Abstract
This article explores labour relations and working conditions in Argentine football under Juan Perón from 1946 to 1955. In a dramatic strike by professional footballers in 1948, Perón’s presidency saw the ‘most serious industrial dispute in world football history’. Clubs were forced to field teams composed of amateur reserve players for several months, while attempts by Peronist officials to mediate a resolution to the dispute were unsuccessful. Contemporary newspapers and the annual reports of the Asociación de Fútbol Argentino provide insight into the strike’s development and eventual breakdown, demonstrating that the conventional framing of the dispute as a clash between working-class players and elite directors is simplistic in obscuring the class divisions that existed within the body of professional footballers. These divisions were crucial to the directors’ strategy to break the strike and reassert control over Argentine football. However, failure to address the root causes of the strike damaged Argentine football in the long-term, as many top players dissatisfied with the resolution to the strike left the country to seek their fortunes elsewhere, most notably in Colombia.
Published Version
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