Exxel Group: Management failure

The Excel Group was the emblematic investment fund of the Menimist period. In the 1990s, through connections, leveraged buyouts and large debts, it acquired large Argentine companies in different sectors, such as Galeno in the health sector, Argencard in the financial sector, Supermercados Norte in the retail sector, the food companies Freddo, Fargo and Havanna, and the music company Muscimento.

As a field of mass consumption, football could not fail to attract a large amount of private capital. The Excel Group, an empire led by Juan Navarro, spent $4.8 billion to acquire 73 companies and was Argentina’s first great management experience.

On April 1, 2000, at a general meeting of members, Quilmes decided to hand over the control of football to DFA (Desarrollo Futbolístico Argentino SA), a subsidiary of Excel, for a period of ten years. The Argentine Football Association had recently included this possibility for its members, and Severo, which carries a liability of ten million dollars and competes in the second category of Argentine football, insisted on this option. Football will be managed by a shared sports control body composed of six members: three proposed by the club and three company representatives.

At that time, the feeling of facing Quilmes was morbid, or at least it was morbid for me during the round trip to the semifinals in June 2001. In New Chicago, we trained in clothes borrowed from the company SuperPancho, who paid our Patacones team and the leadership led by Tito Guerra had reached the point of renting the ground to Emelec, who came to play the Libertadores. On the way back we went to the Centenario Stadium, which had only been built a few years ago and the playing field was a luxury for the Nacional B team. The players had sky-high contracts and wore top-notch sportswear, looking more like players from the national team. The team from the first division was better than the one from the rise. Like the story of David and Goliath, beating them gave us great satisfaction.

“Excel arrived in Quilmes with the intention of changing Argentine football, but the AFA still does not sanction entities that are in deficit. Quilmes is currently in good shape, without any debt, and in the last two years he has played in five finals against teams that were loss-making. “It was not a fair competition,” argued Gerardo León, then head coach of Excell and, oddly enough, now executive director of the AFA.

The losing streak of five promotions in a row did not even last a year and a half. In July 2001, a few months before the fall of the De La Rua government, the Excel Group fell into financial crisis and divested its assets in Argentina. He took the passes of some players from Quilmes as compensation for the investment.

“It is well known that the Argentine football industry has shown strong resistance to change, making effective private management impossible, a situation that seems far from being reversed in the medium term. All initiatives to create sports companies have been rejected by official organizations and the main leaders of national football, with no inclination to create the necessary conditions for the professionalization of football,” said the Excel Group in a statement issued twenty years ago, while dissolving its ties with Quilmes.

Twenty years have passed since the publication of that declaration, and several South American football countries have opened their doors to sports corporations, while Argentine football still maintains itself legally, adhering to its cultural roots of non-profit civil associations, but with the development of open pseudo-managerial experiences, some cases being very effective, such as those of Talleres, Godoy Cruz and Defensa y Justicia.

Decree 730 opened the door to Argentine SADs, and its authors seem to want us to believe that transforming clubs into public limited companies is the panacea for transforming Argentine football. What is happening in South America does not guarantee this. We will develop with our heart and continue to develop.