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Television's growing influence on South American football is reflected by recent developments in Argentina, as described by Peter Hudson
To see what football looks like when it is controlled by television, look no further than Argentina. It is a moot point whether the most powerful man in local football is Julio Grondona, head of the Argentine Football Association, AFA, or Carlos Avila, president of Torneos y Competencias, the company that controls TV rights to the championship. For Avila has used his franchise to build a company that after little more than a decade generates annual revenues of US$210 million and has the clout to match.
Brian Homewood salutes an unconventional goalkeeper
Like Timbuktu and Outer Mongolia, Paraguay is best-known for being an out-of-the-way place. If it has any claim to fame, it is for harbouring Nazi war criminals. It is mocked by neighbouring Brazil, which sees it as a smugglers’ haven (in reality Brazil is one of South America’s crime capitals), and sneered at by Argentina, which looks on it as a source of cheap labour. An estimated one million Paraguayans live in Argentina, many of them employed cleaning up after rich natives.