It was rumoured in May that David Beckham might emerge from his footballing retirement for Bolívar’s Copa Libertadores semi-final. With the club’s reigning oligarch Marcelo Claure later dismissing this idea as just ‘an illusion’, the club was left with a lingering sense of déjà-vu: in 1994, Bolívar offered Maradona US$1 million for a six-match contract — a deal that was widely criticised before eventually falling through. While the temporary signing of ‘Golden Balls’ remains an improbable dream, Alex Walker nonetheless takes a step into the subjunctive and imagines what might happen if the Beckham brand emigrated to Bolivia.

Having signed a one-month contract and twisted the squad registration rules, David is cleared to play. However, after sitting out the first leg with dodgy bunions, he collapses from altitude exhaustion just 17 minutes into the return match at Estadio Hernando Siles and spends much of the half on his hands and knees, routinely ferried across the pitch by the medical buggy to take Bolívar’s set pieces. After halftime, however, David emerges from the dugout with a suspiciously bleeding eyebrow due to an incident later dubbed ‘hair-straightener-gate’.

It seems, though, that the anger rubbed off on ‘Golden Balls’ and, in a moment reminiscent of his notorious dismissal for kicking-out at Diego Simeone in the ’98 World Cup, the red mist descends once more: Beckham charges manically around the pitch searching for the nearest Argentinian to kick — someone who, unfortunately and ironically, turns out to be the referee. As suspicions are raised about David’s sudden burst of energy, however, FIFA discover that his recovery was not all above board –an emergency supply of coca leaves down his right shin pad providing the vital dose– and he incurs a post-match lifetime ban for supplement abuse.

Soon after, the family fall on hard times with their only source of income being decennial Spice Girls reunions at occasional jubilee celebrations back in Britain. After an auto-tune failure during a rare Victoria solo causes the deaths of no fewer than four much-loved family pets, the Beckhams –disgraced and excommunicated from mainstream culture– find themselves in dire straits. Unable to return to a crumbling Beckingham Palace, David lands a weekend job as a personal lustrabota to Bolívar’s goalkeeping legend Quiñones — a role that finally earns him a knighthood under the banner of ‘charitable work’. Victoria, meanwhile sets up a small stall in El Alto market that specialises in knock-off or stolen items from Victoria Beckham ©; a brand name whose rights she surrendered after a long, drawn-out and unsuccessful legal battle with Jean-Paul Gautier.

A politician who plays football, or a footballer who plays at politics?

According to former Bolivian president and football fanatic Carlos Mesa, Evo Morales ‘doesn’t necessarily represent who Bolivians aspire to be, but who they really are’. Indeed, he is an indigenous man, without hardly any formal qualifications, who has become leader of the nation. 

Evo’s political career has been constructed around the ‘everyman’ image and football is, perhaps, the most central aspect of this allure. Take his recent contract to play professionally with the Montero–based ‘Sport Boys’ next season. Despite the insistence of their chief, Mario Cronenbold, that Morales ‘has a great right foot and dominates the ball’, nobody is under the illusion that the president has earned his contract through footballing merit alone. The question that remains, then, is whether this is a purely political ploy. Although sociologist Mario Murillo believes that it is a move motivated purely by Morales’ love of the beautiful game, Club Bolívar president Guido Loayza disagrees, explaining that ‘for people in politics, any act is a political act’. While his decision to play in Santa Cruz, the city which his government has most struggled to win over, could be seen as a populist masterstroke, Carlos Mesa believes that by doing so he will be ‘forcing an absurdity’. This, however, is not what the former president finds most disturbing about his successor’s move. Indeed, Mesa describes this foray into professional football as demonstrating ‘a lack of respect for the league, for the fans and for young players who are trying to break through’.

