Uruguayans are not oblivious to what happens with Argentine sports journalism when their national team loses. In fact, we watch the programs from the other side of the pond with more enthusiasm than our own, due to the level of virulence and sensationalism that some journalists handle, which reaches astonishing levels on some occasions.
Some Argentine sports programs behave as if they were manic-depressive (going from euphoria to depression in 90 minutes, or vice versa) and have even gone so far as to call the players "coup plotters" and speculate (and incite, in fact) a difficult reception from the fans in Ezeiza after Argentina's defeat against Croatia.
In the face of this wave of indignation with a team that is not yet eliminated, Alejandro Dolina came to bring some sanity. In his radio program "La Venganza Será Terrible", he called for honoring Oscar Ruggeri, for having a different conduct than several sports panelists.
"In this difficult moment in the relationship between sports journalism and sports, he handles it with sobriety and treats people as human beings," he said.
"It is not a matter for the judicial system," he said about the performance of the Argentinian team. "You cannot turn a sports defeat into something guilty. 'Who is to blame?'. There are no culprits in a football defeat because it is not a crime or a moral fault. It is not a sin that has been committed, there is no notion of sin-guilt, or malice. (...) It may be that one team played better than the other, that some made mistakes, errors, but not culpable acts or acts that should be forgiven by a tribunal, which apparently are all the journalists in Russia, who seem to be the moral prosecutors of the nation and to whom the players must answer," Dolina continued.
"Not only must they answer, as one of them said. They have to represent them. Someone said: 'these players do not represent me'. And who told you that they have to represent you? What are they, deputies? We didn't vote for them. They may have played very badly, and what the journalist has to say is that these guys have played badly for such and such reasons, I think they should play in a different way, etcetera. If you want to say something. You can also say that they are useless. Yes, you can. But to build a whole guilt thing, to account for it as if it were the tribunal of God. What about 'we'll see what face they bring back'. What are you saying? Are you inviting people to go and greet them and throw coins at them? No, man," he added.
He then mentioned other examples, such as "going out to the street and asking the fans if they prefer to sing against Brazil or Chile," "that kind of xenophobia driven by the media... where does it come from? How do these things happen? And then when something violent happens, they condemn it. If you are stoking it. Or asking a player a question that is based on a lie, to turn him against the coach. It's like making the kids fight. Ruggeri doesn't do any of that. There are some others who don't either, but there are many guys who have put themselves in an excessive position. A minute of silence? Who are these guys?" he wondered.
"We, who are nobody, pay this small tribute to Ruggeri, an extraordinary player, who has more arguments to disqualify than anyone else, and yet he doesn't exercise that impulse that all these republic prosecutors have," he concluded.