Ten Games for a Throat-Grab, Loose Change for Racism: FIFA's Sums Don't Add Up
FIFA took a month to work out what to do about Argentina, and last Friday we finally got the bill. It is worth reading twice, because the numbers make no sense in any direction.
Start with the players. Leandro Paredes gets ten matches and a $90,000 fine for grabbing Eric García by the throat and dumping Gavi on the turf. Nahuel Molina gets seven and the same fine for hitting Rodri in the stomach. Thiago Almada gets one match for unsporting behaviour. Roberto Ayala, an assistant coach, gets three matches and $30,000 for punching Dani Olmo. Gavi, on the Spanish side of the same scuffle, gets one match.
Now hold those side by side. A coach who punched an opponent gets three games. A player who grabbed one and shoved another gets ten. If assault by a member of staff is worth three matches, how is Paredes worth more than three times that? And if Paredes deserves ten, what exactly does a punch to the face cost? FIFA has produced a tariff where the sentence appears to depend on which camera angle went viral rather than on what actually happened.
Then there is the AFA fine. Three hundred and twenty-one thousand dollars, covering discriminatory chants across five matches, objects thrown onto the pitch, the political banner and the team's conduct. FIFA turned over more money than that during the halftime show. A hundred grand of it is suspended anyway, and another hundred grand gets redirected into an anti-discrimination programme, which is a sensible use of the money and also a neat way of making the punishment look like a donation.
This is where the whole thing collapses. If Argentine supporters really did sing what FIFA says they sang across five separate matches, that is a serious, repeated, institutional failure, and the response is a fine a mid-table Championship club could cover from one season ticket renewal window. Meanwhile Paredes, who shoved somebody after a lost final, loses the best part of a year of international football.
The stadium restriction is the worst piece of it. Argentina must play their next home match at half capacity. Whoever sang those songs at MetLife will not be there. The people who lose out are Argentine fans in Buenos Aires who did nothing, many of whom will never get another ticket for a competitive home international as it is. Collective punishment is the easy option for a governing body that cannot identify individuals, and it has never once been shown to change behaviour in the stands.
The Malvinas banner belongs in a different conversation altogether. Argentine players held it up after beating England in the semi-final, FIFA charged it as a political demonstration, and the rule is the rule. Whether the rule should exist is a fair argument. Whether it should sit in the same disciplinary bundle as racist chanting is not. Lumping them together lets FIFA present one round number and avoid explaining any of the individual judgements inside it.
None of this excuses what happened on the pitch after the final. Argentina lost badly, played poorly, and then behaved worse. Al Jazeera called the aftermath pitiful, and that was generous. Something had to happen.
But punishment is supposed to be legible. A player, a fan or a federation should be able to read a ruling and understand the reasoning that produced the number. Nobody can do that here. Tapia is appealing, and for once the AFA has a point, though probably not the one it thinks it has.
FIFA did not go too hard on Argentina. FIFA went hard on the wrong things.