THE 'GOLDEN GOAL' that Xabi Alonso scored against the Tax Agency in the Provincial Court not only allowed the footballer to win his particular judicial match, but also to resurrect his prestige and leave the tax agency in a bad position with a view to new actions against other players.
I remember a useful lesson a teacher gave us in class. "To subdue a group, you have to take on the leader and beat him", said the valuable teacher. He was referring to the way to keep the classroom under control. He would arrive, locate the ringleader and put him into vereaas he used to say. The fall of the little school leader had reputational consequences for the youngster, who was scarred, but it made the rest of us square. In time, I was able to see that the doctrine did not apply only to school.
A decade ago, the tax office launched an unusual crusade against footballers. The agency targeted the two biggest stars in the sporting galaxy and beat them on several fronts. First Lionel Messi and then Cristiano Ronaldo had to bow their heads to the tax authorities, who crushed them on the tax playing field.
The Barcelona player was unable to explain why he had created a corporate structure to manage his image rights abroad, for which the Barcelona Provincial Court sentenced him in 2016 to 21 months in prison (which the player finally avoided) and two million euros for defrauding four million euros during the financial years 2007, 2008 and 2009. Different signatories and shell companies in opaque territories left him little room for manoeuvre. The defence had no choice but to focus on the classic "I didn't know anything, I just played football" used two years earlier by the Infanta Cristina in the Nóos case. She was saved by the formula. He was not.
Xabi Alonso has pointed the way to all those who do not want to accept deals with the Treasury.
The former Madrid player, for his part, did not even go to trial. He reached an agreement with the prosecutor's office and had to pay a fine of 19 million for evading almost six million euros. His case was somewhat different to Messi's, as Ronaldo enjoyed a different taxation regime that could have been covered by the so-called Beckham law. The lawyer who signed his agreement, José Antonio Choclán, admitted months later at the World Football Summit that he could have won the trial had it been held. "I am convinced that the criteria chosen for taxation was the correct one," said the former judge of the National Court, who explained why he nevertheless opted for the pact. "It allowed a quick solution to the problem" and "risk reduction", as even with an acquittal the prosecution could have gone through administrative channels, justified Choclán, who criticised that all these proceedings were "trying to present football players as if they were all fraudsters", something which he said "is not the case".
The fact is that the blow to both world stars turned the game upside down. If the two leaders had fallen, the rest of the world had to get their act together. The Tax Agency was dominating the footballers' classroom, as my esteemed teacher had indicated years ago, by tracing and controlling the leader. In this context, in fact, Javier Mascherano (815,000 euros), Adriano Correia (369,000), Radamel Falcao (nine million), Luca Modric (1.4 million), Ángel di María (two million) and Ricardo Carvalho (143,000 euros) also opted for a deal.
But there was one pupil who responded. On the same day that Cristiano's advisers reached agreement, a former Real Sociedad, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich footballer sat in the dock at the Provincial Court. He had decided to accept the old teacher's challenge and take the matter to the headmaster's office. On 9 October 2019, to be precise, Xabi Alonso and his advisor Iván Zaldúa, also accused of collaborating with the txuri urdin, decided to take on the whole technical, legal and even media machinery that had been set in motion by the Tax Agency and the Public Prosecutor's Office against them in the same line as it had done against other galacticos. The Guipuzcoa-born player's decision entailed not only the risk of losing the case and therefore the money, but also the danger of suffering irreparable reputational damage, even greater than that of being labelled as a suspect.
Cristiano, Messi, Modric and Xabi Alonso himself suffered the 'TV news penalty'.
THE STUBBORNNESS The innocence of the now Real Sociedad reserve team coach was made clear during the trial. "I'm not thinking of making a deal," he said. "I have come here out of conviction and principle," said Alonso, who was facing five years in prison. The tax office argued that during 2010, 2011 and 2012, when he played for Florentino Pérez, the former footballer should have paid taxes in Spain on his image rights.
Last April, however, the Madrid Provincial Court clearly sided with the former footballer. In its ruling, the court not only embraced Alonso's postulates, but even harshly criticised "the erratic position" of the prosecution and the "excesses" in "the tone of the interventions during the oral trial of the tax inspectors". The magistrates lowered the spirits of the Tax Agency and the public prosecutor's office, who had just won everything and had been defeated at home. Apart from Messi's case, which had been a blunder on the part of the footballer's advisers, the tax agency had not gone to court in any other case. It had always managed to ensure that fear of conviction prevailed.
Now, the scenario has changed. The former footballer from Tolosa has shown the way for those who want to accept the challenge: the prosecution must prove that there has been simulation in the transfer of rights, and sometimes that is not so easy. In passing, Alonso has avoided the reputational damage, sometimes worse than the penalty, that was suffered by those little leaders in the classrooms who my dear teacher used to stop their feet firmly in order to control the classroom. Cristiano, Messi, Modric and Alonso himself suffered the penalty of the news. They all paraded through the courts in more or less suits and saw their prestige collapse like a knocked-out boxer. But the Guipuzcoan rose from the canvas. He managed the legal proceedings he was facing and his image as if the two were one and the same. In a scenario with a high degree of uncertainty, he stood firm in his convictions, was coherent, put forward legal arguments and presented a serene and elegant image. Nothing to do with what others did. Nothing to do with the figure of the discreet but giant leader whose size the Tax Agency did not know how to value.
*The texts reflect the views of the author and are independent of the opinions of PROA.