EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsLeer en espaolBUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- There was something off about the yellow house on Gallardo Street. Teenage boys came and went. Inside, a makeshift pub served fans of the local ftbol club before they filed into the stadium down the street. The house had orange and black stripes, tiny security cameras that twitched like eyes, and, over the entrance, a colorful mural of palm trees and late-model trucks.One day a neighbor informed authorities that the house was filled with children living in "inhumane conditions." Police set up a raid, bringing along a small army of social workers, psychologists, city inspectors and medics. When they got inside, the house was dark and quiet, the morning light filtered by newspaper taped over the windows. The rooms smelled of moldering laundry, teenagers and cleats.Three dozen boys, ages 12 to their early 20s, were living in the one-story house. The landlord was a stocky man who went by the nickname El Zurdo, or Lefty. He told police he was the guardian for every boy and had the papers to prove it. "I'm not their biological father, but I'm their father," El Zurdo would later say. When the inspectors asked him for permits, he couldn't produce any.The boys were herded into the dining room for questioning. Among themselves, they knew that there wasn't enough food at times and that El Zurdo could be temperamental. But they didn't tell that to the adults who had come to check on their welfare. They all dreamed of becoming professional soccer players, the heirs to Lionel Messi and the reigning World Cup champions, and that dream lived with them inside the yellow house.Two years later, in April 2025, I visited Gallardo Street, on the gritty western edge of Buenos Aires. By then I'd heard many stories about the system that produces world-class soccer players in Argentina. Some used words like "cruel" and "ugly" to describe it. One mother explained how her son was forced to survive on chicken carcasses and rice laced with black bugs. Another mother handed me an audio recording of her pleading with a club owner to turn in the coach who molested her son."This happens everywhere," the owner says on the recording. "I've seen this on five different teams."The house on Gallardo was supposed to be closed. After the raid, the city issued a 10-day eviction notice, according to an investigative document. But on the warm afternoon when I showed up, I found El Zurdo standing in the kitchen, the house filled with his many children.IN MARCH 2018, Argentina woke up to the realization that beneath the country's intense passion for ftbol was "an underworld of young people -- in the custody of adults who aren't their parents," as one Buenos Aires legislator told me.Independiente, one of the country's premier clubs, had disclosed that a half-dozen men sexually assaulted some of its young prospects. The boys lived at the team's pensin, the name in Spanish for a dormitory used to board players as young as 10. The pedophiles had treated the pensin as a kind of pond in which they fished for young victims.Like many people in Argentina, the lead investigator in the case, Mara Soledad Garibaldi, had never heard of a pensin for young futbolistas. She and her colleagues interviewed some 50 boys. Nearly all had been "groomed" -- or illegally lured -- by men over social media; more than a dozen had been sexually abused, she found.Garibaldi noticed a consistency to the players' backgrounds. Most had traveled great distances from Argentina's interior, where a quarter to a third of the population lives in poverty. They were unpaid for their labor, isolated inside the pensin with only their teammates and their dreams. The predators sensed how to exploit these conditions. One 15-year-old said he was lured to perform sex acts in exchange for bus fare so he could travel home for Mother's Day."This is a case where the vulnerable meets the perverse," a team psychologist explained to Garibaldi.Garibaldi expanded her investigation to include seven other teams, interviewing some 300 prospects. What she discovered was an epidemic: "We reached the conclusion that around 60% of the boys were contacted at some point. I'm not saying they were all sexually assaulted, but they were victims of grooming. Some were asked for photos of their private parts; some were sent photos by the adults. There was a little bit of everything."Many Argentines would readily admit that ftbol is the most powerful force in their lives. "Ftbol is sacred," Julio Conte Grand, the attorney general for Buenos Aires province, who oversaw the Independiente case, told me. "As an institution with that much power, any attempt to pull back the veil is complicated." A series of unusual occurrences hindered Garibaldi's investigation. Leaks in the media gave the pedophiles time to destroy evidence; one suspect's cellphone was obliterated with a hammer. Potential witnesses died. Garibaldi, an obscure local prosecutor who'd recently been bedridden during a difficult pregnancy, received threats until guards were placed outside her home.The case dragged on for years, receding from public consciousness. Five men eventually pleaded guilty to sexual abuse, the last one eight years after the allegations surfaced. Another, a