BUENOS AIRES.- “Wrong message” and “lack of respect”: one minute on the field by streamer Spreen wearing the Riestra shirt in the match against Vélez Sarsfield was enough to unleash a wave of rejection in the argentine soccerwhich led this Tuesday to a request for an investigation by the AFA and a release from the club.
Among the eleven starters that Riestra presented on Monday to play with the leader Vélez for the 22nd day of the Professional League was Iván Buhajeruk, a 24-year-old streamer known as Spreen, who remained on the field for a minute before being replaced, without reaching touching the ball and leaving his team with one change less in the match that ended 1-1.
Vélez’s goal was scored by Braian Romero (the championship’s top scorer with 12 goals), who, at the end of the match, referred to Spreen’s debut as “a lack of respect for football.”
“Today the TV showed the kids a shortcut,” Romero said. “What happened today is a wrong message to society, to the kids, to those who try to the last.”
“From my place I want to tell them that this is not the way and to keep trying, that football is that: try, fail, try, fail, keep trying,” said Romero.
Spreen has more than 17 million followers between Twitch and YouTube, but he never played soccer professionally or trained in the lower divisions.
The marketing action carried out by Riestra made the name of the small club viral, but was received with strong criticism on social networks from football lovers and also from figures such as the president of Estudiantes and former World Cup player, Juan Sebastián Verón, who considered it “a mistake.” total respect for football and the footballers”.
The Argentine Football Association (AFA) opened a file this Tuesday for the institution’s ethics court to investigate the inclusion of the streamer and determine whether Riestra engaged in “conduct likely to harm the reputation and integrity of Argentine football.”
“Strange situations”
Riestra issued a statement on Tuesday in which he acknowledged that “this marketing action generated many negative opinions” and assured that they had no intention of “disrespecting Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield or Argentine football in general.”
“We want to offer our most sincere apologies to those who felt offended,” says the publication and explains that the Riestra coach contacted the Vélez coach this week to discuss the initiative.
The club assured that the objective “was (and is) to attract new audiences to football, generating bridges between different worlds and platforms to continue promoting the product and our club.”
The president of Vélez, Fabián Berlanga, ironically commented on the issue by ruling out the possibility that the famous Argentine music producer Bizarrap, who is a fan of his institution, could play a game in Vélez: “He is chubby, we can’t put him to play.” , he said in a radio interview, although he preferred not to comment on Spreen’s inclusion.
Riestra is a small club that in ten years went from the fifth category to the first, promoted by lawyer Víctor Stinfale, who was its president and is the owner of an energy drink company that sponsors the club.
On Tuesday, some media outlets raised suspicions about what happened: the newspaper Clarín reported that an online betting house on Monday was promoting a lucrative bet on whether or not Spreen would start the game.
“Not only do strange situations happen in world champion soccer. Things happen that should not happen. And that someone should investigate,” says Clarín’s sports editor-in-chief, Martín Voogd.
For Voogd, “the ball is so stained that you can’t even be certain that beneath so much dirt there is a ball.”
This Tuesday, the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Games of Chance (FEJA) of Buenos Aires reported in a statement that it initiated a case to investigate whether “on the occasion of the soccer match between Deportivo Riestra and Vélez, the coach of Deportivo Riestra, Cristian Fabbiani (nicknamed Ogro) ), and the influencer Iván Buhajeruk (Spreen) had the purpose of recruiting bettors on illegal platforms.”
