Adrian García Aguirre / Cdmx.
*A bottling company’s worst deal.
*It was a gift from dad to Junior because of a debt.
*Isaac Berssudo’s mistake in selling the club for 425,000 pesos.
*In six decades the Azcárraga team has increased its value.
*Azcárragas made them an important and cold side.
At an approximate cost of 200 million dollars, the tormented, hated and beloved Club América in Mexico City, owned by the Azcárraga family, is – financial analysts say – one of the best businesses of Televisa, the largest communications emporium coverage in Latin America.
Now we will tell the story of how Emilio Azcárraga Milmo -aka “El Tigre”, the tycoon who died in 1997 and heir to his father, Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta- became this football club at a ridiculous price, laughable for current averages.
In 1959, the Mexican soda company “Jarritos”, owned by Isaac Bessudo, had barely nine years of producing this nationally successful and tasty fruit drink, which still exists and is well consumed in the country; but at that time, despite the commercial success that the soft drink was beginning to have, it was in debt.
In other words, the businessman, who lives in a beautiful villa on Providencia y Porfirio Díaz street in the Valle district of the capital, sold his soft drink for a debt to Telesistema Mexicano SA de CV, which would later become Televisa. .
The problem is that to pay off that debt, Isaac Bessudo had the idea of selling the football team to his friend Emilio Azcárraga Milmo at a minimal price, for which it passed into the hands of Telesistema Mexicano: 425,000 pesos from that moment, which according to by calculations, it would be equivalent to the cost of a house in Lomas de Chapultepec or six Cadillac cars.
“The sale of America was informal, but legal,” says attorney Rafael García Aguirre, a lifelong American whose heroes were Manuel Camacho, “El Perro” Cuenca, Juan Bosco, Alfonso Portugal, Antonio Jasso and others soccer players.
“Moreover, the buying and selling were done informally,” says García, born in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, “almost on a napkin, precisely on plain paper, writing the agreements with a pen and closing the deal shaking hands”. .
The birthday of Emilio Azcárraga Milmo was approaching, whose father was sure he could do good business with that team, and asked his “dear and dear friend Isaac” to take charge of the club’s expenses until the day of delivery, which happened on July 22, 1959 and that’s how it all began.
“The Azcárragas knew nothing about football, but they knew about business,” wrote historian Héctor Hernández, commenting that young Emilio, in his first meeting with footballers as new owner, told his players that he and his family he knew nothing about football, but about business, so he would make America a profitable business.
The following decisions by the owner of Telesistema Mexicano were decisive in transforming América from an ordinary team to a top-level one: he hired sports administration specialist Guillermo Cañedo de la Bárcena, he acquired several Brazilian players such as Arlindo dos Santos Cruz, José Alves “Zágue”, Francisco Moacyr and Ney Blanco de Oliveira, as well as a sensational southpaw from Curaçao, Ronald Martell.
To date, fans believe that, out of a common team, today it is one comparable to Real Madrid, says García Aguirre, a frequent visitor to the stands of the Olympic Stadium in Ciudad Universitaria, then home to the millionaire team.
In the mid-1960s, the Azteca Stadium was built, so that the team had its own home and stopped playing in the university stadium, also taking away the mascot and club crest, which was then a canary, and changed to an eagle .
“Today América -with Mazatlán, Tigres and Rayados de Monterey- is one of the biggest teams in the Mx League, and was bought with Real Madrid”, reiterates the lawyer from the capital and more than sixty years after the purchase of America from “Jarritos”, the soccer team is worth nine thousand times more, according to the latest calculations.
