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After 509 matches, the longest and most chaotic football championship in the world will end on Saturday 13 December: the Argentine Liga Profesional de Fútbol. The decisive match will be played at 1am in Italy (between Saturday and Sunday) between Racing Club de Avellaneda and Estudiantes, who have not won the national title since 2019 and 2010 respectively.
The Argentine league has long been the most important in South America, but several scandals and problems are compromising its image. Today La Liga is experiencing a profound economic crisis, which has caused its teams to lose competitiveness (largely surpassed, at continental level, by the Brazilian ones), and great organizational confusion.
The aspect that best describes this case is the organization of the Liga. In the last 13 years the championship has changed format six times, with often rather bizarre solutions. The last change occurred a year ago, when it was decided to re-establish the double annual tournament formula, which had been missing since 2014.
In this way the Liga awards two different titles during the calendar year. The first is that of the Apertura Tournament, played from January 23rd to June 1st, the second is that of the Clausura Tournament, which will be awarded on Saturday. In addition to this, the number of participants increased from 28 to 30, and the championship was divided into two groups of 15 teams: the top 8 in each group then participate in a direct elimination phase (the playoffs, essentially).
An action from the last match between Racing Club and Estudiantes (Rodrigo Valle/Getty Images)
Even more complicated is the mechanism that establishes the two relegations at the end of the year. One is the last of the annual tablei.e. the ranking that adds the Apertura and Clausura points, while the other is the team with the worst averageor the one with the worst points average obtained in this season and in the previous two.
Under these rules, Club Atlético San Martín and Godoy Cruz were relegated, while the Apertura title surprisingly went to Platense, who had never won a national trophy in their entire history. On 20 November, at the end of the regular phase of the Clausura Tournament (i.e. before the start of the direct elimination matches) the AFA, the Argentine football federation, awarded without any warning a third national title to Rosario Central as winner of the annual tablethat is, for having scored more points by adding those obtained in the two semi-annual tournaments.
The existence of this trophy was discovered by Argentine fans the moment the Rosario Central players left the federation’s offices with the trophy, and it understandably raised a lot of controversy. The strongest was that of Estudiantes, a club chaired by Juan Sebastián Verón, former Sampdoria, Parma, Lazio and Inter player. After the awarding of the trophy, Rosario Central faced Estudiantes, and the latter was asked to do the hall of honora sort of reverence given to national champions when they enter the field. The Estudiantes players had their backs turned during the aisleand for this all 11 were disqualified for two matches. Verón received a six-month ban and Santiago Núñez was banned from wearing the captain’s armband for three months.
The first edition with the new format therefore proved to be a disaster from various points of view. The awarding of the title via single knockout matches means that 14 out of 30 teams spend around two and a half months without playing. Furthermore, finishing first or eighth in the standings doesn’t change much, and this takes away a bit of competitiveness from the first part of the two championships.
The finals are played on the neutral pitch of Santiago del Estero, a town of almost 300 thousand inhabitants in northern Argentina, generating other paradoxical situations. In the Apertura final, for example, Platense and Huracán faced each other, two clubs whose stadiums are 20 kilometers apart (they are both from the Buenos Aires area), but it was played over a thousand kilometers from Buenos Aires, and in a facility with only 30 thousand seats.
Recently, the Santiago del Estero stadium has often been chosen to host the finals of national tournaments thanks above all to Pablo Toviggino, the treasurer of the AFA and trusted man of President Claudio Tapia (who in turn is very close to Gerardo Zamora, the provincial governor of Santiago).
Platense players before the Torneo Apertura final played in Santiago del Estero (Joaquín Camiletti/Getty Images)
The final of the Clausura Tournament between Racing Club and Estudiantes will always be played in Santiago del Estero, in an atmosphere made even more surreal by another recent scandal. On Tuesday 9 December the police searched the premises of the AFA and four clubs, including the Racing Club, as part of an investigation into tax evasion and money laundering. The authorities’ suspicion is that the federation and some clubs have had illicit economic relationships with Sur Finanzas, a financial company founded only four years ago but which has already become one of the main commercial partners of the AFA and Argentine clubs (it currently sponsors Banfield, Barracas Central and Racing Club).
Sur Finanzas was founded as a cryptocurrency and online payments company, but according to the revelations of the Argentine newspaper Clarion most of its investments would be made through shell companies. The management of Sur Finanzas, in particular the CEO Ariel Vallejo, is said to have ambiguous ties with AFA president Tapia. According to documents made public by The NationTapia had received a credit card from Sur Finanzas in 2023, which remained active until last month. The newspaper also revealed that Tapia and Vallejo were working on a deal to issue an AFA-exclusive credit card.
In this catastrophic season for Argentine football, which at national level holds both the world and continental titles, there has at least been some good news. In July the AFA announced a gradual reopening of away matches to fans, which had been banned entirely in 2012 for public order reasons.
