By Nicolás Campisi
Public Books
June 11th, 2026
he 1978 World Cup stands as perhaps the most controversial tournament in football history. Argentina hosted and won it, even while a bloody dictatorship tortured, murdered, and disappeared more than 30,000 people. Critics still dispute the tournament’s legitimacy.1 Four years later, Argentina fought and lost the Malvinas/Falklands War against the United Kingdom. And then, at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, Argentina’s Diego Armando Maradona scored twice against England in the quarterfinals: first with an infamous handball he called the “hand of god,” then with what became known as “the goal of the century.” For many Argentines, victory over England offered a form of enormous symbolic revenge. Maradona himself, in interviews over the years, framed the football win as a symbolic retribution for the teenage conscripts who had died in the islands.2
These iconic moments reveal how deeply football and politics shape each other in Argentina. The interplay between politics and football is examined in two recent books, which explore how Argentine football originated in civic associations and anarchist ideology. Joel Horowitz’s The Creation of Modern Buenos Aires: Football, Civic Associations, Barrios, and Politics, 1912-1943 documents how the city’s neighborhoods and civic institutions created spaces for community and identity among residents of a rapidly growing metropolis. Tomas Rothaus’s Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism alternates between historical analysis and personal chronicle, showing how football became inseparable from the ideological imagination of modern Argentina.
These two books help us confront a fundamental question: What is a football club in Argentina? Is it a civic commons rooted in the barrio or a commercial entertainment brand? Horowitz demonstrates that clubs emerged as institutions of sociability and mutual aid while also mediating political power in the making of modern Buenos Aires. Rothaus reveals the radical energies that have shaped their histories, including anarchist resistance, immigrant solidarity, and antifascist organizing. Together, these books show that football has never been separate from Argentine politics. Instead, it has served as one of the primary arenas through which the nation has struggled to define itself.
From their earliest days, Argentine football clubs have functioned as civic associations entwined with political life. Indeed, these are one of the four types of civic associations that shaped the culture of Argentina’s capital city, as Horowitz documents in The Creation of Modern Buenos Aires. In addition to football clubs, Horowitz examines bibliotecas populares (popular libraries), sociedades de fomento (development societies that materially improved neighborhoods), and universidades populares (popular universities that educated workers).
The book focuses on the period between 1912 and 1943. In 1912, the Sáenz Peña voting reform law was passed, making male voting secret and mandatory. This reform forced politicians to cultivate support among the city’s different neighborhoods, making the post-1912 era the beginning of modern Argentine politics. Politicians and civic associations formed mutually beneficial relationships: politicians offered state resources for infrastructure and funding in exchange for the neighborhood-level support they needed to build mass political coalitions. In 1943, a military coup ousted the Argentine government in what is widely considered the birth year of Peronism, the movement led by Juan Domingo Perón. Horowitz ends at this threshold because the rise of Peronism inaugurated a larger state that would absorb many functions civic associations had previously fulfilled.
During this period, the city expanded due to an influx of immigrants. People enjoyed more leisure time, thanks to the legal codification of the eight-hour workday and the half-day Saturday. Literacy rates grew exponentially. And civic associations provided what Horowitz calls “a sense of belonging” to different neighborhoods. Neighborhoods also encompassed other places of sociability such as cafés, cinemas, and theaters. Horowitz excavates tango songs from this period that reflected the sense of community football clubs generated, including some 25 tangos dedicated to Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro alone.
Among the most important institutions through which barrios derived their identity were football clubs. In Horowitz’s account, this sense of belonging was so strong in some neighborhoods that residents who supported rival clubs sometimes faced expulsion from the barrio. Horowitz deliberately chooses the Spanish word barrio over the English word “neighborhood,” and uses “football” rather than the US equivalent, “soccer.”
This choice underscores the barrio’s importance in the creation of modern football in Argentina, since it was in the Buenos Aires barrios that the sport acquired its distinctive national identity. As Eduardo Archetti has shown, the modern Argentine style of football—called la nuestra, or “our style”—was born in the empty lots of the modernizing city: the so-called potreros, or dirt patches, where children played the game. According to Archetti, “the style of la nuestra [was] an expression of virtues related to childhood; innocence, creativity, tenderness, and the picaresque.”3
Clubs proliferated across the city in these years, created especially by young men who wanted to represent their barrio. Many of these clubs have vanished; the ones that survived did so through a combination of sporting success and organizational ability. At the time, among their most pressing challenges was securing land for matches, a struggle exemplified by the rivalry between two clubs: Boca Juniors and River Plate. Both clubs were founded in the city’s port district of La Boca, but in 1906 the national Ministry of Agriculture evicted River Plate for playing on land it did not control. What followed was a decades-long migration across the city. River first relocated to the Recoleta/Palermo border and, in 1934, purchased land at the Belgrano/Núñez edge (the site of today’s Estadio Monumental, which was inaugurated in 1938). River Plate’s stadium is currently undergoing renovations to expand its capacity to 101,000, making it the second-largest club stadium in the world.