youth referee, decided to take his case to trial, arguing that his victims had consented. After convicting him, a panel of judges issued a scathing takedown of the conditions that fostered the abuse:"We find these young victims in a state of extreme vulnerability. ... To judge that such decisions are voluntary would be like thinking a slave sells his freedom for pleasure. Or that someone sells his organs as a full exercise of his free will."Argentina is both unique and part of a vast global pipeline. It's a phenomenon I've been observing for years: the relentless search for new talent in every major sport, and the children who become victims along the way. Unregulated, often carried out against a backdrop of poverty and corruption, the pursuit is a breeding ground for abuse. A Major League Baseball scout in Venezuela once told me he liked to examine a prospect's teeth, like a horse. When the NBA set up training academies in China a few years ago, searching for the next Yao Ming, Chinese coaches disciplined young players by beating them. This year, in the Dominican Republic, ESPN reported that MLB teams were making illegal handshake deals with children as young as 11; one trainer compared the clubs to "cockfighting owners." The problems extend to the United States, in the abusive culture described by many figure skaters and gymnasts, including the serial sexual crimes of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.ESPN examined the system that produced the defending World Cup champions and found that it is rife with exploitation. Thousands of vulnerable children -- unpaid, separated from their families, warehoused in unregulated dorms -- face, at one extreme, sexual predation, but also extortion, hunger and neglect, according to our investigation, which was based on over 100 interviews, a review of thousands of documents and on-site visits to a dozen pensiones.This story began as an exploration of sexual abuse inside Argentina's most hallowed institution. Along the way it became something more: a portrait of a country and its obsession, the children who dream of becoming World Cup champions, and the adults who fail to protect them.TOBAS PREZ RECEIVED his first offer to train with a professional soccer team when he was 8.Tobas was a shy country kid with a mop of black hair and an explosive left foot. "Look at how he stands," a friend of his father, Roque, observed during a match one day. "Do you realize your son already understands ftbol better than anyone here?" The friend advised Roque to support Tobas any way he could: "One day he'll take you far."The Prez family lived in a farming community called Vedia, in a small blue house on a dirt road, 200 miles west of Buenos Aires. Roque was a plumber who worked all over the area, digging trenches and laying pipe. From an early age, Tobas began training with Newell's Old Boys, the club where Messi got his start. But Newell's was three hours away, in the city of Rosario, and it was too expensive to commute. The club invited Tobas to live in the pensin."He's in! He's in!" Roque thought as he and Tobas drove back from Rosario. He couldn't wait to tell Tobias' mother, Andrea, the news."Don't even think about it," Andrea snapped. There was no way she was sending her 8-year-old son to live with strangers.So Tobas stayed in Vedia, playing for local clubs. At 10 he was recruited by a team called Atlanta, which had the best facilities in the area and connections with elite pro teams.By the time he was 14, Tobas had secured tryouts with several prominent clubs: River Plate, Club Atltico Banfield, Estudiantes de La Plata. An offer from any of them would require him to relocate at his family's expense. Money was very tight. A few years earlier, Roque had suffered a horrific motorcycle accident that killed his brother and left him in critical condition. He didn't work for six months. The family got by with help from friends and relatives who held raffles and dropped off bags of groceries."I pulled through because I have a purpose and I have to fulfill it," Roque said. That purpose revolved around Tobas: "God brought me back for a reason. I'm going to live to see him make his professional debut. Otherwise, I'd be dead by now."In 2022, at 15, Tobas signed with Ferro Carril Oeste, a club in the Primera Nacional, the Triple-A of Argentine soccer.Ferro was located in Caballito, a leafy barrio in the heart of Buenos Aires. The club is one of Argentina's oldest, with a venerable history and famously rabid fans. In Spanish, the word ferrocarril means "railroad;" Irish employees of the Buenos Aires Western Railway founded the team in 1904. A totemic black locomotive towers over the front gate of the team's facility.Tobas' contract bound him to Ferro. The team could do whatever it wanted with him -- even sell him -- but he would not receive a salary unless he made the professional roster. Ferro had its own pensin -- a narrow dormitory wedged beneath the end zone bleachers of its 24,500-seat stadium -- but that was reserved for a dozen or so prospects. Tobas, like 200 other boys under contract to Ferro, was left to house and feed himself.Ferro told Tobas about a cheap "external pensin" -- meaning one not operated by a club -- located about 30 minutes away by bus, in the working-class neighborhood of Liniers. He would