What does the AFA statute mean and say?

After weeks of speculation on the matter, the President Javier Miley confirmed this Wednesday that within the battery of measures that mean, in his words, “the bases for the reconstruction of Argentina”will be the possibility of clubs becoming Sports Limited Companies (SAD). The announcement was made based on a decree of Necessity and Urgency, and it is an old desire of former president Mauricio Macri.

What does it mean? In the 27th place in her list, Milei stated: “Modification of the Companies Law so that football clubs can become public limited companies, if they so wish”. Then, in the DNU, it was confirmed that There were changes in 13 articles and one incorporation into the Sports Law (20,655).

This final clarification is one of the keys to the issue, because it is not an obligation but rather an authorization for the clubs to have a new legal organization, in which The owners are shareholders and investors, not the partners as occurs in non-profit organizations.. For this reason, many of those who demonstrated against the SAD repeat that “the club belongs to the members”.

There is a substantial point beyond this Milei announcement: the AFA statute, the Constitution of Argentine football, specifically defines a club as a “civil association with legal personality in the terms of the provisions of the Civil and Commercial Code of the Nation, Book I, Title II, Chapter 2, and the controlling authority of the respective jurisdiction that has been admitted by the Assembly as a member of the AFA or a recognized league and with at least one team participating in a competition”.

The first to react to the presidential announcement was Juan Pablo Beaconpresident of the Patagonian Football League and secretary of the Federal Council of AFA – which brings together the entire interior of the country -, left a position that marks the rejection that football will take that stands against.

“That the ‘prerogative’ to transform into SA is only for ‘football clubs’, and not linked to civil associations in general, in addition to being neither necessary nor urgent, is an unequivocal interference in the internal affairs of AFA ( prohibited by FIFA and CONMEBOL). Be careful”he wrote on his official account on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

In this way, a debate that, at least the majority, had not planned to discuss will be reopened in the Argentine Football Association (AFA): Just a month ago, a good part of the clubs and leagues from all over the country that constitute that entity, had participated in a campaign on social networks against Sports Public Limited Companies..

This will be the third time that the AFA faces the dilemma of having public limited companies enter its structure to coexist with non-profit civil associations. The first was in 1998 when the then president of Boca Mauricio Macri He managed to get it voted on in the AFA Assembly. The setback was notable, since there was only one favorable vote, his.

The second, in 2016, when the AFA was intervened by FIFA and the Normalizing Committee chaired by Armando Pérez, together with Carolina Cristinziano (today vice president of Rosario Central), Pablo Toviggino (today Treasurer of AFA) and Javier Medín (before and in today, Macri’s man), promoted -although with dissent- the introduction and it was not discussed in the Assembly.

The third is the current one, which began with a campaign of rejection by the clubs in the run-up to the runoff, when a video went viral in which the then candidate Milei indicated his preference for the SAD. “I like the English model (that of Public Limited Companies), clearly. They are not doing badly, eh…”he indicated.

The response was a post on Twitter by Toviggino: “Let each of the Argentine Football Clubs demonstrate in defense of their Institutions. NO TO SAD! No to the privatization of football”. The same leader expressed more than once his public support for Sergio Massa’s candidacy and aroused a flood of responses from other leaders, except from Córdoba Workshops, Defense and Justicey Godoy Cruz from Mendoza.

The Cordoban club He has been the only one who did not hide his interest in the establishment of the SAD and its president Andrés Fassi he claimed: “Today those who are beginning to move the market are no longer the institutions, but the business groups. Manchester City did it with an extraordinary vision”.

That of Florencio Varela is a hybrid: a civil association managed in fact with a sui generis relationship with the representative of footballers Christian Bragarnik, which has also had an influence on the Tomba of Mendoza. It remains to be seen, with the publication of the DNU in the Official Gazette, the true scope and how many clubs stand behind the paradigm that for the first time seems to be closer to seriously getting into Argentine football.

The other possible discussion is to what extent the inclusion of the SAD in Argentine football is part of “the bases for the reconstruction of Argentina”.

Javier Milei’s announcement does not imply that Sports Joint Stock Companies will definitively reach Argentine football and that Civil Associations will be eliminated, but rather that they can coexist in a mixed modality as happens in Spain, France y Germany. There, the members vote, but the elected leaders use foreign capital for management.

Italiameanwhile, allows Public Limited Companies or limited liability companies, while in England most clubs are full SAD.

In the Latin American context, as a result of the economic and patrimonial crises in the clubs, the transformation in the different forms that the SAD can take took place in Chile, Peru y Colombia. And now Argentina could join.