“Something is rotten in Denmark”, said Prince Hamlet. I’d like to borrow Shakespeare’s phrase and apply it to our national sport: football. Football, at least in our country, stinks. Far from a healthy sport and a popular entertainment, football here is immediately linked with dirty business: hooligans (“barrabravas”), violence, bribes, “trapitos”, fraud of all sorts and sizes. And now, to top it all, a child prostitution scandal. Under age footballers allegedly recruited to have sex with men for money (or merely sports clothes). The worst possible crime. Young people, most of them poor and all of them rich in dreams, manipulated and used as merchandise. “Child abuse and facilitation of abuse”. And I dare say this is not new. Fortunately, it’s been disclosed now. I hope all the adults responsible for such a hideous crime pay for it. Never again, please!

Published on Buenos Aires Times