Avoiding the Drop

The last time we covered news out of La Paz was to discuss the Bolivian national team’s 6-1 win over Argentina in their World Cup qualifier back in April. Unfortunately for Bolivia, that win was only one of two they’ve earned in their qualification campaign, which has seen them and their neighbor Peru as the only two teams mathematically eliminated from CONMEBOL. That doesn’t make Bolivian President Evo Morales particularly happy.

Evo Morales, you see, loves him some footy. He feels that the solution that’s worked with Bolivia’s tin smelters, natural gas fields, and telecommunications operations will work with the national team. That solution is Ayn Rand’s favorite dirty word: nationalization.

Nationalization is, unfortunately for Morales, strictly against FIFA’s rules; readers with too much free time may remember that Peru was briefly banned from tournaments by FIFA last year for simply interfering with the Peruvian FA’s presidential elections. Sepp Blatter will no doubt have some very harsh things to say about this plan of Bolivia’s if is goes through.

Morales, however, kind of has a point:

We’re sorry about how our team played in qualifying. Until now, football is a private entity — autonomous — led by sports personalities. But we’re not getting any good results. I understand that some (football) officials don’t know anything about the game. How can they be leaders in the sport?

Good point, no? He continues.

One should think about improving. We’re not talking about intervention. The state will cooperate totally regarding this kind of change.

In order to do anything, however, Morales has a bit of a stumbling block. See, one group that’s apparently decided that the time for cooperation has long since passed is that players for the national team; they announced earlier this week that they were resigning from the national side indefinitely until all of their complaints get sorted out. As it stands now, that would include not playing in October’s World Cup qualification matches against Brazil and Peru.

The missed matches don’t particularly matter; Brazil’s already qualified, and both Bolivia and Peru are already eliminated. It’s clear that there’s definitely a crisis in the FBF, however.

What’s less clear is what exact complaints the Bolivian players have, or what expectations Evo Morales has for the team. Bolivia’s only qualified for three World Cups (1930, 1950, and 1994), so this isn’t about a return to the glory days of Bolivian football. While the national structure is screwy (instead of having an FA that oversees development, refereeing, and the individual leagues, Bolivia has a federation that gives voice to the league and various associations equally, which seems to have created a really screwed up and noncompetitive leage), nobody’s really proposing an alternative.

Nobody, that is, except Morales. While nationalization is typically frowned upon, in this case government intervention – stepping in to actually create an FA, and then going into full-on “hands off” mode afterwards – may be exactly what’s needed.

Regardless, this doesn’t seem like a situation that has any easy answers. Nor does it seem like a situation that’s terribly urgent; outside of those two upcoming matches, Bolivia probably won’t play again for a couple years…and if we’re following the historical results, they won’t be particularly competitive in their upcoming fixtures unless they’re playing them in La Paz.

Bolivian president want to “nationalize’ football [USA Today]
Bolivia’s Morales seeks nationalization of soccer [PressTV]
Bolivia players quit national team [Yahoo Sports]