Sports clubs with football in Argentina: Conflicts, debates and continuities

Football in Argentina was first built as a social practice and then as a spectacle, but it was always institutionally based on clubs. The predominant organisational model of clubs emphasised horizontality and equality as well as democracy and pluralism. Regardless of the changes throughout the last one hundred years, this model of clubs largely remains in place. This essay explores the development of clubs in Argentina throughout the twentieth century. Such development involves three interrelated dimensions: temporal, social and spatial. We explore these dimensions by considering the adoption of football as a social practice, by looking at the impact of football as spectacle and its consequences on urban development, and by exploring the significance of clubs in the past and in the present as institutions that were home to, and enabled the development of, the spectacle of football. For this purpose, the essay focuses on the nature of the debates and paradigms concerning the clubs institutional status, the political behaviour and practices as well as the identifiable disputes and conflicts.