For the Latin peoples, football is a secular religion, something that transcends the single Sunday match. It is a refuge, an escape valve, capable of mending the tears of the working week in 90 minutes. In Argentina, and throughout the South American continent, all this is amplified. Football-related anecdotes could fill a tome, to which another page has recently been added: with the release of the new Panini album from the Qatar World Cup, the request for a package of figurines it has soared to unprecedented levels and the government of Buenos Aires has also had to intervene.
The packs of stickers have cradled the wishes of many generations of children, including Italians, who dream of completing the album. With the world and the new album approaching, Argentine newsagents find themselves in endless queues outside the shops and many people rely on secondary markets to be able to buy a package. All this in a country where inflation runs at 100% and where more than 40% of people live below the poverty line. The reasons behind this rush to grab the “attackable heroes” are manifold: there is a supply and demand problem with production that has failed to keep up, inflation and even people’s expectations. blue and white that the trophy can return to Buenos Aires after the last success in 1986.
Given the high demand, the market has seen a parallel growth in a secondary market where there are no rules. Since Lionel Messi, the only one who can be compared to Maradona, will play his last World Cup this winter, it is his stickers that suffer the highest price increases. In a market in Buenos Aires, the price of a single Messi card was around 21 euros, but it was on an online exchange platform that it really went too far: a special “gold legend” card by Messi was on sale for 410 euros. , 60,000 pesos. That figure is very close to what a minimum wage worker earns in a month.
The market price for distributing a pack of stickers to newsstands has also increased. It should be 150 pesos, just over a euro, but by now they are nowhere to be found at that figure. The average price, in fact, is constantly between 1 euro and 40 and 2 euro 5 cents. In the general confusion, the market has been infiltrated by counterfeits and by the “loan sharks of the package”. The situation was not able to resolve itself and for this reason the government also had to intervene. In a meeting of the Commercial Secretariat of the republic a round table was set with representatives of Panini Argentina and the national union of newsagents. The photo, dated September 20, received criticism and ridicule from the public opinion: more than 3000 comments and 6000 retweets. “What a shame! Is this why you presented yourself in the elections? Take care of people’s real problems ”: this is the tenor of most of the comments under the photo. The decision was instinctive: no government intervention on the issue, given the rising inflation and the discontent of a people who seem not to see the end of the tunnel of the economic crisis.