Time Out

For red-hot enthusiasm, Argentine football (i.e., soccer) fans rate with any sport fanatics in the world. Buenos Aires alone supports 16 big-league clubs and 24 second-class teams, each with its own stadium or field. The season runs for 30 weeks: on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, crowds totaling more than 300,000 turn out in the capital.

When a porteno goes to the stadium he wears his oldest clothes, yells himself hoarse, insults opposition rooters, throws oranges, occasionally sets fire to the stands if things go too badly. Few women (and fewer ladies) go to the games.

Futbol and politics are so tangled that sometimes it is hard to tell exactly where the kicking ends and the politicking begins. Each of the big sporting clubs that sponsor first-class teams has at least one prominent patron-politico to wangle favors, subsidies and stadiums from the government. So last week, when all football schedules were abruptly canceled, it was both a political and a sport scandal.

Thunder. The trouble began last spring when players, brooding over past grievances, organized a union; some felt underpaid, all were exasperated by the rules which allow clubs to sell or trade players at will. Wealthy clubs had taken to buying up promising hooters, not to play but to sit idle on the bench. A fortnight ago, the players put on a token strike. At exactly 3:45 p.m., in every stadium in Argentina, all players abruptly stood stock-still for one minute, then went on with the game.

Football Czar Oscar Nicolini (who is also Argentina's director of Post & Telegraphs) was no man to suffer such a rebuke in silence. Promptly he called a meeting of the powerful governing body, AFA (Asociacion de Futbol Argentina'). To teach the players a stern lesson, AFA voted to wash out the rest of the season.

Blunder. The minute the decision was announced, the government, watching carefully, sensed a major political blunder. The season had only five weeks to go, and the 50,000 members of the league-leading "Racing" club were furious. So were backers of the second-place "River Plate" club (nicknamed Los Millonarios because of the club's free-handed spending for players). So were the "Boca Juniors" (No. 1 fan: President Juan Peron). So was nearly everybody else.

No one could prove that word came down from on high. Nevertheless, in midweek, AFA unexpectedly called off the suspension, offered to arbitrate the dispute. Negotiations dragged, and the clubs got set for Sunday games with non-union oldsters and youngsters. Smart porteno money was on a settlement that would shortly have the stars back on the field, kicking and happy.

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