move, alone, from a small town of gridded dirt roads, wheat fields and stagnant lagoons to a throbbing metropolis of some 15 million people.This time Andrea agreed to let him go. Every year, thousands of parents across Argentina face the same calculation: whether to let their children pursue an opportunity that offers only a remote chance of a career in professional soccer and, for the family, a better life.Before Tobas moved in, the pensin required his parents to sign a document. It looked almost like a permission slip that parents might fill out to let their child go on a field trip. But it gave the man who ran the pensin control over many aspects of their son's life. Specifically, the notarized document gave him authority to represent Tobas before "education and health officials and/or any other public or private organization that requires it."The man's name, written in the document, was Gustavo Hernn Chozas, but everyone called him El Zurdo.THE ABUSE INVESTIGATION into Independiente in 2018 exposed a "world that's little regulated, little seen, little observed," Sergio Siciliano, a Buenos Aires legislator, told me one afternoon. "And as we delve into it, we find things that are shocking, dangerous and worrisome."The system has existed for decades. Pablo Zabaleta, who played on the 2014 World Cup team, signed with Club Atltico San Lorenzo at age 12. In 2000, when he was 14, he moved into the team's pensin in Buenos Aires, two hours from his home. Fifty boys were packed six to a room. He said food was scarce and boys sometimes stole from his and his roommates' stash. After 8 p.m., the players were locked inside the facility."It made me mature and grow a lot as a person, and maybe that's a good thing," he said. But of the 300 players who passed through the pensin, only five or six made it. "I have seen it, I have lived it," Zabaleta told me. "So many kids unfortunately end up being very vulnerable to very complex and very difficult external situations."In 2018, a coach in his late 60s was accused of molesting players at Club Atltico Mac Allister, a training academy and pensin 400 miles west of Buenos Aires. The club was operated by brothers Patricio and Carlos Mac Allister. Carlos is a retired national team star and Argentina's former secretary of sports whose son Alexis is a midfielder for Liverpool in the English Premier League and on Argentina's current World Cup team.Julieta Echenique, a mother who enrolled her 13-year-old son at Club Mac Allister because of its connections with elite clubs, implored Patricio Mac Allister to press charges after the coach, Hector "Patilla" Kruber, molested her son and other boys. Echenique recorded the conversation."We can't get into a situation that may cause us trouble," Mac Allister tells her."For you, the club," Echenique responds."No, no, no," says Mac Allister, explaining that he had seen abuse on at least five teams, including previous allegations against Kruber. "Look, I live in the world of ftbol; this happens everywhere.""We have to stop this train, Pato," Echenique tells him, her voice desperate. "Today it was our kids. Tomorrow there will be others. That's how it is in Argentina. We're all accomplices!"Echenique, who is suing the Mac Allisters for damages, went to police on her own. Because of her testimony, Kruber was sentenced to four years in prison. The Mac Allisters and their lawyer did not respond to questions from ESPN.In 2019, Argentina's top professional league, then known as the Superliga, began its own investigation into the youth development system and counted 1,014 boys -- some as young as 10 -- living at 26 pensiones operated by 23 teams. The 11-page report suggested clubs were in violation of child protection laws. A third of the clubs did not provide documentation of parental consent. Several had no contact information for players or parents, an indication that some families had no idea where their children were living."We found one room with 16 boys," said Carolina Ramenzoni, one of the investigators. "We found a pensin with 22 young people and only one bathroom."The report recommended that clubs create regulations to "guarantee the rights of children and adolescents." But the Superliga folded, shifting responsibility to the Argentine Ftbol Association, the governing body that oversees the nation's hundreds of professional clubs. No further action was taken. Asked how she felt, Ramenzoni replied: "Disillusioned."My colleagues at ESPN and I tried repeatedly to speak with the AFA, through emails, WhatsApp voice texts and finally showing up at the organization's headquarters in downtown Buenos Aires. The AFA never responded to our requests.Buenos Aires child welfare officials opened their own investigation into pensiones in the capital in 2019. They found that there were more boardinghouses -- far more -- than just those operated by the teams. Clubs routinely signed hundreds of players, knowing they wouldn't have to house or pay them. Teenagers like Tobas were warehoused in the private boardinghouses known informally as external pensiones."I couldn't believe that ftbol and society would allow kids to live in such conditions," said Germn Onco, the former director of the Buenos Aires Ministry for the Protection of Minors, who headed the investigation. "These residences take advantage