Hasta El Gol Siempre

It’s the time of year when the points averages start to matter, and Gimnasia Jujuy, after last night’s 1-0 win away to Racing, might be able to start relaxing. Racing’s fans weren’t happy in El Cilindro, chanting songs against the players and the board and also, for the first time, against Reinaldo ‘Mostaza‘ Merlo, the manager. Mauricio Almada won it for the visitors at the start of the second half. If you want to know about points averages and how promotion and relegation are determined, read on…

The ‘points averages’ are the system by which promotion and relegation are worked out in Argentina. It’s not easy to explain, but I’ll try: The number of points won by each team over three full  seasons (six campaigns – three Aperturas and three Clausuras) in the current division are added up, and divided by games played to get an average of points per match. A table known as the Promedio is the result of this. At the end of each season, the two teams at the bottom of the Promedio go straight down.

In the division below, the best two teams in the Promedio go straight up. 3rd- and 4th-placed sides play off against 3rd and 4th bottom in the Promedio of the division above, for the last two promotion slots. So anywhere between two and four sides could swap divisions at the end of each season.

If a team are promoted, only their points average since promotion is used – hence Racing’s current average of 1.301 points per game is from 103 matches, whilst Gimnasia Jujuy’s average of 1.333 is from the 66 matches played since they started in the top division, in August 2005.

Finally, if you’re thinking all this seems suspiciously like it’s designed to keep the big clubs from being punished for a single dreadful season – it is. It was introduced in 1983, after River Plate finished second bottom and would have gone down (although it’s worth noting that Racing finished bottom and went down on the new system anyway). They do things differently in Argentina, remember.