Barros Bravos
I’m a fan of Argentine football — I would love to see Boca Juniors vs. River Plate before I die, call it a dream. And, as a fan (from afar) of criminal consipracies, I thought this was pretty interesting.
The supporters groups (Barra Brava) have long since strong-armed their way into the club’s pockets, demanding free tickets, a percentage of concessions, even skimming off the top of gate sales and player transfers. But as the money in the game gets bigger, the tension changes focus from rival Barra Brava competing against one another (the English hooligan paradigm), into internecine fighting over the slice of pie various gang factions are getting. And as we see anywhere else in the world, once the money gets big enough, the weapons come out and the killing starts.
There is a lot of discussion going on in England right now about the recent transfers of Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo (who went for a staggering $112 million) and how this level of spending might have inflated the player market — but what isn’t getting discussed is how that inflation, the big, big money is trickling down into places like Argentina or Brazil — nations that function as de-facto “feeder nations” for the top European clubs.
If C. Ronaldo is worth $112m, and a player like Gremio’s young starlet Douglas Costa is worth $25m, the question then becomes, what is that amount of money worth . . . to the gangsters and extortion artists who plague South American football?
It’s worth your ass, you can bet that. If I were a club chairman at Gremio, or Palmerias, or Newell’s Old Boys, or Colo Colo for that matter, I’d be seriously thinking about retirement.
Or about hiring some ninjas.