Argentine Media Spews Hate Against Maradona

By Guillermo Almeyra

Diego Maradona was an extraordinary player, but is a sorry man and a very bad coach of any team and, still more, that of the national team as the results show. I think that as a person, together with his massive defects and bad habits, he is generous and has an instinctive position against the powerful like how as member of the international footballers’ union he denounced FIFA boss Blatter, of Switzerland, as a mafioso: or in Argentina Julio Grondona of the Argentine Football Association, something both will always remember, or how he spoke out against the last Argentinian dictatorship and in favour of Alba and Cuba and against oligarchy, something that is neither forgotten nor forgiven.

On the other hand, football some time ago ceased to be a sport and the clubs are no longer that but businesses which kill the sport to promote good players, not to form a good, stable team constructed through years of common work, but to sell them abroad for much more than what is declared to the treasury and to the members. The club directors pay… Argentinian football hooligans…and rent them to reactionary political forces like the anti-poor police of Buenos Aires municipality, recruited from the hooligans of San Lorenzo who are “crows” on the field and vultures on the urban streets.

Now the sky has opened on Maradona because, with the fine elegance and style that characterised it, he said his critics could “go suck” (without being more explicit about what he was referring to). Grondona hinted at throwing him out on the street. Blatter threatened him with a large fine and suspension for five games (possibly World Cup games) and the poisonous media of Argentina, in the great majority unbridled and limitless in its opposition to Cuba, Chavez, the national government, AFA, the team and Maradona, have discovered suddenly that they themselves are well-spoken and moralists, breathing fire on the loud mouth.

Well, the television programme with the highest rating simulates intercourse and shows a great profusion and variety of bottoms in the “famous” pole dances and television news…says that the Kirchners are “like the Ceausescu and should end up like them” (or be lynched), which is much more serious than the obscenities of a brusque footballer…

Who is behind this hate for the team, the hope clearly formulated that they do not win, with the intention of doing away with Maradona…? To start with the $4-billion-dollar business that just ended for the Clarín (media) group for the pre-paid transmission of football matches on cable television.

The Argentine government, in effect, came to an agreement with the mafioso Grondona and with the clubs… imposing a law which established that the games would be freely available in the open television channels and that the state would be able to sell the rights abroad… The approval of the broadcasting law affected the possibilities of misinforming and poisoning public opinion. The Opposition groups and those that lost in the football business are now taking aim at Maradona to end the agreement between the government and AFA. It is not about, well, morals or condemning the more than colourful language… For that, in this case, I am defending the dreadful Maradona.

Abridged

Source: La Jornada
Related Article: Dark History of the 1978 Football World Cup

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