Argentina had never lost a qualifying game at home and suddenly the roof came down: on September 5, 1993, Colombia thrashed them 5-0 at the Monumental, with a final humbling move from the masterful Carlos Valderrama. A soccer disaster that seriously threatened the World Cup. All writing about Graphics He came back from the stadium chewing on fights and ideas for the release. It wasn’t just any defeat. Already in the magazine, someone reached for a large photo of several Argentine players leaving the field with their heads bowed. Aldo objected, “No, you have to do something different, this is a historical stick.” And he designed the famous all-black cover: above, a headband with the score: Argentina 0 – Colombia 5, and in the middle a short, huge headline: SHAME!

Stop time…!

That cover has become a legend, it is valued by hundreds of people in Colombia, and even has great value as a collector’s item. Aldo Proietto was the director Graphics, grosso, one of those born for this profession, who delivers them to you in a box marked “JOURNALIST”. At the age of 22, he was already the manager of Sports at Chronicle, newspapers overwhelmed with numbers. Then he managed various media, including magazines Goals and Graphics. What a talent…! The king of irony. An exceptional journalist, witty, caustic, with a fantastic sense of humor. He downplayed everything.

Estupiñán and ten others

This chronicler was specially sent to Rio de Janeiro for the match Brazil 1 – Chile 0, when the famous event of the torch was recorded in which the famous Chilean goalkeeper Roberto Rojas played a leading role. Chile needed to beat Brazil to qualify for the 1990 World Cup in Italy and didn’t have the strength to do so; Rojas then devised a great fraud like the Maracana. As they scattered all kinds of attacks on Brazil in Santiago, it was expected that they would retaliate against them in Rio. In the end it wasn’t like that, but Rojas was convinced that he had hit a rock, there would be an incident, something. “I said: the first time it happens, I will throw myself and cut myself,” he admitted later. And it happened. A flare has fallen near your location. It was not a sea flare of the kind that floats through the air at high speed, but a harmless ray of light without any force, slowly descending as it consumed itself. He almost fell on the grass. But Condor (that’s what they called him) took advantage of the fact that the ball, and thus his eyes, were in the second sector of the rectangle, threw himself on the ground and cut himself with the Gillette he had in his glove and carefully prepared it. A big scandal broke out and the Chilean team made a drastic decision to withdraw from the field.

The best medicine in the world wins

After the sharp wound Rojas showed on his forehead, from which profuse blood flowed, and the immediate withdrawal of the Chilean eleven, referee Juan Carlos Loustau had no choice but to decide to stop the game as Chile refused to continue playing. They lasted 69 minutes. This withdrawal was so arranged that they did not want to wait for a stretcher: between several comrades they took Rojas, carrying his legs and arms. The watchword was leave or leave.

Graphics It was the only media in the world that assured that the goalkeeper Rojas was faking the injury and that everything was a grandiose hoax. ‘The farce that makes football dirty,’ I headlined. It was not easy to write that chronicle while the whole universe was convinced otherwise. It was like seeing a UFO when you were alone and then pretending to talk about it. As soon as the suspension was announced, I used the phone in the press room and called the newsroom in Buenos Aires.

-Urgent, at Proietto’s-.

– I already passed you…

– Hello Jorge…

– Hello, Aldo, I’m calling from the Maracana, something serious happened here and the match was interrupted.

– Yes, I know, they almost killed the shooter with a torch.

– No, they didn’t even touch him, that meant…

– How come they didn’t even touch him…?- he raises his voice. – They almost killed him, we watched it on television.

– No, Rojas pretended, I saw clearly.

– But what do you say… if all the world’s press assures that they injured him and will take points from Brazil…?

– It wasn’t like that, the torch was harmless, he saw that it fell behind him and jumped. I don’t know why the blood was coming out, but it wasn’t there when he threw himself on the torch. I wanted to tell you that I would write it.

– What… Are you crazy…? As Graphics do you mean that… We’ve seen the pictures a hundred times here and you see a guy injured by a torch…

-Aldo, I’m absolutely sure, I watched it, I was distracted from the game precisely because of the torch, I kept looking at it and saw when Rojas in a very malicious attitude dived into the torch, which is simply a beam of light, nothing dangerous.

– Don’t risk it, in any case say that you have doubts…

– I have no doubts, I have never been so sure about something, I want to write what I saw.

We will make a historic mistake.

– Be calm, I know what I’m saying, Rojas is a fake. After all, then why did I come to watch the game…?

-Ah, of course, the gentleman is a special envoy…- (He said it in that half-joking, half-serious ironic tone that was characteristic of him, Proietto was a very funny guy).

– Not because he is a special envoy, but because I saw him. I’m going to the hotel and I’ll send a message in two hours.

There is a tradition in journalism that in Graphics was fulfilled: the word of the emissary of the magazine was always sacrosanct, even in dissidence. But they strictly respected my opinion, which, if I was wrong, seriously threatened the magazine’s prestige. That’s how it was published and I felt comforted, although when I got back I realized that they didn’t fully believe me and that they suspected that the publication had made a terrible mistake because of me. Today I understand them perfectly: it was a huge risk; no other media in the world dared to say that there was a simulation of the goalkeeper. Don’t even move it. And as I titled and wrote, there was no going back. If FIFA agreed with Rojas, the journalistic and legal consequences for Graphics they could be serious. Proietto was played and supported. Not even a comma in the article touched me.

He didn’t have the same luck. As a young man, he suffered first hand when they changed the note. It was in 1967, when he was emerging as a top journalist of a popular daily Chronicle. I counted:

– I was just starting Chronicle, where I learned all the good and all the bad things about journalism. I had to live that experience, it’s very ugly, but over time I assimilated it. I was 21 years old and they sent me to Montevideo to watch the Intercontinental Cup final between Racing and Celtic. I wrote my comment and put what happened, that Racing beat Celtic to the ground. When I got back to Buenos Aires, the first thing I did was buy a newspaper to see what my comment turned out to be. It wasn’t mine, it was someone else’s. Terrible rage. When I got to the newsroom, I asked who made the change and they told me “Américo Barrios”. He was a newspaper director and a great person in journalism and literature, a great writer. And he was an avowed fan of Racing. Of course, that’s why he changed her, I thought. Then he called me and very calmly explained to me: “Kid, you don’t argue with the champion, you approve of it.” I grumbled a bit, and he added, “You’re too young to understand.”

Proietto died on Tuesday in Buenos Aires at the age of 78. Aldo dear… (OR)