Only in Argentina: the new football season

Though I love Argentina with all my heart, it's renowned for it's many rules and huge bureaucracy which make sure that every document you need requires at least 3 visits to different locations that then try to make sure they never open on the same days of the week. It's also renowned for there almost always being a more practical unofficial way of getting the same thing done, resulting in almost everybody knowing somebody who will arrange what you need.

Permits, taxes, concert tickets or money changing, there's a "grey" way of doing or getting almost anything. The more and higher placed people you know, the bigger the things you can arrange. Today however something happened that even for Argentina is quite unique in it's audacity.

At the end of last football season, legendary local footballclub River Plate was relegated to the second division after performing terribly for quite some years already. As a protection against the big teams relegating, the results of the last 3 years (6 seasons) are measured in Argentina, so you really have to have quite a bad streak to relegate.

Riots during the River vs. Belgrano relegation match

Everybody was already preparing for the first year without a Boca vs. River Plate Superclasico between the two most popular teams, when the Argentine Football Association (AFA) announced today that as of immediately they have decided to merge the first and second division in to one big division with 38 teams. And so River Plate is no longer relegated! Teams will play in two divisions of 19 with the best 5 from each division then competing in play-offs for the championship.

The spokesman of the AFA even honestly announced that the only reason that they did this was because of "this whole mess with River". Turns out that they got a call from their television partner that they only pay this much for the rights because of the big clubs, so River needed to be reinstated.

Funny thing is that the television rights partner is the official government owned Canal 7. The Kirchner presidency bought the television rights as a political stunt under the name of "Futbol Para Todos" or "football for everyone", so everybody could watch all matches for free. Christina Kirchner earlier also personally decided that River fans could attend the last match of the season even though they were supposed to be banned after earlier riots, resulting in huge damage to the "Monumental" stadium

Canal 7, the state owned football rights holder

Seems that now they also try to placate the millions of River fans by interfering directly with the AFA. Did I mention it's an election year?

The press are up in arms and early opinion polls see huge majorities against this plan as well, so we will have to wait and see how it all turns out, but if the government really can get away with this one, it shows yet again what a long way we still have to come in this beautiful country to get rid of corruption. Here's hoping.

Update August 2nd 2012: Good news! It's only a few days later and after huge protests in the media and on social networks and a demonstration in front of the AFA headquarters today, it was announced that the plans have been cancelled and the current league system will stay in place after all.