of people's needs -- people who live in the interior of the country, who can't travel, and send their children to live in these places."Onco estimated that he and his colleagues inspected 17 facilities. Some were clean and well run, others "practically uninhabitable." One external pensin was run by "a woman who performed sexual favors," Onco said. In others, "the kids were practically not fed," he said. The city forced at least two pensiones to close.Lorena Oliva, an investigative reporter, examined external pensiones for La Nacin, one of Argentina's largest newspapers: "Pensiones are the only institutions in the country with children in their care without any entity regulating what happens in them," she told me. "There are no rules, no protocols or any type of control."For months, our ESPN team set out to find pensiones, by scouring social media and news reports and talking to people who had encountered them. We found them hidden in plain sight all over Greater Buenos Aires -- in affluent neighborhoods and slums, in private homes and apartments. Some were immaculate and well run, others overcrowded and strewn with debris. At one house, 10 boys lived in a narrow room without air conditioning, with bunk beds lined up barracks-style filling the entire space. Another had manicured gardens and private bathrooms, with just two or three boys to a room. Costs varied as much as conditions, from the equivalent of roughly $200 a month up to $450 in U.S. dollars, in a country with a median monthly income of around $450.The annual wave of unaccompanied minors is like a migration of students heading off to college -- only younger, poorer and with a more elusive goal. The demand for housing for these children is relentless. We found one external pensin that was effectively a four-story apartment filled with more than 50 boys and girls. The owners had added a three-story structure in back and were continuing to build. "It's still under construction," the owner told me apologetically as we walked through a courtyard filled with random plants, old bikes, rubble and crisscrossing clotheslines draped with laundry. "The other half hasn't been built yet."One blistering February afternoon, in the middle of Argentina's summer, I drove out to Moreno, a Buenos Aires suburb, to watch a tryout involving hundreds of boys. A mother sat in the shade drinking mate, the ubiquitous infused tea sipped from a gourd through a metal straw. She'd come with her 15-year-old son from Santa Fe, about 300 miles north, along with dozens of boys who hoped to catch on with a team. The scout who brought them had rented out an entire city bus. The mother and her son were elated: That week he'd been offered a spot with a second-division club. The mother told us that she was about to move him into the team's pensin.A few weeks later, when I was back in the United States, I received an email from her. She wanted to share their story. She requested anonymity to protect her son.Before moving him into the pensin, the mother told us, she'd been shown impressive photos on the internet. She and her son arrived to a "totally different reality." The pensin had a caved-in ceiling and pirated electricity and was filled with "30 teenagers living one on top of the other," the mother said. Most of the players weren't enrolled in school.Inside her son's room were four beds for five boys. "We didn't fit -- two of us had to share a bed," he said. His mother took photos of the food, which included chicken carcasses and white rice laced with tiny black bugs."In my house, not even a dog would eat a chicken carcass; I had to watch my son eat that food," she said, crying.After two weeks she took him home.One theme I sometimes heard throughout our investigation was that suffering and even abuse were like rites of passage that players had to endure. The mother had heard this theory too."They brainwash them by telling them they'll go far by living through these situations," the mother told me. "It's fraud, no matter how you look at it. The problem is that there is no legal framework to regulate the management of these places. Where would we file a complaint?"TOBAS' BUS RIDE from Vedia to Buenos Aires was 4 hours. When he arrived at Retiro Bus Terminal in August 2022, the city crashed over him -- "people, people, people..." -- his eyes blinking, his head swiveling at the movement and the noise.Life inside the pensin on Gallardo Street was no less chaotic. Tobas' new home boiled over with boys from all corners of Argentina and other countries, like Colombia and Ecuador. Tobas had a half-dozen roommates, and some 30 more lived in the sprawling house. The players jostled over the bathroom and the limited amounts of food. "There was always somebody who was hungry," Tobas said. When his father visited, Roque noticed some boys received less food than others. "I felt bad to leave him; I thought, 'My son is going to have to go through that too.'" Roque called his wife to make sure they had enough money to cover their own expenses, then went out and bought "sugar, tea, bread, cookies -- whatever we could afford." He distributed the food to Tobas and his friends.Then there was the bar, which catered to fans of Velez Sarsfield, a first-division club whose stadium rises over the neighborhood. "I was afraid a drunk would wander into