Villa’s departure: no official communication, there were only tense dialogues between leaders

The sentence is already It is a fact: two years and a month in suspended prison, a psychosocial treatment and workshops. The question – the questions, the tension in the club’s offices – now is what Boca will do with that sentence of Sebastián Villa that many leaders relativized for so long. The future of the Colombian soccer player is in those dialogues with three different endings: unilaterally terminate the contract; a final sentence in case the lawyer appeals the measure and that he continues playing until he ends his contract on December 31, 2024; or sell it abroad.

The club is convulsed by expected –or foreseeable– news, but that had not been dimensioned as such. “There are a lot of pressures,” releases a leader. Pressures that come from different conceptions of certain leaders in the face of this kind of judicial sentences –and in a context in which some violence is no longer relativized– and pressures that also have an economic explanation. The representative’s force or objection converge with some questions that arise from within the club: which club would prefer to buy it? Who pays for the year and a half of the contract that he has left?

The background of the player Alexis Zárate circulated strongly yesterday as a possible analogy. On September 18, 2017, the Oral Court 1 of Lomas de Zámora sentenced Zárate to six and a half years in prison for “aggravated sexual abuse.” After a series of appeals made by his defense, the former Independiente and Temperley footballer traveled to Latvia in 2018 to play for the Liepaja club. He was able to go because he still did not have a firm sentence and because that Eastern European country does not have an extradition agreement with Argentina. But then, before a ruling by the Supreme Court of Justice, he was arrested at the beginning of July 2020: Zárate is serving his sentence in the prison of the city of Saavedra, in Bahía Blanca.

Will the same happen with Villa? In case you travel abroad, there are some countries that would not allow you to enter. United States or the main leagues in Europe, for example. The same would not happen with other alternative tournaments such as the Middle East or Eastern Europe.

Boca, meanwhile, left the forum throughout the afternoon yesterday. Despite the fact that some leaders had already warned that if there was a conviction the player could not play again in the First Division, given the news that emerged from the Lomas de Zamora Courts, the club did not rush to issue an official statement or anything similar. At the close of this edition, both in Brandsen -where President Jorge Amor Ameal governs- and in the Ezeiza estate -where Juan Román Riquelme governs- they tried to agree on a common position, something that has not happened at almost no time since the current one began. management in December 2019. Perhaps this complex resolution situation will generate some common position. Until last night, there was a certain consensus that Villa’s continuity was impossible.

In the next few hours, there will be news.