Player paid the price for football money interests

The friendly football match between Spain and Argentina recently was a terrible match and part of a fabulous business. The price of the party – which was organised by business leaders from both countries who live well on soccer – is paid by the player Maximiliano Rodríguez: the Argentine midfielder suffered a ligament injury in his left knee and will loose six months of football.

His club Atlético Madrid will now seek compensation from the Argentina Football Association (AFA) in accordance with the fight that the powerful clubs from G-14 leads against FIFA.

But AFA looks away: It received 750,000 dollars for the match but the club from Madrid demands four times more for the injury of Rodriguez.

The match should never have been played. When warming up the day before, Spanish defender Carles Puyol was hurt.

According to the trainer of Atlético Madrid, Javier Aguirre, his two colleagues at the national teams, Alfio Basile and Aragonese Luis, had agreed that it was impossible to play on a field like the one at Nueva Condomina, the stadion that was inaugurated with the friendly match.

But the great family of football respects agreements. For Argentina, it was the second of the 24 friendly matches that the national team must play under the contract with the Russian

Renova Group. Of the 18 million dollars that the contract awards to AFA, the organization already received half in advance.

As for the Spaniards, the very president of the Real Federación Española, Angel Maria Villar Llona, had assured that the match would take place, because he had given his word to the owners of the new stadium that it should be inaugurated with a top encounter.

Villar is one of six junior vice-presidents of FIFA, whereas his counterpart in AFA, Julio Grondona, holds the office as FIFA’s only senior vice-president.

In addition, Villar is chairing FIFA’s Referees’ Committee, in which one members is Blunt Jorge, president of the Council of Referees at AFA and enjoying the confidence of the big shot of Argentine soccer: before arriving at  AFA he was supplier of Lombardi and Grondona, the ironworks owned by the AFA president.

The owner of the stadium is Real Murcia from the Spanish 2nd Division. Its president Jesus Samper Vidal who also is owner of Trusam the construction company that built the stadium... and he is also president of Santa Monica, the sport marketing company that, among other businesses, holds the tv right of Sevilla and interests in five clubs in Chilean soccer.

The co-director of Santa Monica is Juan Manuel Trujillo, also a co-owner of Trusam (which derives its name from Trujillo and Samper). Santa Monica, according to its website, sold the tv rights of Spain-Argentina to 90 countries.

As if he did not have sufficient occupations, Samper Vidal was in July appointed board member of the RFEF by Villar himself.

Was it in this function, or as a stadium constructor, that Samper came to Buenos Aires, less than a month ago, to announce the match? Too many interests mixed and mingled to suspend the fight.

The player Rodríguez now pays the abundance of business confidence with six months inactivity.

Original version by Pablo Vignone, Pagina /12 en Argentina. Edited and translated from Spanish by Jens Sejer Andersen.