The referee blows the whistle. The game ended and the team that leads Claudio Fabian Tapia he is the new champion. Everything is revelry and joy, but in the midst of the festivities the cell phone of the “Chiqui” sounds over and over again. Not even three minutes have passed since the end of the tournament, but the man who is calling should not be kept waiting. The voice is unmistakable. “Congratulations kid, you are champion. Enjoy it”, heand says JJulio Humberto Grondona from the other side of the line.
Since that call from the soccer boss, when Tapia had just achieved his first sporting achievement -ascending, for the first time in his history, to Barracas Central to the metropolitan B– Twelve years passed. Although a lot of time passed, deep down nothing changed: achievements on the field translate into political victories, as the man who wore the ring that said “Everything happens” well knew. Now, with the World Cup at hand, it became clear who best understood Grondona’s legacy, the first to occupy the throne of power that he vacated. The “Chiqui” era is here to stay.
THREE STARS. How much remains of that Tapia from 2010? Or, going even further back, how much remains of the Tapia who arrived in the Capital with his humble family from San Juan?
Those close to the “Comandante”, as his sides in the AFA call him, say that everything has to do with his origins. That Claudio Tapia He recites from memory, to this day, the streets of Barracas and La Boca through which he had to pass the broom when he had his first job, as a street sweeper: Wenceslao Villafane, Almirante Brown avenue to Parque Lezama, and from there it went down Martín García. They say that he became president of the Argentine Football Association precisely because of the experience that the street gave him -he was also a collector for the Manliba company, owned by the Macri, a time when he joined Camioneros-, and because of his years as a trade unionist, a double condition that brought him to the world of soccer with the waist already trained, in addition to the push that the marriage he had with Paola Moyano, Hugo’s daughter, gave him.
THIRD. Tapia, celebrating in Qatar after Argentina’s victory against France. The National Team had just won the World Cup.
Today Tapia is quite similar to his mentor, Grondona, whom he always admired and whom he was curious about not knowing a word of English. In this it can be said that the “Chiqui” was ahead: does not need any other language to fight with Aníbal Fernández, in what was the previous to the failed caravan of the Selection, to exchange messages with Peter’s “Wado” from the plane that brought him and the champions from Qatar, to receive congratulations from Maximo and Cristina Kirchner after the world trophy, or to convey the message to Alberto Fernández that he has well kept in his memory the moment in which the President tried to displace him. And, above all, Tapia knows that with Spanish you can understand well who is the heart of his political capital, the key with which he managed to have the entire local soccer leadership under his wing, even those who criticized him or wanted displace it: Lionel Messi, and the achievements and businesses that can be achieved with the Ten.
Is that the “Chiqui” He knows it: these World Cup days he seems to feel like the most powerful man in the country.
Those who know Tapia say that with Alberto and his government there is not a single problem, but rather a sum of several.
Here you first have to understand the psychology of the soccer manager. For the majority, politics is the kingdom of “everything happens”, Grondona would say: a world where faces change every two or four years, while the ball -and its owners- always remain, and whose mandates are not defined by millions of people all over the country but just a handful. “It’s that soccer controls more territory in Argentina than the Catholic Church,” he says Daniel Ferreiro, former vice president of Nueva Chicago, who was a spokesman for Tapia and, after a few years of clashes, now he became friends with him again. And “El Chiqui” showed that she knows the world of soccer. He became president in 2017 -after the scandal of 38 to 38 of 2015 that relegated the chances of Marcelo Tinelli and the intervention of the AFA- thanks to the power that the “United Promotion” gave him, a group of clubs from the interior and promotion with which he gathered the 40 votes that made him president.
Tapia is the first to handle politics with calculated coldness. With Fernandez, for example, he has plenty of reasons to be distanced. Alberto tried to displace him when he became president, supporting candidates like Tinelli, the failed president of San Lorenzo, or Marcelo Achile, head honcho of Defensores de Belgrano. Those who closely followed this fight point out that the big problem was that the president “broke the codes”, an affront that is not usually forgotten in this world: Tapia, Tinelli and Alberto They had closed a verbal agreement at the beginning of 2020 so that the once successful television host would keep the management of the local league and “El Chiqui” would be elected again in the AFA. But with local football in the hands of Tinelli, he and Alberto became emboldened and wanted to take heaven by storm, and pushed a legal complaint against the re-election of “Chiqui”. The General Inspection of Justice, in fact, had in its hands the silver bullet to oust him, but the body chaired by Ricardo Nissen, Cristina Kirchner’s lawyer with many terminals in the K ecosystem, rejected that request. That decision, and the relationship between Santiago Carreras, director of YPF, the only official who traveled to Qatar, and the man who helped put out this and other fires, explains why Tapia looks more favorably on Kircherism than on the President.
