Fifa’s huge prize money risks making a handful of clubs almost infinitely wealthier than their domestic rivals
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ast Sunday, in the northern Argentinian city of Santiago del Estero, Platense beat Huracán 1-0 to win Argentina’s Apertura, the decisive goal a beautiful dipping effort struck at the top of the bounce by Guido Mainero. It was the first title in the club’s 120‑year history and provoked scenes of extraordinary emotion.
Platense are one of Argentina’s quirkier clubs. They are nicknamed the Squid because their original ground was built on a marsh and the story grew that they played better in wet conditions when, as the journalist Antonio Palacio Zino put it, “the boys moved like squid in their ink”. The boggy conditions are also supposedly why they wear brown after an early director thought it would help to hide mud stains; the real reason is probably that their first members agreed to wear the colours of a jockey who won a particular race.
None of their fans expected anything like this. Just as it has been for the rash of other rare winners across the world in recent months, for Newcastle, for Crystal Palace, for Aberdeen, for Union Saint-Gilloise, for VfB Stuttgart, it was a time for reflection, to remember friends and family long since passed who would have loved to have been there. “At a time like this,” one of their joint managers, Favio Orsi, said, “I think of my old man. I owe football to my old man. I thank life for everything I shared with him.”
