A Loan Ends When A Loan Ends, Damnit.

Nothing ever happens in plain vanilla style down in South America, does it?

The Apertura Bolivian championship was won by Bolivar of La Paz a few weeks back (which everyone surely knew) when they beat Real Mamore on the final day of the season to nudge a one point gap between themselves and runners up Real Potosi. The only problem is that one of their players, Argentine defender Augusto Mainguyague, had a loan contract* which ended one week before the game on July 5th. Bolivar ran him out anyway, thus meaning they fielded an ineligible player. You can see where this is going…

* – Media outlets generalize it as a “contract” but wiki says loan, and as we all know Wikipedia > everything else.

Real Mamore, the new BFF’s of Real Potosi, lodged an official protest. In stark contrast to most official protests, the courts decided they had a legitimate beef – pretty straight forward, actually. Ineligible player means a swift loss of those three points. And this is what the top of the table looked like before the punishment:

A three point drop means Bolivar drop from titlists to best of the rest, handing Real Potosi only their second ever championship per the infallible Wikipedia.

It remains to be seen who’s at fault for this and whether or not anyone actually knew what was going on. Given common dates in the football world, logic would dictate June 30th was the end date for Augusto’s loan contract. This means it’s highly possibly the ink read 6/30 on the contract, while the two clubs had agreed on a loan ‘til the end of the season‘. Simple mistake, big consequences.

Or maybe this is South American football at its plainest vanilla.

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Category: South America