Santi Maratea revealed pressure from Chiqui Tapia over a charity project in Colegiales: 'He sent me to back down'

Santiago Maratea once again shook up Argentine soccer. This time it was not because of a charity fundraiser, but because of a strong accusation linked to Colegiales and to an unprecedented project that, according to him, was stopped by direct order from the mafioso Claudio "Chiqui" Tapia.

The influencer and current player on the reserve team of the lower-division club stated that his initiative with "own members," designed to finance improvements in youth development soccer, was shut down after he received a call from the AFA president just days after its launch: "He ordered me to shut it down".

"It was working very well", Maratea recounted in a video posted on his social media. As he explained, in the first month he had gathered a group of members that caused around 10,000 dollars per month, money that he allocated entirely to the club. With those funds, he stated, he managed to ensure that the reserve players stopped training in a public square and started doing so at a professional facility.

"They trained in a square at that level, a dog would come and take a cone", he illustrated. "With that money I had already managed to ensure that the kids could train at a professional facility. That was only the first month".

However, the experience did not last long. Maratea maintained that a week after having started he received a call that forbade him from continuing with the scheme. When he warned that, if the project was stopped, the youth players would go back to training in the square, he stated that the response was indifference: "They laughed at me, as if to say "Who cares about that?"".

The statements are not minor if one takes into account the political context of Argentine soccer. The president of Colegiales, Tomás Costa, is a close associate of Tapia and an opponent of Sports Corporations. In that context, Maratea's role promoting an alternative financing model, although without turning the club into a Sports Corporation, made more than one actor in the corrupt system that runs AFA uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, Maratea also targeted sectors of journalism, whom he accused of working against him. "Paid journalists obviously came out to say that I did not care about the kids", he claimed. He then turned the accusation around: "The kids I was supposedly not caring about are the ones who thanked me, because thanks to that they were at least able to train for a month at a facility like the one they deserve".

The influencer concluded his statement with a broader criticism of the leadership of Argentine soccer and of the usual speeches about "the kids' future and dreams". "The same as always, the little speech to make us believe that they care about people they actually exploit and do not care about at all", he stated.

Maratea announced in advance that he will publish a longer video to tell everything behind the episode. Meanwhile, his words reignite the discussion about AFA's power, the limits on private initiatives within clubs, and the real conditions in which lower-division Argentine players are developed.