MX club protests wages by standing still in match
Veracruz players protested unpaid wages by refusing to play for the first 4 minutes and 20 seconds of Friday’s 3-1 Liga MX home loss against Tigres, giving up two early goals in the process.
Tigres’ players joined the protest for the first 60 seconds, but then began to play after goalkeeper Sebastian Jurado kicked the ball away and ceded possession.
Tigres’ Eduardo Vargas kicked the ball into an empty net at 1:39, and Andre-Pierre Gignac added the second past motionless goalkeeper Jurado at 3:55. It was Gignac’s 100th goal since moving to Liga MX in 2015.
Veracruz players began to move and play just after the second goal, but Tigres increased their lead through a second Vargas goal in the eighth minute to make it 3-0. Veracruz’s Colin Kazim-Richards added a late goal for the home side to reach the final scoreline.
At 2-0 down and with 4 mins and 20 seconds on the clock, Veracruz’s players finally start to play. Strong protest about unpaid wages that will make global headlines. What a strange situation. #ligamxeng
Veracruz forward Angel Reyna told TV Azteca that Tigres players knew that his side would protest for the first three minutes of the game, but proceeded to play anyway.
The Mexican footballers’ association (AMFproMX) had confirmed earlier in the week that Veracruz’s players would be boycotting the game due to wages not being paid to players, with some of the debts stretching back six months.
But the match against Tigres in Estadio Luis “Pirata” Fuente went ahead after the FMF and Liga MX suggested the club could be relegated if players hadn’t taken the field.
In a news conference earlier Friday, FMF president Yon de Luisa announced that an emergency fund of around $1 million would be made available to guarantee that players who made official complaints that could be verified would be paid part of the debt owed.
De Luisa confirmed that only two players from Veracruz had made official complaints so far, with Liga MX president Enrique Bonilla saying Wednesday that some players had only “verbal agreements” with the club.
Players’ association president Alvaro Ortiz spoke at a separate news conference shortly afterward Friday and said that the emergency fund represented “a light” and that stopping the league in protest wasn’t the solution.
Veracruz has had a number of issues on and off the field in recent years, and paid a fine to be able to stay in Liga MX at the end of last season, after it had been relegated, with Mexico’s first division set to increase to 20 teams.
The result sees Veracruz extend their record winless streak to 40 games in Liga MX; with the team’s last win coming in August of 2018. The club is currently rooted to the bottom of the Liga MX table, having picked up four points and scored just seven goals in 12 games so far this season.