COMMENTARY The loutish example of international soccer bosses like Ramón Jesurún helps explain the hooligan behavior of international soccer fans like those who stormed Hard Rock Stadium at the Copa America final.
There’ve been a lot of nasty if not racist remarks and memes made about Colombians since Sunday night.
That’s when a legion of mostly Colombian (but also Argentine) soccer fans riotously gate-crashed Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, before the Copa America championship match. Some even crawled through stadium air vents — an image I half-expected Republican conventioneers to brandish this week when they chanted, “Build that wall!”
Twenty-seven people were arrested at Hard Rock, and several folks were injured, including a 9-year-old boy whose arm was broken in the mayhem.
READ MORE: Soccer helped the world forget Latin America’s dysfunction. Is it now a reminder?
But while this particular crowd of Colombia’s hinchas, or supporters, do have to answer for their dangerous scofflaw behavior, it’s pretty bigoted to paint the whole Cafetero nation as hooligan brutos, as social media’s been doing.
Which is why — if we’re trying to figure out how this Copa chaos happened and how we can prevent a repeat two summers from now, when Miami hosts seven soccer World Cup games — I’d focus instead on just one of the Colombian hooligans who was handcuffed Sunday night.
And that’s none other than Ramón Jesurún — president of the Federación Colombiana de Fútbol (FCF), Colombia’s governing soccer body.
The 71-year-old Jesurún and his son, Ramón Jamil Jesurún, were arrested after the Copa final. Per the police report and video of the incident, a Hard Rock security officer blocked them from entering a restricted area of the stadium — even though, they insist, their badges clearly indicated they were muy, muy VIP.
When the officer pushed them back, they allegedly assaulted him. Ramón Jamil even knocked him to the ground, punching and kicking him.
Jesurún 1 and Jesurún 2 were then tossed into a Miami-Dade County pokey for the night — and when they were let out the next morning, Jesurún 1 insisted he and his offspring were the real victims.
Let’s not forget nine years ago U.S. prosecutors indicted more than a dozen heads of soccer federations like CONMEBOL for racketeering.
Of course he did — because he’s an international soccer honcho, and this is simply NOT how international soccer honchos expect to be treated, ¡por Dios!
And there — in what happened after Sunday night’s Copa final — is an important part of the explanation for what happened before Sunday night’s Copa final.
Ticket-scalping scheme
You want to understand why so many soccer fans acted in the loutish way they did? Then it helps to consider the loutish example of so many soccer bosses like Jesurún. Not just in Colombia but around the world — and especially in South America, whose governing soccer body, known as CONMEBOL, was in charge of the Copa tournament operations that went so sour at Hard Rock.
Colombian soccer fans sneaking into Hard Rock Stadium through air vents for the Copa America championship game last Sunday, July 14, in Miami Gardens.
In the U.S., where soccer is still a stepchild sport, we’re largely unaware of the omnipotence and impunity soccer officials like Jesurún enjoy on the rest of this fútbol-crazed planet. But let’s not forget that nine years ago, U.S. prosecutors indicted more than a dozen heads of federations like CONMEBOL for racketeering and other crimes. Almost all were convicted.
In Jesurún’s case, let’s remember he and the FCF have been involved in scandals before — including a ticket-scalping and bribery scheme that led to hefty Colombian government fines four years ago. Colombian media, in fact, regularly rate the FCF one of the country’s most corrupt institutions, one that treats the loyal hinchas as royal chumps.
Which is relevant to Sunday night’s Hard Rock rowdiness. Jesurún is also a CONMEBOL vice president — and one of the angriest criticisms of the Copa that CONMEBOL just oversaw was exorbitant, scalper-style ticket prices. Colombians here have told me they paid thousands of dollars for nose-bleed seats for Sunday’s final. Many other, more resentful fans apparently had had enough of that wallet abuse and simply decided to colarse — jump the stadium turnstiles.
I’m certainly not excusing what they did. And I realize Miami-Dade County police and security ops also have a lot to learn from the fiasco if they want the world to take their World Cup prep seriously.
But it’s fairly obvious one of the best things Miami-Dade and U.S. officials can do in 2026 is rely a lot less on — or be a lot more wary of — the all too often arrogant, incompetent and corrupt cabal of international soccer kingpins Jesurún represents.
If you want to create social media memes this week, make sure to include his mugshot.
For a discussion of the Copa America final chaos and what it means for the 2026 FIFA World Cup games due to be held in Miami, tune in to The South Florida Roundup this Friday, July 19, at 1 p.m.
Source link : https://www.wlrn.org/commentary/2024-07-18/a-south-american-soccer-boss-is-arrested-for-assault-how-fitting
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Publish date : 2024-07-18 07:00:00
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