The phrase ’sleeping giant’ is often used to describe a big club who’ve fallen on hard times. Racing, right now, are all but comatose. In the separate league table which is used to work out relegated sides in Argentina, Racing stand four points above the relegation playoff spots – with the rest of the Apertura, and the whole of the Clausura, for the sides below them to make that gap up. And on Tuesday, Racing imploded.
At least, that’s how large swathes of the Argentine media reported it. Adrián Bastía, the team captain, was at pains to deny stories of divisions within the squad – which according to the journos has split into four groups, all arguing with each other – and of a lack of dialogue between players and manager.
‘Today I had to read that we don’t have a dialogue with Gustavo [Costas],’ began Bastía in a low tone, which rose and became more forceful as he went on; ‘I don’t know if this was invented or if it was put out there to make a mess or what. The squad is not divided. Gustavo has the support of all of us. There are no factions, as has been reported. What we don’t have, is results.’
That told them, then. Until he carried on.
‘In 2001, I nearly came to blows with [José] Chatruc on three ocassions and nobody knew anything, no-one said anything. Today that’s not the case. So I don’t know what it is that they’re looking for. Talking off the record doesn’t do any good to anybody. If you [the assembled journalists] have codes [of professionalism] you’re going to say who the person is who’s telling you these things.
‘Would you like it if someone in your job was talking about you behind your back? Well, if there’s someone doing that, that person’s not treating Racing right, he’s not treating this group of players right.’
So, there’s an inflitrator, it would seem. Subsequent pronouncements that ‘I trust my team-mates’ sounded perhaps a little hollow after that. The idea that, ‘there are differences as in any case, but no-one’s fighting with anyone’ may or may not be true. But are Racing’s players going to use this to pull together in the wake of Saturday’s 3-0 loss to Boca? Or is it one more chapter in a season which may yet go down as one of the worst the club has ever seen?
Filed under: 2007 Torneo Apertura, Argentine football, Argentine league, Domestic, Football, Football clubs, Football managers, Players, Primera A, Racing Club | Tagged: Bastía, Costas, Racing