San Lorenzo de Almagro exemplifies the turbulent histories of Argentine clubs and their ongoing struggle for stable playing space. According to club lore, Salesian priest Lorenzo Massa founded the club after witnessing street-playing children nearly struck by a trolley cart; he provided them with a field and ongoing support. The club’s original Boedo stadium, the Gasómetro, opened in 1916 on Avenida La Plata. In 1979, however, dictatorship-era municipal pressure and financial vulnerability forced its closure. The land was redeveloped for commercial use, displacing the club to Bajo Flores, where the Nuevo Gasómetro opened in 1993. Two decades later, the fan movement La Vuelta a Boedo successfully pressured the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires to pass the Ley de Restitución Histórica (Law of Historical Restitution) in 2012. This legislation enabled the club to negotiate the recovery of the Avenida La Plata site from Carrefour (the French supermarket chain) and secure rezoning approvals for a new Boedo stadium on its historic ground.
Football clubs, as Horowitz demonstrates, were involved in the community far beyond football itself. These clubs provided spaces for sociability and barrio identity. They hosted lectures by important intellectuals of the day, organized dances and summer camps, and offered classes, including cooking classes by Doña Petrona, the author of Argentina’s iconic cookbook. Horowitz’s crucial insight is to view football clubs as belonging to what he calls the “galaxy of institutions that bettered” people’s lives during this period.
The politicization of football clubs, as Horowitz shows, intensified during the Perón years and continues to the present. Today, political careers are launched from Argentine football clubs. The most prominent example is Mauricio Macri, who parlayed his leadership of Boca Juniors into a political career, serving as Mayor of Buenos Aires (2007–15) and, subsequently, as president of Argentina (2015–9).
But this relationship between clubs and politics cuts both ways. As the next book demonstrates, clubs have not just built the status quo. Simultaneously, they have also served as bastions of resistance to mainstream power.
From Rothaus, we learn that the shooter of the “goal of the century,” Diego Armando Maradona, also has ties to Argentina’s anarchist past.
In recounting the immigrant origins of many football clubs and tracing their development as clubes sociales y deportivos (social and sporting clubs), Tomas Rothaus’s Argentina, a Tale of Two Utopias: Anarchism, Soccer, Neoliberalism illuminates a crucial connection between anarchism and football in Argentina. Anarchism has a strong history in Argentina. Despite its marginalization in contemporary culture, a fate shared across much of the world, the country still boasts the world’s longest-running anarchist publication, the journal La Protesta. Rothaus demonstrates that most clubs still in existence today were founded in the first decade of the 20th century, a period when anarchism held greater sway in Argentine culture and politics, with many of these clubs openly embracing anarchist principles in both their organizational structures and their spirit.
Rothaus takes us to the province of Salta, where the country’s first anarchist club, Club Atlético Libertad (Liberty Athletic Club), was founded in 1901. The club served as both a sports venue and a unionization space. Anarchist clubs are often recognized by their red-and-black colors. Examples include Chacarita Juniors (born in 1906 in an anarchist library) and Defensores de Belgrano (located across the street from the infamous ESMA, the Navy School of Higher Mechanics, which served as a murder and torture center during the last military dictatorship).
From Rothaus, we learn that the shooter of the “goal of the century,” Diego Armando Maradona, also has ties to Argentina’s anarchist past. Maradona’s first club, Argentinos Juniors, was formed by the merging of two older clubs, including Mártires de Chicago (Chicago Martyrs), whose name honored the victims of the Haymarket affair, the 1886 bombing of a labor demonstration. The merged club chose a new name, Argentinos Juniors, to divert attention from potential repression. Nevertheless, Rothaus suggests that the club’s initials (AAAJ) may have contained a subliminal message: “Adelante Anarquistas Avancemos Juntos” (Forward, Anarchists, Let’s Advance Together). This anarchist message seems to prefigure Maradona’s later political activism.
