The television host Alejandro Fantino once again shook the Argentine football board by speaking openly about the leader and former player Juan Sebastián Verón, within the framework of the debate on the current affairs of the Argentine Football Association (AFA).
The trigger was the gesture carried out by the Estudiantes de La Plata club when, after Rosario Central won the title last Sunday, November 23, they decided to perform a “hallway with their backs turned” to the champion. That fact generated controversy and was the trigger for Fantino’s critical analysis.
During his participation in the streaming program “El Cónclave”, Fantino did not skimp on adjectives: “I know Verón. He is not someone with whom I would have a relationship; he is the opposite of me when it comes to watching football. He is a difficult, superb boy.”
The journalist was not limited to that phrase: he recalled that this type of criticism towards Verón is not an isolated event but part of a history of media confrontations. In 2017 he had already said that Verón was “a manipulator” that “in the National Team he was always a loser”, that “he fired Simeone, Milito and Vivas” and that “he did the same in Estudiantes”.
Fantino’s intervention comes at a time of strong tensions in the AFA, with questions about leadership, the roles of leaders and sports ethics. Symbolic gestures—such as the inverted hallway of Estudiantes—acquire a political dimension that goes beyond the grass: they refer to the internal power of Argentine soccer and who defines what is “respect” and what is “campaign.”
Verón, for his part, president of Estudiantes, has been the target of questions for his management style, his status as a former star player who returned to the country with media weight and his ability to intervene in club decisions and in the field of major football. Fantino places him as an uncomfortable figure for his view of football (“…he is at the opposite end of the spectrum from me…”), and with a complex character to handle in public relations.
Beyond the personalities involved, the truth is that Argentine football is experiencing a moment of institutional review. The voices of media figures like Fantino take the ring to point out that the conflicts are not only on the fields, but in the offices, in the hallways of the institutions and in the way in which symbolic power is disputed.
In short: Fantino explicitly burst into the AFA debate, pointing out Verón as “a difficult boy” and focusing on the fact that in Argentine football it is no longer enough to play well: you also have to know how to negotiate views, establish alliances and respond to the demands of modern management.
