The controversial departure of Alexander Fantinus of ESPNhitting them Mariano Closs y Sebastian Vignolountil not long ago his colleagues on the Disney channel, generated mixed reactions and a special look, that of Flavio Azzarothe sports journalist who usually analyzes on his YouTube channel the B side of sporting events and those surrounding the great football circus.
“And yes, people, Fantino was kicked out of ESPN. After saying that he would spit in Closs and Vignolo’s face, they kicked him out of ESPN. But Fantino had already been kicked out a long time ago, they had fired him. The one who marginalizes him doesn’t it is neither Vignolo nor Closs, no matter how much Alejandro may ask us that, who can believe that Vignolo and Closs are in charge of putting in or taking out a journalist like Fantino“, began his reaction on his YouTube channel Azzaro, who has been a streamer for some time, just as Fantino does now at NeuraMedia.
Although he anticipated that this was “going to be the last time” he would talk about Fantino because he felt he was “getting into his business”, Azzaro tried to explain to his followers the real reason for Fantino’s departure. “I don’t like Alejandro. No. But don’t eat the verse, people. Alejandro Fantino leaves because Juan Cruz Ávila does not want himwho is the channel’s news director and is the guy he walked with for 15 years, with whom they were partners, this whole circus is not like that,” he remarked.
“You don’t want to deal with the system. It is easier to hit Vignolo and Closs, with whom he started a war, with whom he always fought until he decided to return to ESPN because there was money and because his friend and partner Juan Cruz had grabbed and told him ‘we put it together’. And when he came in, Juan Cruz did his business and Fantino left him out, that’s the truth about the milanesa. Vignolo and Closs serve him better. Fantino is a Taliban and Juan Cruz is now a member of the clubs“, he expanded.
In the video, Azzaro showed parts of Fantino’s program on Thursday, where the driver announced that he had reached an agreement with ESPN to leave the signal. “God save me, Maria, Fantino’s tone. Fantino made an arrangement with ESPN: it was becoming a quilombo or you reached an agreement. All this is verse, it is not wanting to rot the truth system, like wanting to grab it with Vignolo and Closs is not wanting to rot the system. I don’t like this one of ‘I came to ESPN, I agreed and I leave grateful,'” she explained.
“Fantino was used as a lining“, he remarked. “Give it, Alejandro, give the battle you have to give, I ask you please, as a viewer of Mar de Fondo and former partner -he asked him-. Stop fucking with metaphors. Stop swelling the eggs, Ale. Vignolo and Closs don’t exist in this whole story.”
On the current situation of the host of Loose Animals in America, Azzaro said: “Now Fantino comes to streaming and wants to attract the public and this is the way he has, throwing shit but for the place that suits him and serves him. Because he still has the built-in system. Although the system throws him out, he continues to pay homage to him. You can’t want to look good all the time. I’m not saying that Closs and Vignolo don’t matter in ESPN’s scheme, they do matter. But if we go to war it’s not beating up two small-time soldiers. The real power is Juan Cruz Ávila“.
“We are going against what has to be done, Alejandro. If ESPN did not put you in the place where you wanted to be, as you said yourself, they kicked you out of the debate table… If the system expelled you and you saw yourself sitting in front of Marcos Díaz at 4 in the morning in a program that not even Marcos Díaz’s mother sees and you said I’m going to rot her because I already feel like a liner, all good. But you wanted to stay attached to the system as much as you could. But now that you have to go out and see what’s up, you want to join a new tune, the one that we true outsiders are going through, those of us who fight it and we don’t have a producer behind it like you did that seems like an outsider but it’s not, you’re in the middle. Always in the middle?” She reproached him.
“It’s the last time I’m going to talk about Fantino, because I feel stuffed too. Because Fantino could easily be a leader of the real outside, kicking the deck in a real way. But no: I caress you who are those of real power, you put on shin guards. Come on, Fantino. Let’s not eat the verse. Real power is not being attacked by Fantino, Fantino wants to continue being there. To break you have to have balls“, he concluded.
“Why do I always have to go?”
“I spit it in the face of the one who produces it and the one who proposes it to me,” the television host Alejandro Fantino had declared when asked by a colleague about the possibility of sharing the 2022 Qatar World Cup with Vignolo and Closs, colleagues in the ESPN channel. If he shared, because after the controversy generated by his statements, the network made a drastic decision: it terminated the driver’s contract.
This Thursday, minutes after 5 p.m., Fantino started his brand new program Neura again, on Twitch, with an editorial that was rising in tone, because he first apologized. “I regret it, I’m not like that, I don’t speak like that, I propose another type of journalism. I’m crazy but I’m not like that. Otherwise I’m disrespecting you. I was wrong about you, listener, and that’s wrong. Journalism that I propose is another”, launched.
Although, immediately, he escalated his two contenders of the last days: “Closs I return to you, Pollo I return to you. This place is also comfortable. It leads you to say things that you do not want to say. Neura was just born, this medium that is ours , with friends. And from now on I am going to dedicate myself, as I did against Grondonism, to journalists like Closs and Vignolo, who are the owners of the system, of the ball. They have the power to sit down and tell someone like Cascini and talk to the referees and apologize to them. Mariano, Pollo, come on, let’s debate”.
And before the official statement from the American chain came out, he confirmed the news: “Do I always have to go from the traditional, crazy? Why do I always have to go? It’s always sad to leave, crazy, why do I always have to stay out, because the Closses and the Vignolos always stay and I have to go. Always, brother, I go. I do not know. I am very happy and I want to tell you that I am not going to be on ESPN anymore, I was very happy.”
“Mariano, Pollo. Day by day. Story, Twitter, Instagram. I have my lawyer. Surely they will send me a document letter so that I stop talking, a little legal muzzle. You, Vignolo and Closs, represent power. We we go and you stay in power: Torneos, Fox, Continental, La Red. You represent the truth. You are gentlemen and civilized and we are the crazy, the dirty, the bad. You are always inside and we are outside “, Fantino completed in his program.
The official statement from ESPN
“The Walt Disney Company resolved together with Alejandro Fantino the termination of the relationship according to which Mr. Alejandro Fantino will leave the screens of ESPN”. With that concise line, repetition aside, the American company announced the departure of the television and radio host, after 48 hours convulsed by his media fight with two colleagues like Closs and Vignolo.
Fantino had returned to the ESPN screen last August, to start a series of face-to-face interviews with different sports stars. In his first program, for example, the host was in the capital of Greece, Athens, and in Pujato, the city of Santa Fe, where the coach of the Argentine National Team, Lionel Scaloni, is from. His goal was to draw a line between Greek mythology and the current Albiceleste team.
Further back in time, the santafesino had left the leadership of ESPN FC, which carried out with heavy screen figures such as Diego Latorre, Miguel Simón, Oscar Ruggeri and Mariano Closs, after a decision by the channel to form work bubbles to protect the health of employees. At no time did he return.
On that occasion, in his last broadcast, Fantino expressed: “The FC is discontinued. It is very rare, at least on television, to discontinue a program that measures very well. It is utilitarian. The logic is that it measures and likes. People got hooked on the discussions and conversations. The signal is doing well and people are hooked.”
Then, he supported the measure and explained how they will work from now on: “The bubble concept is brilliant, how this signal applies it. The signal considers one thing, that we must work on bubbles, and it’s great. Ruggeri works in the afternoon, Mariano has his own delivery. Miguel the same, he recounts it. Diego the same. We have to work with bubbles, we all work with our people. It is supposed, God forbid, that there is no contagion in the afternoon bubble. If there were one here, you stop all the other programs.”