playing field occurred this Sunday, when the Estudiantes de La Plata players turned their backs on their colleagues from Rosario Central in the hall of honor prior to the match they were to play in the round of 16 of the Clausura. The Rosario team, in which Angel Di María plays, had been declared champion three days before in an AFA office of a tournament that had already ended without anyone knowing that it had a title at stake.
Amid the enormous particularities in the organization of the tournaments, the First Division has 30 teams, a way of exercising power for Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, the president of the AFA. As the calendar is not enough to complete round-trip matches between all the clubs, the season is divided into two tournaments, the Apertura and the Clausura, which in turn are subdivided into two groups. The sum of points from both competitions is counted in the so-called Annual Table which, until last Thursday, was only believed to grant three places for the 2026 Copa Libertadores.
But no: once the regular season had concluded, that is, also that annual table, the previous weekend, the AFA let four days pass and unexpectedly declared the team that had finished in first place, Central, champion. It was a tournament that did not have a name – because it was not a tournament – but it was called League Champion 2025. In an unusual image, Di María, other Central players, the coach and leaders went to the AFA to receive an award that took the entire football environment by surprise. Then they celebrated in a car back to Rosario, 300 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
Justifying itself, the AFA announced that it was an agreement between the leaders of all the teams but, already on social networks, Estudiantes published that there had been no vote but that it had been a unilateral decision by the AFA. It was another round in the fight between the president and idol of Estudiantes, Juan Sebastian Veron – the former soccer player for the Argentine national team and various European clubs – with Tapia, which extends to other areas. The rest of the club leaders, on the other hand, maintain a good relationship with Tapia, or at least prefer not to confront him publicly: there is a hidden fear of being harmed by the arbitrations.
Coincidences of fixturethe next match after the unexpected consecration of Central, at 72 hours, had to be against Estudiantes, at home in Rosario. The AFA then ordered that the La Plata team give a hall of honor to the new champions, a figure that is very little used in Argentina and that had never been ordered by the AFA. More than intended for sporting honor, it seemed like a form of humiliation or submission, but Estudiantes did a judo turn: their players turned around and turned their backs on those from Central, a message not against the Rosario club but against the AFA. The match ended with another surprise: Estudiantes won 1-0 and eliminated Central, which had effectively been the best team of the year.
The AFA then began a bizarre counterattack: it reported hours after the game that, according to a resolution issued in February, the halls of honor had to be carried out with a certain protocol and that the team that did not comply would be sanctioned. According to that supposed document, “those in the hallway must remain in their place, looking at the players passing by, without making movements or behaviors that alter the normal development of the protocol.” That is, Estudiantes had failed to comply with the regulations.
However, computer experts – although it was not enough to know so much about the subject either – verified that this PDF had been created, although dated in February, in the last minutes of the match between Central and Estudiantes, that is, when the majority of Argentine football was already celebrating the gesture of rebellion by the La Plata club. It was even made with a version of Adobe released in September, so the document could not be from the beginning of the year. With the embarrassment stripped away, it was believed that the AFA would abandon the persecution, but no: finally the players and the president of Estudiantes were sanctioned.
This Thursday, the AFA Disciplinary Court suspended Verón for six months “from all activities related to football” and punished the 11 Estudiantes footballers who turned around in the hallway with two absence games. The sanction was greater for the president because, according to the organization, he acknowledged “having given the order that gave rise to the behavior judged here, which reveals that it was not an improvised gesture by a player.” Among the sanctioned footballers are the Uruguayan goalkeeper Fernando Muslera and the Colombian striker Edwuin Cetré.
The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, took advantage of the situation to support Estudiantes and criticize the AFA. Milei had already shown a La Plata team shirt in September 2024 when he was trying to pressure the AFA to remove the SAD, a legal figure prohibited in Argentine soccer, where the clubs are non-profit civil associations. Estudiantes, through Verón, introduced a possible investor, the American businessman Foster Gillet, who finally encountered rejection from the members of the La Plata club.
Football as political spoils
After the scandal in the hallway, Milei once again showed another Estudiantes shirt and restarted his attack against the AFA, an old desire of most Argentine presidents: to take control of football as political spoils. Tapia also received journalistic complaints in the last few hours about alleged money laundering for million-dollar figures in financial institutions linked to the AFA; the football leadership spoke of a “political destabilization operation.” A few months ago, Milei had stopped his advances towards the power of football when he was warned that Lionel Messi has a very good relationship with Tapia.
Beyond the political implications, the irregularities exceed the last First Division championship decided in an office and not on the playing field. In the previous week, the AFA Ethics Court had also surprised by suspending Walter Otta, the technical director of Morón, a Second Division team, because he had supposedly declared against the arbitrations that favored the team he had to face in the semifinals to be promoted to First Division, Deportivo Madryn.
Otta, in fact, could not sit on the substitute bench – his team lost and was eliminated – but he had never said that phrase: it had been a fake in networks that the AFA considered valid. The favored one was Deportivo Madryn, a team that had also passed the stage previously thanks to another failure in the offices, this time due to an alleged attack by Gimnasia de Jujuy leaders on the match referee that, as in the (non) statements of the Morón coach, no one could verify.
Among arbitrations suspected of favoring teams close to the most powerful leaders of the AFA, especially Barracas Central, the humble club that was chaired by Tapia between 2001 and 2014 and that in recent years went from the third division to the first division amid multiple controversies, various murals in honor of the 2022 world champion team began to be crossed out. The Vélez fans, this Saturday in their match against Argentinos Juniors, loudly insulted the president of the AFA.
While the credibility of the VAR is also hit, the AFA is multiplying the tournaments: in 2026 there may be nine different First Division champions between the League Champion, the Clausura, the Apertura, the Argentine Cup, the Argentine Super Cup, the Champions Trophy, the International Super Cup, the Champions Cup Winners’ Cup and the Champion of the year. Also in imagination, Argentine football should be declared world champion.
