Nothing worked. Or everything went wrong, which is worse. From. To one week, since Argentina’s game with the Netherlands, it was known that the moment that happened yesterday was very likely. The meeting of the players of the soccer team that won the World Cup with the society to which they belong, even if they live abroad, and in the country where they were born. no one ever foresaw anything. The only obsession of the Alberto Fernández government wasfrom the moment of the triumph against France and the consecration of the Argentine athletes as world champions, to achieve that those players meet him at Government House. The photo with Messi and with the World Cup became the President’s only political project. He made various efforts, direct and indirect, to achieve that image. He got nothing. The president of the AFA, Chiqui Tapiaan old political pastry chef, put pastry aside and set his priority: preserve the good relationship that he established with the team of players. Goodbye to his successive fabrics with albertismo and with La Cámpora. Tapia refused to pressure the players to visit the Government House, according to interlocutors of the AFA boss. The players know, by their own curiosity or by the story of relatives, that Argentina lives trapped in an unbearable crack. None of these athletes wanted to fall into the fracture that divides Argentine society. Alberto Fernández thus became the first Argentine president (and the only one in the world) to be denied the opportunity of a greeting by a sports team that won a world championship.. Despite the fact that the Government is still speculating about the possibility of a meeting in the next few hours or days between the head of state and a representative of the national team, the truth is that the habit was broken of a World Cup team visiting the President shortly after his arrival in the country. Here with Raul Alfonsin, and throughout the world, athletes visited and visit the President because they recognize him as the representative of all their compatriots. It is the way to greet everyone by visiting the political figure who was chosen to represent the national society. The confusion caused by Alberto Fernández (does he represent Cristina Kirchner or the State? How many Argentines feel represented by him?) apparently reached the world champion soccer team. His political loneliness and a certain feeling of power vacuum are more exposed since yesterday.
Vainly, the representatives of The Campora They tried to beat the President to the punch and get the photo with Messi and the World Cup before him. The Minister of the Interior, Edward of Peterand the president of Aerolíneas Argentinas, Paul Ceriani, two campers with black palates, were located at the bottom of the stairs of the plane of the flag airline company that brought the champion players. The objective was clear: to obtain the photo with the captain of the selection and with the World Cup. But It was Tapia who immediately stood between the players and the campersjust Tapia who in recent times preferred to get involved with maximum kirchner more than with Alberto Fernández. Frustrated operation. Although no one said it, it is evident that Tapia knows that the players do not want to be enlisted, albeit in appearances, with no local political faction. And Tapia is more secure because now he knows that the world championship screwed him also in the AFA chair for four more years, at least. He no longer needs allies or acquaintances or benefactors.
The organization of the popular celebration was an example of disorganization. Both from the national government and from the capital government. The only way for players to get to the Obelisk would have been to be airlifted in helicopters and set up in a circular arena there. The possibility of them arriving in groups never existed when close to four million people had crowded into a relatively small space. Horacio Rodriguez Larreta had the opportunity to show the efficient organization of a popular festival. He lost her. Hannibal Fernandez, National Minister of Security, should have shown the same aptitude to guarantee the safety of the team and of the common people. He didn’t show it. Already in the caravan of the selection from the Ezeiza airport to the AFA headquarters, also in Ezeiza, there was a moment of extreme danger for the players, who had to avoid a high voltage electricity cable. It could have been a tragedy, easily avoidable if someone from national or provincial security had gotten on the bus with them and marked the places they shouldn’t use for transportation. It is worth seeing the images of the arrival of the Moroccan soccer team in their country to see the difference between a country with a State and a country without a State.
Everything was further aggravated by the absurd national holiday decreed by Alberto Fernández. Why subject the companies of Catamarca, Jujuy, Córdoba or Mendoza to a national holiday for a celebration that would take place in a handful of square kilometers between the Capital and the province of Buenos Aires? Why upset the agenda of millions of Argentines, who had to comply with work, medical or any other commitments? Only a country that despises work can afford, in the midst of a monumental economic crisis, to be paralyzed because it won the soccer world championship.. Perhaps it was one more gesture by Alberto Fernández to ingratiate himself with the players of the national team. Useless, if it was for that. Already on Monday morning, official spokesmen had made it known that Alberto Fernández would adopt Alfonsín’s format in the 1986 World Cup if the team visited him. This is: he would receive the players and greet them, but then he would leave them alone so that they could celebrate from the famous balcony of the Government House. That idea was later officially anticipated by Minister Aníbal Fernández. Any. Tapia’s messages from Qatar, after the triumph, indicated that the players just wanted to celebrate with the people. They did not want politicians by their side. Mauricio Macri he played with more skill because he never directly showed himself with the national team, not even in Qatar after the victory. In passing, he exhibited himself with several foreign leaders, such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The emir of Qatar was also seen walking several meters to hug Macri when the team became world champion; the hug lasted endless minutes. After the first (and only) defeat of the Argentine team against Saudi Arabia, Kirchnerism hastened to brand the former president a mufa because he was in Doha. Anxiety is the worst enemy of Kirchnerism. What will he say Rodolfo Tailhade now, after he started that campaign against Macri? Perhaps, that it will always be necessary to take him to the world championships, even if he is no longer a FIFA official? They are all idiots because they have nothing to do with reality, but with superstition. Neither Macri is mufa nor could it be a cabal.
The collective madness that was experienced this Tuesday must be explained beyond the soccer world championship. It was good news for a society that has just lived four years (including Macri’s last) hit by bad news. Very high inflation, devalued salaries, political brawls that only matter to politicians, indescribable insecurity in its dimension, tantrums from the vice president (and the President) against the Judiciary. In the middle, the pandemic that sowed disease, death and fear in society, led by a government leadership that did not succeed either with the quarantine or with the early choice of vaccines. A political leadership, in short, obsessed with its own navel. The former world soccer champion and exquisite Argentine writer Jorge Valdano thus analyzed the local team’s championship in the Spanish newspaper El País: “The country is going through a very difficult time politically, socially and economically, a catastrophe mitigated for a month by the enormous force of the World Cup.” And he added: “At the end of this World Cup epically, I don’t know how long the country will remain united around soccer because we tend to divide. We are difficult.” In short, there is a complex line to distinguish in yesterday’s collective frenzy between celebration and catharsis.
The celebrations and political opportunism once again relegated the situation of the Iranian footballer Amir Nasr-Azadaniwho could die by hanging in imminent times by the theocratic regime of Iran. An announced crime. Nasr-Azadani had only participated in a protest over the murder, in the midst of torture, of a young woman detained by the state police because she was not wearing the veil that must cover her face properly. Until now, the national government has not said anything about this succession of violations of the most basic principles of human rights in the world.. Silence. Complicity. Does he continue, perhaps, the special relationship with the Tehran government that he began at the time Cristina Kirchner? “Cristina manages the foreign ministry, not Cafiero,” said a career Argentine diplomat. Macri should also make efforts so that the leadership of FIFA, where he has influence, take the world initiative in defense of the life of Nasr-Azadani. Macri’s former foreign minister George Faurie He said in a tweet: “It is a shame that the current Argentine government does not condemn or protest the dramatic violations of human rights that the Government of Iran is committing. Are human rights different depending on the religion or political affiliation of the person who violates them?” he wondered. Also the Political Club, which presides over Graciela Fernandez Meijide, addressed the President to urgently address the situation of Nasr-Azadani. Will the declared international policy of Alberto Fernández, which, according to him, has human rights as a priority, not work either? It is probable. In an anarchic and disorganized country, life and death lost value. That doesn’t even work anymore.