With bare fists – and a pistol: referee and club president fight in Argentina

Due to a controversial referee decision, there is a physical altercation between the president of the losing team and the referee after an Argentine Cup match.

Andrés Merlos and Andrés Fassi are the protagonists of the latest football drama that has reached us from Argentina. Merlos is a referee, Fassi is the president of Club Atlético Talleres. The fact that the two do not particularly like each other became apparent at the cup match between Talleres and the big Boca Juniors at the weekend.

On Saturday evening, the teams drew 1:1. Boca Juniors narrowly won the penalty shootout that followed, and Talleres was eliminated from the Argentine Cup.

“They came into the locker room with a gun”

According to President Fassi, the blame for his club's defeat clearly lies with referee Merlos. In one scene shortly before Boca Juniors scored the opening goal, he allowed the game to continue even though the ball had already left the field. There was no VAR in this game.

Reason enough for Fassi to confront the referee after the game in the catacombs of the Estadio Malvinas Argentinas. “Two people came into my dressing room with a gun, all she had to do was pull the trigger,” Merlos described the crazy scene to the Argentinian broadcaster “TyC Sports”.

“They started shouting at me and told me they were going to kill me. The security guard put his hand in his pocket and I saw the butt of a gun.” These are harsh accusations against the Talleres president. Nevertheless, referee Merlos is not sure whether the action will have consequences for Fassi. “It is regrettable, sad and painful what happened. There is no explanation for what Fassi is doing, he has incredible impunity.”

Did the referee strike?

A completely different version of events in the days following the match came from the Talleres president himself. He claimed that it was the impartial War who suddenly became violent during the confrontation in the stadium's catacombs. “He started shouting at me! Exactly the opposite of what usually happens in this type of situation, because I have often been the one shouting at a referee,” Fassi said.

“He became completely irrational and angry, so much so that the other coaches started holding him back because he was trying to attack me,” says the club president.

Merlos even insisted that he follow him into the dressing room, but he “naturally decided against” following the referee “in that state.” Shortly afterwards, the referee stormed out of the dressing room again and used physical violence.

“I was four or five metres from the door, he came straight at me and hit me on my right cheekbone,” Fassi describes the situation. “I was completely stunned and thought: 'What a crazy thing that man has just done, I have never seen a referee hit a club president.'”

Video of fight surfaced

But the crazy story doesn't end there. After the referee became violent, Gustavo Gatti, the vice president of the club, also intervened. “You're crazy, how can you hit the president?” Fassi recounts, and continued: “What did Mr. Gatti get then?” A kick to the liver from Mr. Merlos, which knocked him back two meters from the dressing room door. That is the end of this embarrassing and sad event that I have never experienced before.”

Both stories have been repeated several times by the Argentine media. Now a video from the stadium's catacombs that surfaced on Monday is supposed to shed some light on the matter.

It shows a confrontation between the two parties in a corridor under the stadium. Apart from a visible hand-to-hand fight and a lot of shouting, the video footage doesn't reveal much. One person falls to the ground during the scuffle. It is not clear whether it is Fassi, Merlos or Gatti. “TyC Sports” claims to have seen a “punch from the referee”.

This is not the first time that Fassi and Merlos have clashed. In 2022, a heated argument broke out between them after Talleres lost to Central Cordoba de Santiago del Estero. As a result of this incident, the AFA Disciplinary Court punished the Talleres president for “insulting the referee internally” and suspended him for 30 days.

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