the pensin to cause trouble," Roque said.The players followed a schedule of metronomic routine. In the early morning, around 5:30 or 6, they left the house to train with their respective clubs, returning in the early afternoon. After lunch, they attended a neighborhood school for 3 or 4 hours, then walked back to the pensin in time for dinner. Tobas was often miserable, crying in his room. "I wasn't strong-minded," he said. "I missed home every day. I lived locked up; I would come back from training and lock myself in the room." Finally, he decided to go home.His father couldn't believe it."Listen, there's no future for you in this little town," Roque told his son. "I've been working here for 40 years, and I've never gotten ahead. This is what's waiting for you."Roque decided to take Tobas to work. They rose at 5 a.m. and traveled to a nearby town, jackhammering the road and clearing rubble in the sweltering heat. "We left all the heaviest stuff for him," Roque said. After four 14-hour days, Roque and Tobas showered off the grime and the sweat, then sat in the dark sharing mate, passing the gourd back and forth in the yard. Tobas' back ached."I'm not gonna work anymore," he told his father. "I'm going back to Buenos Aires to play ftbol."Ferro welcomed him back, and Tobas thrived, emerging as the most promising midfielder in the organization. He moved the ball with lightning speed and seemed to possess an extrasensory ability of where to direct it, as if he could read his teammates' minds. After witnessing what he faced back in Vedia, Tobas returned to the club with new urgency and discipline. He had come to realize that ftbol was his job, even if he wasn't paid. He became close friends with another rising star, striker Lautaro Bordn, reducing his loneliness.Life at the pensin was less stable. Tobas had returned to the house controlled by his landlord and guardian, Gustavo Chozas, aka El Zurdo, who ran three pensiones in western Buenos Aires.On the afternoon I met him, in April 2025 at the pensin on Gallardo, Chozas said he was thinking about adding a fourth."I was thinking about scaling back this year so I could have a little more freedom," he told me. "But every January more boys keep coming."Chozas said approximately 3,000 players had passed through his pensiones. In addition to the 60 currently under his care, he said he was guardian for 22 others who no longer lived with him."So you're the father of more than 80 boys?" I said."Yeah, more or less," he said, chuckling.We were sitting across from each other in the dining room. Paint was peeling off the scuffed blue and white walls. It was early afternoon and there were few people around -- mothers who helped out at the house, some kids who weren't at school, including one who told me he was 12 and had come from Formosa, a poor rural province on the border with Paraguay, some 600 miles away.My ESPN colleagues and I had tracked down Chozas after hearing about him from club officials, scouts and players; his reputation preceded him. "He's a man with a very strong temperament," a scout who had had run-ins with Chozas told me. Before the pandemic, Chozas said, he ran an ice cream parlor. But he had connections in ftbol, and friends recommended that he open a pensin for boys when they came to Buenos Aires for tryouts. Soon he was operating multiple pensiones full time."For many people this is a business, but for me it's not," he told me. "I have a personal commitment -- to educate, to fulfill a dream. What I want is to help a boy grow up to be a soccer player, or a professional, and return home with a diploma and tell his parents, 'Thank you for all the effort you made so I could get here.' That's all I want."Chozas said he charges families 350,000 pesos, about $200 to $300 a month at the time we spoke and the low end for pensiones around the capital. He denied that there were food shortages but said he had to make choices to ensure everyone got fed. "If we eat beef here, there are 15 kids who can no longer eat," he said. "If we buy pork and work with pork, then we all eat. So you make that choice. Do you follow me?"Do you think I have any money left over from all this?" he continued, his voice rising. "I have terrible problems I deal with every day, but I keep going because this is what I do. And I'll defend it till the day I die. They'll have to carry me out of here feet first because nobody else takes care of these kids like I do."El Zurdo was hard to read. He carried himself like a brawler and when agitated spoke a language of violence and threats. After Tobas' school in Vedia was slow to deliver a necessary document, Chozas told Roque: "If they don't want to give it to you, go punch them in the face! Your kid is fighting for a dream here, and you're not helping him!""It's not like that here, Zurdo," Roque said he replied. "Here we talk. We're not going to fight over something like that."Chozas responded by questioning his manhood, calling him "Little Balls," according to Roque. He screamed so much that whenever his name popped up on their phone, Roque and Andrea froze and passed it around like a hot potato, hoping to avoid him.But Chozas could also be surprisingly tender -- paternal and kind."That first year was quite scary," Roque said. "But later I talked to him alone and he was a different