Rothaus also documents clubs forced to change their names under pressure from the government, police, or employers. Libertarios Unidos, for instance, was compelled to become Club Atlético Colegiales after Colonel Ramón Falcón, the notorious police chief who persecuted and murdered anarchists, “suggested” the club do so. Falcón was later assassinated by the anarchist Simón Radowitzky in revenge for the police massacre of workers during the Red Week of 1909. In another case, Club Atlético Germinal, named after Émile Zola’s novel about a coal miners’ strike and founded by oil field workers, faced a stark choice from their oil field administrator: change the name or disband.
Such repression seemed a thing of the past in December 2001, when the twin utopias announced in the title of Rothaus’s book materialized. The first was a political utopia: the toppling of the government of Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa. A “social revolution” brought people into the streets to protest the freezing of their bank accounts and to demand justice. The second was “the other utopia,” the footballing one. Rothaus’s childhood club, Racing Club de Avellaneda, stood poised to win the Argentine championship for the first time in 35 years. The championship match was played a week after the massive, nationwide protests that ousted the government.
The book thus chronicles a twin journey. The first is the author’s awakening to anarchist ideology. The author’s anarchist journey led him to one of the spaces Horowitz analyzed in his book: a popular library. At the Biblioteca Popular José Ingenieros, he encountered a tight-knit community that shared his anarchist values. Through Rothaus’s dexterous narration, we begin to see anarchism pervading many elements of Argentine culture. The anarchist bakers’ union gave irreverent names to baked goods to mock the police and religious institutions. Most importantly for Rothaus’s book, various still-existing football clubs have anarchist origins.
The second journey is Rothaus’s football fandom for two clubs: Racing Club de Avellaneda, the club he grew up loving, and Club Atlético Atlanta, his neighborhood club, associated with the Jewish community of Villa Crespo. Argentine football fans commonly support a first-division club and have a secondary club in the lower leagues, usually the one from the neighborhood where they grew up. Rothaus fits this pattern, though his relationship with his secondary club runs deeper than most.
Rothaus’s story stands apart in how adversity deepened his bond with Club Atlético Atlanta, through the club’s 1991 bankruptcy and its battles against antisemitism from rival fans. Raanan Rein argues in a book dedicated to Club Atlético Atlanta that for many Jews who participated in the club’s social life, Atlanta “confirmed a meaningful Jewish identity and helped them gain social integration and acceptance,” though he notes that the perception of the club as solely Jewish is usually imposed by rival fans.4 Rothaus narrates episodes of witnessing swastika flags and chants praising Hitler during Atlanta matches, and he credits the club’s response to these episodes with teaching him “practical lessons in antifascism.” The book’s extensive photographic collection offers a visual journey through the author’s twin passions, including a particularly arresting newspaper image: a police officer’s boot pressed against his neck.
The 1990s were turbulent years for Argentine football clubs beyond just Atlanta. Racing, Rothaus’s other club, faced financial woes that led its administrators to declare it would cease operations and be put up for auction, amid suspicions that its president, Daniel Lalín, wanted to privatize it and become its owner. Public pressure from fans compelled Congress to pass a law protecting clubs like Racing from bankruptcy.
This episode was still fresh in Racing Club fans’ minds when they became Argentine champions in 2001. The timing carries remarkable poetic justice: during the same week that Racing, a club that had recently emerged from bankruptcy, won the Argentine championship, the entire country went bankrupt, with provincial governments issuing several cuasimonedas (quasi-currencies), bonds intended to function as cash to combat the collapse of the Argentine peso.
The narrative is bookended by two Decembers—2001 and 2022—when mass mobilizations erupted across Argentina. The repression began on Thursday, December 20, 2001, when police attacked protesters at the Plaza de Mayo, a symbolically charged timing: Thursdays are the days the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo hold their traditional circular march seeking accountability for their disappeared family members. During the popular uprising, Rothaus participated in efforts to replace the Argentine flag at the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace) with the red-and-black flag of the anarchist movement, believing the end of the neoliberal order (and the end of the end of history) was only “one spark away.” A week later, Rothaus and Racing Club fans returned to the same plaza to wave their club’s flag, which shares Argentina’s sky-blue-and-white colors, creating a moment of collective joy that seemed to conjure the ghosts of recent socioeconomic violence. The book concludes with Rothaus and more than five million people taking to the streets of Buenos Aires on December 20, 2022, exactly 21 years after the massive demonstrations during the country’s socioeconomic crash, celebrating Argentina’s triumph in the Qatar World Cup.
