Matias Caruzzo, the sports director of San Lorenzo, put the question black on white. Regarding the situation of defender Federico Gattoni, who decided not to renew his contract with the club in order to keep the pass in possession on June 30, he said that Argentine soccer clubs are defenseless against the maneuvers of player representatives. At this time, the same thing happens to Huracán with Lucas Merolla and Boca recently went through the same hardship with the goalkeeper Augustine Rossi who, in the middle of the negotiations, ended up signing a pre-contract with Flamengo from Rio de Janeiro and going on a six-month loan to soccer in Saudi Arabia.
The weakness of the Argentine economy and the lucrative contracts in dollar bills offered abroad seem to have accelerated the unscrupulous behavior of some representatives in recent times. The desire of the players to collect better money is as understandable as the position of these representatives to negotiate firmly in defense of the interests of their clients. But in all this tug of war, the good faith of the parties must take precedence. And that is what seems to have been missing (or to be missing) in the aforementioned cases.
The representatives of Gattoni (Marcelo Lombilla), Merolla (Carlos Papandrea) and Rossi (Miguel González) sat down at the negotiating table with the decision not to agree made in advance.. They raised unacceptable or unattainable conditions for the clubs with the idea of not renewing and staying in the middle of the year with all the passes in their possession. And the strategy has been working for them. Gattoni and Merolla will not play this semester in San Lorenzo and Huracán. But on June 30 they will own their pass so they can sell it or lend it to the highest bidder, but always in hard currency. Rossi suffered the same fate in Boca. But he didn’t want to wait that long. And on the return trip from the United Arab Emirates, he got off the plane from Boca in Madrid and got on another that took him to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, where he signed a contract to play for six months alongside Cristiano Ronaldo. .
The pass of their players is in many cases the main asset of the clubs and they should not waste it on shady operations. They have to do something to avoid decapitalizing, but they do not have the legal resources to defend themselves against malicious businessmen (and players). If they can’t afford the contract they’re asking for, they should be able to sell them and not be exposed to those evildoers maneuvering to pilfer players in the light of day without leaving a ticket in the treasury. It is one thing for representatives and players to defend their interests without sentimentality. And another very different thing is that they want to go too far and keep something that does not belong to one.. That and stealing is the same and football is full of these thieves with not so white gloves.