person."At the time, Roque said, he was going through a rough patch, questioning his will to live after his motorcycle accident. Chozas provided comfort and advice."He told me he'd lost everything himself and you can't give up, you have to keep fighting," Roque said. "He told me, 'You have a son who's like gold. If you give up, your son's dream could end. But I'll always be here for him, like his second father.'"ON AN OVERCAST Tuesday, April 4, 2023, Tobas, by then 16, arrived at the pensin after practice, gear slung over his shoulder. He was planning to have lunch with his friends before school. He arrived to find the house crawling with adults -- some armed and in uniform, others in white coats and work attire. They were police and investigators from a half-dozen Buenos Aires agencies. Fifteen boys were already in the dining room. Tobas was sent to join them.At 11 that morning, the authorities had staged unannounced raids in Liniers -- one on a building where Chozas ran a small restaurant called "Zurdo," the other around the corner at the pensin on Gallardo Street."The reason for this intervention stems from a complaint by a neighbor, who says he saw many children entering and leaving the house, and that they were living in 'inhumane conditions,'" according to an investigative summary prepared by the local prosecutor and obtained by ESPN. Chozas "appeared distressed" when police arrived, the document stated, but he agreed to cooperate. He told police he had "everything in order."At the pensin, the boys were interviewed for eight hours and given medical exams. Representatives from the Council for the Protection of Boys, Girls and Adolescents tried to determine the players' welfare. Clustered in the dining room, the boys began to fear they'd be sent home. That was the last thing they wanted.As they huddled together, Tobas told me, the boys made a pact: "We weren't OK. But we told each other, `Let's cover for him so they don't shut down the pensin.'"A forensic doctor concluded that the boys appeared to be in good health and were enrolled in school. "They all state that Gustavo is their guardian, given that he has permits signed by their parents," the report stated. "He claims that each permit is legally valid due to the signature of a justice of the peace."But the investigators could see the conditions for themselves. "The windows are covered with newspapers or paper to prevent anyone from seeing inside," according to the report. "The young people are living in overcrowded conditions, and the available beds are insufficient for the number of boys."The Buenos Aires Agency for Government Control issued an eviction notice after determining that the house wasn't licensed to operate as a boardinghouse, according to the report. The pensin was to be shuttered within 10 days."I understand there was a raid here," I told Chozas as we sat in the same dining room where the boys had been questioned two years earlier."Here?" he said."Yes, here in the pensin," I said."Yes," he said. "There was a false accusation. They checked out all the boys to see how they were doing. They were in perfect shape, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here."I handed Chozas the document indicating he'd been evicted. He grew angry."You want to know why this was never cleared up?" he said, waving the document. "You want to know why? Because they never knocked on the door again!"Buenos Aires officials couldn't explain why the pensin was still open. None seemed aware that the house had been raided. Chozas read a text message that he said was from a lawyer, telling him his case had been "cajoneado," an ambiguous term that could mean "closed" and could mean "buried."That season, Tobas was promoted to Ferro Carril Oeste's Reserve team, one step below the holy grail, La Primera. This too was part of the economic model of Argentine soccer, which tilts heavily in favor of the clubs. Players on the Reserve squad (and every level below) are generally unpaid. Players promoted to the first team earn at least 1 million pesos, roughly $700 a month, depending on Argentina's wildly fluctuating exchange rate.As Tobas' earning potential grew, he was courted by people who wanted to help him find representation. One was Chozas, Tobas said. El Zurdo pressured Tobas to sign with his son Joel, according to the player and his parents. "They convinced my parents that other agents would scam me," Tobas said. Joel Chozas effectively became Tobas' representative, Tobas and his parents told me.Tobas and his parents said they repeatedly asked Chozas and Joel for a copy of a contract but never received one.When I asked Chozas what happened, he snapped. "I'm not an agent, and I'm not thinking about becoming one! I don't represent a single player.""And you haven't pressured boys to sign with your associates?" I asked."Are you joking?" he said."No, I'm asking.""Do you want to see my phone? I'm asking you seriously," he said. "Do you want to search it? Do you want to know who I am? You should read all the messages I have from people who tell me, 'Thank you for everything you've done.' And I do it from the bottom of my heart."His anger continuing to build, Chozas thrust his finger at me and said: "You're going to sit here, even if it takes till 6, and you'll see for yourself how the boys are doing."Chozas