Morales is certainly not unique in mixing politics and sport. Indeed, North Korea’s deceased leader Kim Jong-il’s biography boasts that in his first-ever round of golf, he achieved 11 holes-in-one, carding a dubious 36 under-par. Closer to Morales, though, is Silvio Berlusconi—a man with very different politics but with a similar populist image—who conjured up a party from thin air based on demagogic policies with the buzzword name ‘Forza Italia’, the slogan of his own football team, AC Milan. His connection with football is far more than surface deep, however. Perhaps the strongest illustration of Berlusconi’s footballing mind-set can be found in his use of language: for example, on his victory over fascist and communist opposition, Berlusconi said, ‘I heard that the game was getting dangerous, and that it was all being played in the two penalty areas, with the midfield being left desolately empty . . . and so we decided that we had to fill that immense space’.

Mario Murillo says that Morales, too, views the world of politics through a footballing frame of mind. He explains that, when Bolivia hosts political summits, the President refers to his government as the ‘home team’ and that he often uses attack-vs.-defence analogies when constructing political strategies. Carlos Mesa remarks that Morales ‘can’t spend a week without playing a football match’, and you need only flick through a few pages of a Morales biography to understand that football is ingrained in the president’s DNA. 

Aged 13, Evo set up a community football team called Fraternity, captained—as you might expect—by himself. Within two years, Morales had been elected as the training coach for a team in Oruro: ‘I was like the team owner’, he said. ‘I had to shear sheep and llama wool . . . we sold the wool to buy balls and uniforms’. In the ’80s, drought forced his family to move to the Chapare region, where Morales used football to integrate into his new community: ‘One day, I played with the settlers and I scored the winning goal’, he reflected, ‘then everyone wanted me to play with them’. Later, as Sports Secretary for the region’s cocaleros trade union, Morales organised football tournaments and, in 1985, was appointed Secretary General, leading six separate cocalero federations and getting elected deputy of the union just two years later.

Morales, as president, is no stranger to using football as a political instrument. For instance, when playing in a match at 6,000 metres to protest the efforts to ban Bolivia from international fixtures at high altitude, the president used the situation to act as unifier and enhance his reputation—something encapsulated by his statement, ‘If love can be made, football can be played’. Referring to this political strategy, Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian political scientist at Florida International University, declared that ‘FIFA have done Evo a big favour’. Similarly, in September last year, Morales and several UN officials took time out from the General Assembly to play a football match to raise awareness of a UN campaign against domestic violence. Heraldo Muñoz, Chilean Minister for Foreign Affairs, describes football as ‘a global passion and a great way to win hearts and minds’, and Morales has proven adept at using it as a means to an end.

In times of political difficulty, Morales has also used football as a deflection tactic. In April 2010, for example, just a day after he controversially warned Bolivian males to eschew chicken because it caused baldness and decreased virility, the president organised a football match between representatives from all over South America in the mountain village of Colomi — arguably succeeding in diverting public attention away from his statement. Perhaps more puzzling, though, is the fact that his administration has been accused of building canchas in areas of political opposition to pull wool over the eyes of his critics. Ironically, while a blatant populist act, there is no doubt that this ploy will directly contribute to the development of grassroots football in Bolivia. Carlos Mesa believes that ‘without a single doubt’ Morales has improved the state of the game in Bolivia in two main respects: Morales has established football as a part of the quotidian Bolivian culture, and he has inculcated the idea that ‘football can be played in any place at any time’. 

Carlos Mesa explains that he ‘couldn’t have gotten away with half the things that Evo does because there are certain things that the public expect of their current leader’. Morales, then, has built a political career on a populist image centred around football. Like the man who built his house upon the sand, having constructed a political career on footballing foundations, you would assume that it is only a matter of time before Morales’s luck runs out. Indeed, David Goldblatt, author of Futebol Nation: A Footballing History of Brazil, believes ‘as widespread protests in [Brazil] in the past year have shown, the public is too educated, too organised and too cynical to accept the tropes of the past—that football and glory are a plausible substitute for health-care and good government’. 

