Soccer baptisms: the opportunity to end a violent practice disguised as a ritual

Some words are usually a trap. Because calling it a rite or ritual is a euphemism for not calling it what it really is: a violent practice naturalized for decades not only by players and coaching staff, but also by the media, which in the preseason published notes and photos about the new youth players ” baptized” by the rest of the campus.

In other sports, such as rugby, the scenes exceeded the limit of what was tolerable, or what was fun: they generated marks –physical and psychological– that lasted a lifetime. The crossovers between some gymnastics kids and their ex-partner and now Banfield footballer Brahian Alemán, last weekend, put into debate that initiation that in several clubs tries to be banished.

Fernando Langenauer, a graduate in Education and who worked in the training of youth in the pensions of Vélez and Independiente, defines certain limits of soccer as a jungle: “And within that jungle you have places with more and less care. The subject of initiation, with haircuts and so on, some find it funny and like it, and others suffer from it and have a terrible time. That is why the message from the oldest to the youngest in Estudiantes seems exemplary to me: this is over”.

On the opposite side of what Mariano Andújar and Mauro Boselli tried to install in Estudiantes, Alemán led a group calling itself Los Ninjas in Gymnastics, which had the habit of “baptizing” the soccer players who reached the First Division. What was normally identified with a deliberately sloppy shave or haircut often turned into a humiliation that was beaten and tormented. This week it slipped that even in some situations abuse of a sexual nature could have occurred, something that the club and the campus vehemently denied with a statement.

The truth is that Alemán had a fight with the youthful Felipe Sánchez in the Banfield stadium and, after that, the one who explained the reasons for these crosses was the journalist who covers the daily life of the La Plata club, Matías Romero. There was a more or less close precedent, when the relative of one of the “baptized” youths denounced the mistreatment by Los Ninjas, something that had generated a slight sanction by the coaching staff and the leadership.

The current president of Gymnastics, Mariano Cowen, recognized “the mistreatment suffered by youth soccer players between 2019 and 2021″, ruled out that there were sexual assaults and ratified the club’s commitment not to endorse these practices. “We do not endorse this type of thing and it will not happen at the club under our leadership. They have to be banished from sport in general, not just from football,” Cowen told C5N.

Langenauer assures that, when he saw and enjoyed the World Cup in Qatar, he thought that players like Enzo Fernández or Julián Álvarez had gone through some humiliating situation very recently. Because all the players suffered it to a greater or lesser extent.

In fact, the photos that illustrate this note show that: Alan Leonardo Díaz, Tomás Lecanda, Felipe Peña Biafore, Tomás Galván and Flabián Londoño Bedoya were the five River footballers “baptized” in 2021, while Gonzalo Lamardo and Agustín Almendra they went through that in 2018. Although in those schools that tradition implied cutting their hair, the rite was put into discussion in some other clubs such as Estudiantes. “We don’t want to feel bad for a boy who is doing his first preseason and likes to have long hair. A little while ago we talked about it with Mariano Andújar, there is no point in ridiculing them. As long as we are there, it will not happen,” Boselli explained in January, before these practices became visible on the other side of La Plata.

“That is why it is time to cut all this. That what happened to us in the World Cup makes us review how we want to build this sport”, says Langenauer. It would be a way of turning football –or any other sport– into a healthier environment.