Hence, it never crossed his mind to go to La Rosada to celebrate the championship. Hannibal Fernandez, on the Tuesday morning of the caravan, he proposed to her more than once. Before, when they were in Qatar, there were also negotiations, which began after the match against the Netherlands. But they did not prosper.
The great topic of debate, however, is what within football is known as “twelve twelve”. It is decree 1212 that Macri’s AFIP promulgated but that Alberto’s government validated, and that significantly increases the social charges paid by clubs in Argentina. In the only face-to-face talk on this subject, in a very heated heads-up at the beginning of 2020, Tapia told the President that this decision implied an impact of up to $700 million per year – a calculation that helped him arm his hand right, Pablo Toviggino (see box) -, which could bankrupt many clubs. As a good politician, “El Chiqui” knows that the support he can get from the leaders depends on the economic health of the clubs they command.
With macrismo the relationship is not much better. Although Tapia has a good dialogue with Daniel Angelici, with whom he closed an agreement at the time to be president -in fact, “el Tano” was very active during the World Cup with the distribution of tickets-, with Macri he keeps his distance. The intervention of the AFA that made his government is in the fresh memory of the sports leaders, and also the fear, widely shared, about the future of the founder of PRO. In the world of football it is understood that the former president wants to influence this environment again -he is the head of the FIFA Foundation for a reason-, and many think that this new radicalized Macri, who talks about privatizing Aerolíneas Argentinas and other branches of the State, would promote this business model for the field of baseball. And, in addition to what that would mean for the millions of fans and partners throughout the country, for soccer leaders, privatization would mean removing them from the field.
THE BALL DOES NOT GET DIRTY. Even Tapia’s opponents admit that his great success was the communion he achieved with Messi and the players. The letter to Conmebol in which he denounced irregularities -after a controversial elimination of Argentina against Brazil in the 2019 Copa América-, which earned him no place on the FIFA Council -a position that
He is very Peronist, and from there he maintains a fluid relationship with his governor, Gerardo Zamora. He is not only the economic brain of the AFA but also manages institutional and political relations.
Also noteworthy in this field are the terminals he has with Sergio Massa and his family, and also on the other side of the crack: just like “El Chiqui”, he has a dialogue with the macrista Daniel Angelici.
Toviggino and Tapia, from San Juan, are two that explain why several matches of the National Team are played in the Interior, in addition to the support that this group of clubs in that area has. he pays US$ 25,000 a month-, the bank to Scaloni when nobody was betting on him, the coexistence in the Copa América 2021 -it was the middle of the pandemic and players, leaders and coaching staff were locked up for 45 days-, and the achievement of the Copa del Mundo joined the “Chiqui” with the entire squad. “It’s that, with the good and the bad, Claudio seems like another player,” they say in that environment, emphasizing Tapia’s past as a footballer and technical director as a young man, at Barracas Central.
The Selection, in addition, is a business powerhouse for the AFA, the great jewel together with the income that comes from the sale of television rights to local league matches. For Tapia, who took over the association in a deficit state and in the midst of the country’s economic crisis, this is a central issue. In fact, there are some investigations that weigh on the back of the head honcho of the AFA, who is also vice president of CEAMSE, the company that manages waste in the City. The Justice of San Martín, following an anonymous complaint, investigates him for money laundering and fraud in an alleged purchase of real estate.
All of this, however, seems far removed from Tapia’s present. Now the governor of San Juan, Sergio Uñac, receives him like a hero, while tattoos with his face begin to be repeated, or a hairdresser offers his haircut for free for a year. And going forward, he is clear about the steps to follow: he wants to remain in the AFA chair for at least eight more years, when he hopes to be able to hold the 2030 World Cup in Argentina -plus Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay. He has already had several meetings with his Latin American peers. and is discussing the issue with the current government. And with which he will come. Because, as Don Julio said, everything happens. Except the ball and its power.
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