On April 13, 1930, the rivalry between San Lorenzo and Vélez was born. On the La Plata avenue field, the local fans couldn’t stand the celebration of a visiting goal. There were punches in the gallery that overlooked Mármol street. Also among the players. The referee, Manuel Jurado, received blows. They kept hitting him in the locker room. And the next day he rolled down the stairs when he went to the Argentine Association to present his report and ran into managers of both clubs. Three days later, Vélez broke relations with San Lorenzo. And those from San Lorenzo responded that those from Liniers had not had, for years, “the most elementary sports ethics”.
It is just one of the hundreds of wonderful stories that journalist Carlos Aira tells us in his recent Heroes in infamous times – Stories of Argentine soccer 1930-1940 (Fabro Editions). In total 870 pages, “three years of research and a pandemic”, summarizes the author before Page 12. The book has another antecedent of Aira himself: tent heroes, that narrates the Argentine football of the 20s.
The football of the 1930s, known for its break towards professionalism, is usually remembered because the players of that time -little less than gentlemen- played above all for honour, the leaders were gentlemen and the fans were mere spectators. Aira confirms why none of that is true. And with examples he realizes how sports corruption was the order of the day. Also violence, which is not the exclusive symbol of these times. In fact, The graphic He called for the “extermination of the fans”. For the magazine it was about “detestable characters” and “infectious elements that harm the interests of the sport”.
Culture, for example through the poet and journalist Raúl González Tuñón, highlighted the importance of football. The 1930 coup from Uriburu to Yrigoyen influenced the sport. In La Plata, Aira tells us that the leaders of Gymnastics were “pointed with the finger” for their approach to the deposed president; those of Students, for their arrival at the repressors. And the well-known leader Pedro Bidegain, of “Yrigoyenista militancy”, was confined to the Ushuaia prison.
Aira rebuilds each year of the decade. Alfonso Doce’s description is unmissable. “First entrepreneur” of Argentine football. The tours of Boca in 1925, of Sportivo Barracas in 1929 and of the Tucuman Federation made him think of “glory and money”. The chain for professionalism, which was already moving, albeit covertly, saw the light.
“The ‘this didn’t happen before’ vanished between the pages of this book, essential to understand a bygone and unfriendly era of our country”, writes journalist Alejandro Fabbri on the back cover. With the reading we will go through painful facts, such as that of the murder of Felix Sola, which led his son to resign from the presidency of Banfield. We will understand why in 1934 the Argentine League and the Argentine Association bet on unity with the Argentine Football Association. 14 clubs in the First Division. Ups and downs since 1937. Obligation of stadiums with a minimum capacity of 20,000 spectators and 4,000 members or more. We will meet exciting matches and brilliant players who were unfairly not among the most remembered. We will know about soccer players who had novel lives. Meanwhile, Corrientes street, the death of Carlos Gardel, fashions and the arrival of foreign teams. We will read about a scandalous Rosario classic from 1935. We will also understand why economic power helped make Boca, River, Independiente, Racing and San Lorenzo the “big clubs”.
The history of the superball is colorful, the “first ball without a mouth, a valve inside the chamber and an invisible seam”. “Miracle birthed in Bel Ville to end the era of tiento”. Created in 1931, it was made official by AFA in 1936 and exploded the following year. “Whoever uses it, consecrates it”, the newspapers advertised. From 1938, among other anecdotes, the large number of goals stands out, there were 1,334 in 272 First Division games. “The year of the goals”, writes Aira. And the year of the inauguration of the Monumental with telephone lines in the press booths. Almost at the same time, the Bombonera began to be built. But on the courts, the team that won and played well was De la Mata’s Independiente, Erico and Sastre.
1939 is the year of the visit of Jules Rimet, president of FIFA. Argentina and Brazil planned to organize the 1942 World Cup together. And it was also the year in which the police killed a 9-year-old boy in a Lanús-Boca. The match was played the same way. There was a police cover-up. There are things that do not change. That is the importance of Aira’s work.
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