Argentines all set to get their peso of flesh

The players and coaching staff are still owed money for their appearances in the 18-match qualifying campaign that spanned nearly two years, according to an Argentine newspaper report. The AFA’s chief difficulty is with coach Marcelo Bielsa, whose contract when he took charge in late 1998 was drawn up in pesos but on a par with the dollar, the daily Clarin said on its website on Friday.

It said the players, almost all of them extremely well paid members of Europe’s leading club sides, have agreed to a cut in the bonuses they were originally going to receive after winning the qualifiers at a canter.

But it gave no figures. The players have over the past three months shown great solidarity with their beleaguered relatives and friends back home, saying a World Cup victory might not mend the country’s ills but would be balm to their compatriots’ wounds.

Bielsa, whose side beat Germany 1-0 in a World Cup warm-up game in Stuttgart on Wednesday, said recently: “All agreements are being revised. Argentines linked by an economic tie are all subject to a revision.”

The AFA’s treasurer Hector Dominguez was in Stuttgart this week and met with Bielsa but the outcome of their meeting was not revealed.

But AFA president Julio Grondona told Clarin: “Bielsa’s contract was never in dollars but in Argentine pesos at one to one with the dollar… no doubt we’re going to have to renegotiate.

“There’s no kind of conflict,” Grondona hastened to add.

“There’s a big debt. Thank God, the World Cup’s coming and with the money we’re going to earn, we’ll be paying the debt to the coaching staff and the squad.”

Another unidentified AFA board member said, however, that Gondona would not have his arm twisted because, even if he so wished, “he can’t pay Bielsa what (the coach) wants.

Bielsa would like the matter to be settled quickly before the World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan starting on May 31. Argentina, based in Japan, open against Nigeria in Ibaraki on June 2 and also meet England and Sweden in Group F.