Welcome to Argentinian football, where the dumb rules are part of the fun

On Wednesday night, Boca Juniors and Velez Sarsfield have to play a weird, made-up playoff match for a spot in the Copa Libertadores group stage. The winner will get to skip the playoff round of South America’s most prestigious club competition and drop right into the final 32, while the loser -- well, that’s complicated.

See, this isn’t a simple win and you’re in. Velez will be out of Copa Lib altogether if they fail to win, but Boca will get a second chance.

Confused? That’s because it’s nuts. Don’t take my word for it -- let’s check in on someone prominent in Argentina who covers the domestic game. Here’s Sam Kelly before a friendly match a week ago.

Welcome to Argentinian football, where this is the norm. For instance, here’s what we wrote about former Argentinian FA president and FIFA executive Julio Grondona when he passed away.

During his time in power, Grondona attracted a significant level of controversy. He has been widely criticized for anti-Semitic remarks and offensive comments about the Falklands War, while Diego Maradona has referred to him as a gangster.

Grondona’s final lasting legacy is the crazy first division he constructed. Argentina used to have a 20-team top flight with two tournaments, an Apertura played in the spring and a Clausura played in the fall. One of Grondona’s final acts as FA president was to implement a new league system that features 30 teams and a tournament that runs from February through December. To get to this point, one last “Torneo de Transición” was played with 20 teams last fall, and now the new tournament will start in 2015.

This seems pretty uncomplicated until continental qualification is taken into consideration. Copa Libertadores is a bit different than the UEFA Champions League. In Europe, the rules are pretty straightforward -- each league, based on a coefficient, earns a certain number of places in the top competition, which are then distributed based on teams’ position at the season’s end. In South America, each federation can pick their own qualification criteria, though the same basic seeding principle applies -- a team labeled ‘Argentina 1’ will have the best seed and the easiest road to a knockout stage place, ‘Argentina 2’ will have a slightly tougher draw, and so on. Some teams drop directly into the group stage and lower seeds have to go through a playoff, like Champions League.

Most countries eligible for Copa Libertadores choose their representatives in a sensible fashion. Brazil, for instance, sends their top four finishers in the Brasileirão and the Copa do Brazil winners. Mexico’s teams are the two top finishers not playing in CONCACAF Champions League and the winner of a playoff between the winners of each season’s Copa MX.

But Argentina decide their qualifiers in a different way. They get one automatic spot -- ‘Argentina 1’ -- for San Lorenzo, the defending Copa Libertadores champion. The ‘Argentina 2’ slot went to the winners of the 2013-14 Clausura, ‘Argentina 3’ to the Torneo de Transición winners and ‘Argentina 5’ to the Copa Argentina winners. Then things get weird.

The spot that Velez and Boca are contesting is ‘Argentina 4’, which is the ‘2013-14 Primera División aggregate table best team not yet qualified’. The two teams finished equal in the aggregate table, but the rules proved contradictory. Velez argued that Article 112 of the league’s rules stated that the top team in the aggregate table got the place, with goal differential as the tiebreaker in the event teams were equal on points (Velez, of course, had a better goal differential). Boca claimed that Article 111 said there would be a playoff in the event two teams were tied, and successfully argued that these two rules were written in such an ambiguous manner that a playoff must occur. The result is Wednesday night’s match, held at Estadio José María Minella in Mar del Plata, a neutral venue that is not the home of any top flight team.

There’s another Copa Lib position that’s yet to be decided. That’s ‘Argentina 6’, which is given to the ‘2014 Copa Sudamericana best Argentine team not yet qualified’. If Boca win their playoff, that’s Estudiantes la Plata. If Boca lose their playoff -- that’s Boca Juniors, who were semifinalists in that competition. Estudiantes were quarterfinalists.

Despite having a fallback means of qualifying for Copa Libertadores that could not be taken away from them, Boca argued their way into a made-up playoff based on some ambiguous language in the rules. Having Boca in the competition is good for Argentinian football’s image and TV ratings, so it’s good for everyone -- except, of course, either Velez or Estudiantes.

Argentinian football is probably the silliest brand of high-level football in the world. Enjoy the inanity!