Violence Wins Again in Argentina

By: Christian | August 12th, 2007

Today’s match between River Plate and Newell’s Old Boys has been suspended. The Minster of the Interior handed down the ruling this week, in an effort to prevent acts of violence within or outside the Monumental stadium. As of today, no future date for the match has been set. This comes days after the shooting of River Plate barra Gonzalo Acro, who was shot along with a companion leaving a gymnasium in Buenos Aires. He was pronounced dead Thursday. Arco was a member of the River barra group, Los Borrachos del Tablon, which in recent months has fought a war amongst its members for control of the terraces. Amid rumors of vengeance that appeared on message boards and in public, and given that the match against Newell’s itself was already a heated affair, the decision was made to call off the match.

Since I began this blog, I have done my best to avoid discussing barra bravas and specifically LBDT, because frankly I feel that it’s discussed to death elsewhere and I’d rather focus on the football. However, in a previous post, I discussed the recent decision to allow only half of away fans to enter a visiting teams grounds in an attempt to reduce violence, and I said that this was a ridiculous ruling, which punished innocent fans and avoided the real problems. Days later, the murder of Acro occurred, and now before even one fan was allowed to enter the stadium, an act of violence has once again, stopped football.

So we are back to where we were before. The actions of a few, whose motives are simple greed, are the ones who are deciding the outcome of Argentine football. Instead of talking about the Apertura season, the headlines are about the power struggle between thugs. Make no mistake, River Plate has allowed this to happen; they turned a blind eye while barras overran the club, and were given carte blanche to come and go as they pleased. They were given tickets, money, and jobs (Acro was a club employee before being let go this year). AFA have known of the problems for years and yet sat on their hands and did nothing. Yet again, el futbol is the real victim.

Violence Wins Again in Argentina

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