Argentina votes. Argue. He is outraged. Government changes with a regularity that, in the region, is no small feat. And yet, there is one place where democracy seems to play as a visitor: football. The Argentine Football Association (AFA) It is not just the entity that organizes tournaments; It is a factory of rules, a distributor of resources and a powerhouse of legitimacy. When this machinery works with its own logic, the problem stops being “sports” and becomes institutional.
Recent journalistic reports offer a pattern: formats that are tweaked in full competition, relegations that are suspended when they get in the way, leagues that stretch like gum and a financial ecosystem that is as transparent to the average fan as the VAR on a foggy night. In parallel, online betting sponsorship became part of the landscape: It is no longer announced in the margins, it occupies the center of the scene. The debate is no longer aesthetic: it is social, and also business.
To understand why this matters, it is convenient to leave the “they steal, but they do” and enter political science. Political scientist Michael Johnston proposes that corruption is not a single thing: it adopts “syndromes” depending on institutional strength and the type of competition. In some countries the “influence market” predominates (access is purchased without the need for bags); in others, “oligarchs and clans” (the dispute is cruder). And there are two especially useful categories here: “elite cartels,” where political and economic networks agree to defend their hegemony in the face of growing competition; and the “official magnates”, where a small circle controls opportunities and punishments with impunity because institutional brakes are weak.
The uncomfortable hypothesis is this: the Argentine State can operate, with elections and alternation, under the traits of an “elite cartel,” while the AFA is more like an enclave of “official magnates.” It is not a contradiction; It’s an exchange. Politics tolerates a fiefdom that delivers identity, epic and the capacity for mobilization; The fiefdom benefits from erratic supervision and rules that, when necessary, become elastic. The fights over statutes, assemblies and reelections—and the tug-of-war with control organizations—are not technicalities: they are the dispute over whether power will be public (subject to rules) or personal (subject to loyalties).
On that board, even organized violence can have a function: the bars not only shout, they also mediate. They offer presence, muscle and territorial control in exchange for resources and protection. It’s ugly to say it, but Argentine politics has always been better at managing symbols than at closing audits.
The formula is old and effective: corruption = monopoly + discretion − accountability. If the regulations change on demand, if resources are distributed with opaque criteria and if control arrives late, the system does not “be corrupted”: it is organized to persist, regardless of the person in charge.
The final question is not whether football “should” be democratic (no one votes offside), but whether we accept that an institution that organizes identities and moves millions operates as a free zone. Democratizing football – stable rules, independent audits, transparent contracts, credible sports justice – sounds reasonable. The difficult thing is the obvious: to achieve this, someone has to lose power. And that, as always, is the part of the game that no one wants to play.
*Raúl Saccani is a professor at IAE Business School.
by Raúl Saccani