This 2022 celebration crystallizes a tension that runs throughout the book: the conflict between two utopias, the social and the footballing. Anarchists at the beginning of the 20th century believed that soccer and carnival (two of Argentina’s popular passions) distracted workers from developing class consciousness, and Rothaus identifies this same tension in contemporary Argentina. The country is a pioneer in social issues such as reproductive rights, yet it failed to boycott the Qatar World Cup, as Argentines flocked to Qatar in massive numbers.
The Qatar World Cup was mired in controversy. There was widespread reporting on the treatment of migrant workers who built stadiums and infrastructure under the kafala sponsorship system. Reports documented unsafe conditions, wage theft, and deaths. Qatar’s laws criminalize same-sex relations and impose broader restrictions on LGBTQ+ expression. Scholars and NGOs argued that Qatar was using the event to launder its international image through what they call sportswashing.
Moreover, in December 2022, as Argentina won the World Cup, the country was experiencing a 50 percent poverty rate and hyperinflation. It was a familiar Argentine paradox: collective euphoria over football unfolding against a backdrop of economic devastation. Rothaus is acutely aware of the limitations of football fans taking to the streets without class consciousness, and he does not sympathize with his team’s footballers, whom he calls “mercenaries.” Yet despite this awareness, he cannot stop himself from traveling to Qatar with his family and joining the massive celebrations on the streets of Buenos Aires.
The tensions between his anarchist and footballing sympathies might find reconciliation in football’s roots in the country’s civic associations. For Rothaus, this reconciliation manifests in the sense of community he feels when attending football matches or celebrating his club’s victories on the streets, as well as in his activism with social organizations, neighborhood assemblies, and mutual aid and solidarity groups that intersect with football institutions to this day.
The books by Horowitz and Rothaus illuminate what is at stake in these disputes by revealing how deeply football and local political power remain intertwined.
At the time of writing, the president of Asociación del Fútbol Argentino (AFA), Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia, is embroiled in multiple scandals. Tapia faces allegations of tax evasion through a sponsorship firm (Sur Finanzas) while simultaneously navigating Javier Milei’s government push to privatize Argentine football: a reform that would dismantle more than a century of community-based ownership embodied in the civic association model. Additionally, there are widespread concerns about refereeing decisions that disproportionately benefit teams connected to AFA power, especially Barracas Central, the club where Tapia still serves as president.
The books by Horowitz and Rothaus illuminate what is at stake in these disputes by revealing how deeply football and local political power remain intertwined. Tapia’s case is instructive. His background as a barrendero (street sweeper) provided entry into Camioneros, Argentina’s truck drivers’ union, and CEAMSE, the state waste-management company. He rose through both institutions, building the power base that propelled him to leadership in football.
AFA’s membership model is built around nonprofit civil associations (clubes de socios), but this status faces mounting pressure from technocrats and politicians seeking privatization. Milei, the current Argentine president, argues that clubs should be able to adopt a for-profit corporate form (Sociedad Anónima Deportiva, or SAD) to attract private capital and modernize what he views as an inefficient football economy. For AFA, however, the requirement to admit SAD clubs represents state overreach into football governance and the clubs’ right to self-organization.
Together, these two books illuminate football as one of Argentina’s most enduring civic institutions. For over a century, football has embodied the contradictions of modern urban life, caught between the competing demands of community and commerce. As Milei’s government pushes privatization, the clubs that anarchists and immigrants built over a century ago face a struggle that will redefine what football means in Argentina.
This article was commissioned by Bécquer Seguín.
- During a visit to the Museu do Futebol in São Paulo some years ago, I came across a display on World Cup history that described Argentina’s 1986 victory as “the first legitimate” world championship won by the country. As an Argentine, I read this as a pointed jab from our fiercest footballing rivals, implicitly questioning the legitimacy of the 1978 tournament.
- For Maradona’s retrospective reframing of the match’s symbolic meanings, see Andrés Burgo, El partido: Argentina–Inglaterra 1986 (Tusquets Editores, 2016) and Diego Armando Maradona (with Daniel Arcucci and Ernesto Cherquis Bialo), Yo soy el Diego (Planeta, 2000).
- Eduardo P. Archetti, Masculinities: Football, Polo and the Tango in Argentina (Routledge, 2020), p. 173.
- Raanan Rein, Fútbol, Jews, and the Making of Argentina, trans. Martha Grenzeback (Stanford University Press, 2015), p. 9.
Featured image of Estadio Monumental during the 1978 World Cup by an unknown author / Wikimedia (CC0).
