The barras bravas, masters of argentine football

At the beginning of this decade, an argentine journalist drew a comparison that any stranger would not have understood. “The last two cracks of our football team are Sergio Aguero and Javier Cantero”. He was referring, in addition to the Kun, the newly elected president of the Independent, in 2011, an iconoclast, who sought to rule against the authorities of the other clubs: it faced the bar brava " of your computer —violent that frightened her with only to cross paths with them, they took away the business —received the club's $ 40,000 per month— they threw him out of the seat and the stadium. Today, while the factory of goals from Aguero continues to open, Bed has four years of experience to your construction company: is a pariah of the football.

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“In Europe do not understand the phenomenon barrabrava because they think they are a violent and isolated, as the hooligans, and the truth is that they are part of the system,” says Cantero. “Up come the politicians, not all, because there are exceptions, but many. Politicians appoint or bless judges and police officers, and the barrabravas are his workmanship,” explains, who was called don Quixote.

Mason took two years in office. Very soon he was left alone. “I was going to see ministers and told me to loosen: ‘But how many entries you ask? What 500? Give them 200 and ready’. Or was a police officer and I said: ‘You put cocaine in the car of the leader of the bar, and I have two years prisoner but managed by whom they replace and those we of us’. In a classic fit with Mouth, put it right of admission to the two bars. Wine Daniel Angelici [current president of Mouth] and he told me everything, asked me who I thought it was. When I went to the AFA leaders of the clubs did not want me, told me I was exposing. And I lost the internal support when in sports we were wrong: there I was wrong a lot”, it assumes a Stonemason, who gives rise to the resultadismo that eats away at the argentine football: for the fans, of any team, is most shameful and stigmatising a defeat sport that an act of violence.

this is how the bars bravas, the knot of a problem that has led the Liberators to Madrid by the violence of the ultras. Perhaps the only thing predictable is that the next day every day violent, as the piedrazos, which broke the bus that transferred to Boca at the Monumental, in the media, repeats a phrase as a mantra: “we must banish to the bars as the british did with the hooligans”. But it is impossible. Every two or three years to reach european experts to treat the phenomenon barrabrava and in a short time warn the infeasibility of implementing a european solution in Argentina.

“In Europe, the hooligans were marginal groups with no connection to the system,” said the Dutch specialist Otto Adang, in 2009. “In Argentina, the bars are linked to the business. Have passes of players, they handle the merchandising on the streets, parking lots, sale of drugs and have links with the political power to astonish. This is why the problem in Argentina is much more serious, because you have to change the system. While this does not happen, it is naive to think in re-bar, or generate a rollover from education”. Everything remains the same.

When you are at the stadium, the murderer of your brother

The theme of the bar bravas is so complex that Perabet it is not always the members of these groups are those responsible for generating violence. Those who threw stones to the bus of Mouth were fans common. The same thing happened, with the greatest fortune for the players of River, when returning from the Bombonera after the trip: your vehicle also ended up chipping but with no players injured. And leave not be minor in comparison to others. Last year, in a classic local Workshops and Belgrano, in Cordoba, a fan recognized the murderer of his brother and began to harass the crime. The defendant defended himself by telling the rest of the fans that Balbo was of Workshops. The crowd acted in mass: began to take in the grandstand who was, supposedly, an infiltrator: Balbo fell from height and died within a few hours. The argentine sociologist Pablo Alabarces defined to that barbarism with a term: barrabravismo. “The stamina is a political and moral mandate”, says; “the violence, in spite of his own negative, it constitutes a suitable place to build identity. Creates strong feelings of belonging. It creates an us stable and solid, allows you to acquire a significance impossible in other kinds of identifications”.

In a recent book, The owners of the ball, the journalist Federico Yanez reveals that the authorities of the vast majority of clubs have a direct relationship with political, judicial and trade union. That the replacement of Bed in the Independent has been the then leader of the trade union centre historical of Argentina, Hugo Moyano, it should not be surprising. The largest sample of the free football-power, but not the only one, is Mouth, the club from which Mauricio Macri —its president between 1995 and 2007— he began his career to the Casa Rosada: the dome in its leadership of the club passed in recent years, judicial officials, parliamentarians, provincial ministers, vice-presidents of legislatures and proprietors of institutes planned. In 2012 he was appointed head of security at the club, a prosecutor who years ago had been at the wedding of the leader of the barra brava, Rafael Di Zeo. “He's my friend,” he said. Also the commissions directives of the River, and the rest of the clubs are built by ministers, barristers, solicitors and trade union leaders. “The eradication of the bars would complicate doubly many leaders: out of fear or convenience, used to politics and football”, says Yañez.

In the magazine this week's News, one leader explained from anonymous: “to Investigate the bars would be to stick a shot in the foot. The clubs are not only football teams but also a place to do business, politics and lobby. And to grow in the clubs you have to have the bar in your favor. They are paid to go to playing the bass drum acts up, I get a charge on the State, hire them as security in public buildings or put them in the company of a leader. They are merchants of violence.”

however, it is possible that a large part of this culture barrabrava not arrive at the Bernabeu. According to the chroniclers, specialized in violence, a subgenre within the sports journalism in Argentina, the first and second lines of the bar does not travel to Spain. It would be venturing into a territory where you do not have protectors. Nor can they sell out the 5,000 tickets that went on sale in Argentina for each club to high prices: between 80 and 250 euros.

“And what about you, what you had done? Would you have paid the bar?”, responds Bed every time you ask him if his error was to have believed in an individual solution, quixotic. It was neither that nor any other.