Magazine gives
Mexican football referees a red card
By Kenneth
Emmond
On Sunday, December 4, the Nuevo Leon Tigres scored
a stunning upset to advance to the Mexican Football Federation (soccer) semifinals, besting the vaunted America team 4-1 at
Azteca Stadium. The road win in Mexico City gave the Tigres a come-from-behind 5-4 overall victory in the two-game, total-point
series, after they lost 3-1 at home.
America is the league’s equivalent of the New
York Yankees, having been a champion or contender nearly every year for generations. This year it seemed invincible.
If you were a fan who likes to put a little money
down on a game, you’d have done well to bet on the underdog.
Psychologist Octavio Rivas, former consultant to
the Mexico City-based Pumas, says overconfidence caused America’s defeat.
However a special section in the December 4 edition
of the Spanish-language magazine Cambio might lead bettors to suspect that more variables are at work than a team’s
standing, its injury list, and whether it has a playoff berth.
The section, entitled “The Dark Side of Football,”
includes two articles that focus on referees, some of whom admit that they can play a role in game outcomes, something fans
have long suspected.
One article, “Traps on the Playing Field”
by Alejandro Lelo and Juan Manuel Ramirez, appears to confirm the suspicion. It quotes veteran sportswriter Angel Ramirez
of the newspaper La Jornada.
“The trick is to identify it,” said Ramirez.
“The closest I got to the referees was during the 1980s…. I thought it was inconceivable that a referee could
manage a game’s outcome by saying, for example, ‘There’s going to be a tie,’ or ‘Such-and-such
a team is going to win.’”
But, Ramirez said, he was introduced to a person
not identified by name who said, “Of course it’s possible. If someone wants the outcome to be a tie it will happen.
If you want to work against a team you don’t let them out of their own zone, you make calls in favor of the other team,
things like that.”
Although the interviews Ramirez recounted took place
in the 1980s, there has been no movement since to reform the system. There’s little reason to believe that these activities
have stopped.
Indeed, in the other article about referees, “Now
There’s no Mystery,” Oscar Machado tells of “cronyism, nepotism, lack of training, and too much money”
in the world of football refereeing in Mexico.
It’s a story of incompetence rather than outright
game fixing, told through an interview with retired referee Bonifacio Nuñez.
Nuñez, who spent 20 years refereeing Mexican football,
blames the Commission of Referees of the Mexican Football Federation for failing to ensure proper training and standards to
provide an adequate level of refereeing.
“If there were discipline within this commission
it would be reflected on the football field,” he said.
One of the effects, Nuñez said, is the total lack
of respect for referees, who are subjected to insults and scorn by players and fans alike.
“There isn’t the least bit of respect
for the referees,” he said. “Some have even received death threats.”
Nuñez singled out for special mention Eduardo Gasso,
a referee from the first division. “He’s the most expensive referee in Mexico, and even though he makes lots of
mistakes he continues to work as a referee because he is the son of Alfredo Gasso, who’s on the Commission of Referees.”
Other stories in the series deal with the treatment
of league players, of ways in which owners and agents exploit them, legally or otherwise. Few players complain because they
fear losing their positions, though a few have negotiated better terms.
Often this is done through Puebla lawyer Thelma Herrera,
sometimes referred to as “Mama Football,” who claims to have successfully settled no fewer than 170 individual
cases in favor of her player-clients.
Another story outlines the frustrations encountered
by Chema Huerta, who heads the Unionized Association of Professional Football Players of the Mexican Republic. It gained official
registration with the Labor Department last August 12, 15 years after it applied.
It’s nearly impossible to enter a bar or café
in the afternoon or evening without seeing a football game in progress on the house television set. So it’s a shame
that there is so little will to clean it up in a country with millions of enthusiastic fans.
The fact remains however, that you should take some
of these factors into account before you put money down on the Tigres winning the league championship.
——————————
Kenneth Emmond, an economist, market consultant and
journalist who has lived in Mexico since 1995, is also a columnist with MexiData.info.
He can be reached via e-mail at Kemmond00@yahoo.com.
