Imagined modernization in Argentinean football: between the club and the enterprise

Abstract

The possibility of transforming the Argentinean clubs into companies is framed in the rhetoric of globalization that intends to modify the juridical form of these institutions (non-profitable civil associations). In spite of the privatizing tendency of the years of Menem´s government (1989-1999), football clubs have remained outside the official policy that warranted the entrance of private and foreign investments in the area of public services. Under the figure of “management”, some key actors tried to impose a set of formulas which –they sustain- has been successfully implemented in the first world. Then, this new class of businessmen is imposing a new football economy that is orientated, in a high degree, to the production of goods into a capitalist market.