Morales, though, is not offering football as a substitute. For him, politics and football are one and the same. While his decision to play professional football next year does not exactly send out a message of total commitment to his presidential duties, it is difficult to disagree with the idea that, in many key respects, Evo Morales has been a good president. Rather, Morales has so effectively conflated politics and football that both have become inseparable from the man himself.

‘Roly, with the Tahuchi Academy, has revolutionized the world of children’s football’, famed Brazilian football star Pelé said about the dream of engineer Rolando Aguilera Pareja, who wanted to provide to children the opportunity to realize their dreams of playing football and thrive in other areas of their lives. So in May 1978, Aguilera created the Tauhichi Academy, where children learn football as a fundamental tool for social action and education.

Thirty-six years after its creation, the Tahuichi Academy does not lack international recognition: it was named an ‘Ambassador of the Youth’ by the Organization of American States in 1984. When it received the Condor of the Andes, the highest distinction from the Bolivian government, then–head of state Gen. Hugo Banzer praised Aguilera, saying, ‘He is a man quintessential in sports education.’ The academy has also been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and Rigoberta Menchú​​, a Nobel Prize winner herself, said, ‘Tahuichi children are the hope of a more fraternal and humane world.’

The school is named in memory of Aguilera’s father, Ramón ‘Tahuichi’ Aguilera, who played for Bolivia’s Florida team. ‘Tahuchi’ means ‘big bird’ in Tupi-Guarani. There is also a stadium in Santa Cruz, named after him, the Estadio Ramón 'Tahuichi' Aguilera.

A year after its creation, the Tahuchi Academy’s team won its first Bolivian children’s championship, and since then its fame has spread worldwide, so much so that in 1985 FIFA organized the first under-16 World Championship in honor of it in China.

In 1996, Aguilera organised the the Tahuchi ‘Peace and Unity’ Little World Cup, a yearly under-15 tournament held in Bolivia. It celebrated its 19th anniversary this past January, with participating teams from around the world. Other countries have followed suit, according to the academy’s press officer, Jalqui Gutierrez: ‘Even the South American Football Confederation has formalized its own sub-15 championships, inspired by the achievements of the Tahuchi ‘Peace and Unity’ Little World Cup.’ (And, underscoring the importance of Tahuchi, some former competitors from the ‘Peace and Unity’ tournament will play in the this year’s World Cup in Brazil.).

Some of the academy’s famous alumni include Romel Quiñoñez and Rudy Cardozo, both current Club Bolívar players, and retired footballers Marco Antonio ‘El Diablo’ Etcheverry, Erwin ‘Platini’ Sáanchez, Juan Manuel Peña, Luis Héctor Cristaldo and José Carlos ‘El Gato’ Fernandez (who is now the director of Club Bolívar).

But the trophies and international recognition would be nothing without the academy’s overriding mission: ‘The purpose of this is to give young people the opportunity to play sports in a healthy way, teaching useful skills for life, against social risks, such as drugs and crime’, says Mabel Añez, the social responsibility coordinator for the school. ‘Social action has become the basis of the academy in the last 10 years.’ To date, over 300,000 children between the ages of 3 and 15 have attended the academy; 85 percent attended free of change, thanks to scholarships for homeless and low-income Bolivian children. Tahuichi also provides medical and nutritional services to about 3,000 children both on and off the pitch in addition to its soccer clinics. Girls also participate in the academy’s programs and have found great success in international matches.

Various partnerships with schools and colleges throughout Bolivia and abroad provide scholarships to Tauhichi grads, with 625 scholarships having been distributed, 133 of them to study abroad. Eddy Hurtado, a former student at the academy and now the head of its human resources department, says that ‘the players that manage to turn professional are exceptions, but Tauhichi gives children the chance to thrive’ in any area of life. Hurtado arrived at the academy from the Chapare region when he was 16 years old. ‘It was a great opportunity to change my life. It gave me the opportunity to play football, travel a lot, and now it gave me work.’ Through the academy, he won a scholarship to study in the United States, and now he’s active in helping out new students. ‘Tahuichi changed my life’, he says, ‘and now I can pass that on to future generations.’