All week it was up in the air over whether or not Veracruz players would take to the field. The Spanish verb is presentar - to present themselves, to show up, to perform. The players were present, but they didn't perform, initially anyway. There in body only but not in spirit.
Their minds were there as well, minds that were made up to finally stand up for themselves. If you believe the players, and there's been little evidence presented to convince the general public to doubt them, there are some who haven't been paid for half a year. If they didn't play in this Liga MX clash against Tigres, the consequences would be severe, the league had warned. A resolution, officials promised at a news conference Friday afternoon, is coming with access to a $1 million emergency fund set to be approved.
That's not good enough for the players, with the money not yet in their hands and likely only to cover the contracts actually registered with the league.
"The problem that exists doesn't come from any situation apart from that they have a contract signed with the federation and have other verbal agreements with Veracruz's directors," Liga MX president Enrique Bonilla said this week.
What those "verbal agreements" entail isn't clear but should there have been separate discussions regarding payments that were never officially documented, it only adds to the mess that is facing the club, its players and the board at present.
So to the actual game itself as the whistle blew and the players stood still. For nearly a full minute, the ball rested at the feet of talented young goalkeeper Sebastian Jurado as he rested on one knee. After a minute passed, Andre-Pierre Gignac went and won the ball, with the Frenchman setting up the opener for Eduaro Vargas and adding a second four minutes in with Veracruz still looking on as though the match were still in the warm-up period.
Vargas scored again in the eighth minute and Tigres eventually took the honors, though clearly that's not the right word, with a 3-1 victory in extraordinary circumstance.
Tigres have been made out to be the villains in this, and it wasn't exactly a strong show of solidarity from the visitors. But they were put in an unenviable situation. Communication hasn't exactly been clear from any parties involved in the whole debacle, and captain Guido Pizarro said after the match that his squad had planned to respect one minute of no play. Veracruz players say they were expecting three minutes.
¡HISTÓRICO!
— TUDN USA (@TUDNUSA) October 19, 2019
El partido arrancó entre @clubtiburones y @tigresoficial. Veracruz no opone resistencia y se dejó anotar.
🦈 0-1 🐯#Veracruz | #Tigres | #TULigaMX
🔴 EN VIVO 👉 https://t.co/4v6qrBcrPc pic.twitter.com/GC5erMp9Lq
"They told us they were going to stop for a minute after that they were going to stop for three," Pizarro said. "I told them we were only doing one minute. Several Veracruz players didn't know it was going to be for three minutes. They found out from me."
Tigres didn't ask to be put in this situation. They didn't volunteer to be the ones to put goals past the one team in the league that isn't getting paid on time. Tigres are not the villian. The villian is Veracruz owner Fidel Kuri, who admits he has debts to pay but instead of working to find a solution is calling out his own players.
The sad reality is that a casual Liga MX fan checking their scores app Saturday morning wouldn't be surprised to see Tigres plaster Veracruz. Compared to previous results, 3-1 seems like progress.
But how are you supposed to get yourself pumped up to play when you're getting nothing for it? How are you supposed to motivate yourself when you know your hard work may not be rewarded? Why give your sweat and risk your health for an organization that has made it clear it doesn't value the sacrifice? And when the staff, youth players and women's team seem to be in an even worse situation... the time comes to make a stand.
It's what Veracruz players had the courage to do, even as the supposed authority figures in the room neglected to do so. Veracruz should've been relegated in the spring, but Liga MX allowed Kuri to buy back in, to pay a penalty as other teams had done in the past and stay in the top division. Why Kuri was allowed to do so is baffling. This is a man who has associated with some of the state's most repugnant politicians, who physically assaulted a member of the officiating committee in 2016 and who shows no remorse for the situation he has put the club in.
Rather than hide his face and slink out of the public eye, Kuri was back in front of the cameras late Friday night, picking a fight in the press with his defender Carlos Salcido, who spoke for all Veracruz players in a post-match news conference and set out their frustration with the payment situation.
"Of course," Salcido lied, Kuri said. "They should've done a full strike. There you see the lack of fight my team has."
It's not exactly the time to talk smack about the veterans on the team. The only words anyone wants to hear out of Kuri's mouth are that he's catching up on his debts and/or selling the team.
The players will likely come out of all this in a stable position. A city already hurting for reasons that go beyond soccer may not. While attendances have dwindled at the Luis 'Pirata' Fuente for obvious reasons over the last few years, there are still people who live and die with the club. There were still fans who, knowing they might not see a game of soccer, purchased tickets and went to Friday night's match. It's in their soul.
"My father passed me the cross of rooting for Veracruz," Cesar Martinez Valenzuela wrote last month in an essay about why he still supports the team. "It's not about celebrating successes that perhaps will never arrive, but rather about feeling proud to be his son, that he'll always be my father and that the Tiburones always will be our soccer team."
And that's what fandom is about. Being there through thick and the thin, the good and the bad. However, fans also have a reasonable expectation that the players they're cheering on will be given some level of reassurance so that they can perform at or near their best.
Instead, many players are wondering how they'll pay their rent or feed their families. It's a situation the league could've avoided by leaving Veracruz in the second division where they belonged. Instead, it took the payment from Kuri but got a much bigger situation than it bargained for. Letting Veracruz back in and waiting until now to take action on his delinquency has led us to this point, with media outlets around the world running an embarrassing story about Mexican football.
Of all parties involved, perhaps Kuri - of all people - had the best summation of the night. "We were the joke of Mexican football once again," he said.
Sure enough, but the striking players shouldn't be the objects of the footballing world's ridicule, but rather the owner who refuses to fulfill his role and those who enabled him.