sent Joel to pull players out of school so they could vouch for him. Eighteen boys filed in, different ages and sizes, many wearing backpacks. Some greeted Chozas with a kiss on the cheek. The players formed a wall behind him. A couple seemed scared and were crying."Go on, tell him what you think of me," Chozas told one player. The boy wore a black Nike T-shirt and a baseball cap facing backward."Last year I came here to play ftbol, without knowing anything or anybody; like most of these kids I had a dream," he said. "After going through some bad experiences in other pensiones, thank god I ended up with this person" -- he clapped El Zurdo on the shoulder -- "who today is my old man in Buenos Aires."Chozas pointed to another teenager he identified as Mateo. The boy had streaked hair and said he'd been struggling."Tell him what we did for you, Mati," Chozas said."I haven't been doing well because I miss my family," said Mateo, his voice quavering. "Thanks to the support of all the boys and El Zurdo, I'm feeling better."He started to cry."C'mon, kid, don't cry," said Zurdo, patting him affectionately on the cheek. Mateo smiled."He's a beautiful person," the boy continued. "I'm very happy and grateful for all the support."Tobas' best friend at Ferro, Lautaro Bordn, also told me he was pressured by Chozas. Lautaro came from Formosa, in the country's northeast. It took his family more than a year to save enough money to send him to Buenos Aires. On his forearm he wore a tattoo of the Divino Nio, the baby Jesus, who he believed was responsible for curing him of a rare blood disease, and who guided him in his career.In his first season, Lautaro scored more goals than any player at Ferro. Agents soon wanted to sign him to a contract. But after hearing about Tobas' experience, Lautaro said, he refused. At that point, Chozas "started treating me badly," he said.Lautaro had been staying at another pensin controlled by Chozas, about a mile north of Gallardo Street. Conditions there were also precarious. Lautaro said he and his roommates sometimes heard gunshots and hid in their rooms. One player went out to grab food one night and was robbed at gunpoint. The boys took video of the pensin. One showed mattresses strewn across the living room floor. When it was hot, he said, the players sometimes slept on the roof.Now, after he rebuffed Chozas, the water was cut off for a month, according to Lautaro. He and his teammates had to buy mineral water and shower at Ferro or a nearby gas station. The cook abruptly left, leaving Lautaro to cook for 15 boys. When the scout who trained Lautaro, Ovegildo Santilln, tried to speak with Chozas about the conditions, El Zurdo responded with "violent threats," according to Santilln. Eventually, officials at Ferro heard what was going on. The team sent food and water and encouraged parents to move their children out of Chozas' pensin, according to Julin Nemirovsky, Ferro's youth development director at the time. "We felt it was our responsibility," Nemirovsky said.Chozas told me that the water was cut off for three days, not a month, after a pipe broke. The cook left for another job, Chozas said, and finding her replacement took time. He denied again that he had any interest in being an agent.Later, our ESPN crew went to film outside another pensin that Chozas had opened near Fuerte Apache, one of Buenos Aires' most dangerous slums. We were standing across the street when suddenly Chozas stormed out of the building, arms pumping. Our security guard intercepted him."C'mon, Zurdo, calm down," the guard said."Calm down?" Chozas raged, "I'm gonna cave in their skulls.""Why are you breaking my balls?" he shouted at me. "We're done, pal! Why are you following me around?"EVEN AS EL Zurdo was threatening us, I found it hard not to sympathize with him. We had dropped in unannounced, foreigners intruding on his world, this maelstrom of dreams. He was an entrepreneur, after all, an essential worker in an industry dependent on children and regulated by no one. The entire system would collapse without people like him. Chozas inhabited a space where the national obsession collided with poverty, fantasy, vulnerability and greed.In November 2025, the Buenos Aires city legislature finally passed a law governing club-operated and external pensiones in the capital. The law aimed to provide an accurate count of the boardinghouses and their occupants, establish health and safety standards, and outline potential sanctions for violations. How the law will be enforced is unclear. It doesn't apply to Buenos Aires province, outside the city, where many pensiones are located, or to the rest of Argentina."Nothing has changed," said Lorena Oliva, the reporter for La Nacin. After her series on external pensiones was published, in 2024, she won a major journalism award, but otherwise she said the reaction was silence. Other investigations she published on other subjects, including a series on missing women, resulted in new legislation and nationwide attention. As a journalist, she was baffled. As a mother, she was saddened."That to me is the most complete proof that nobody really cares," she told me. "I'm left with this bitter feeling that what happens with these kids -- what's happening right now while we're having this conversation -- seems to matter to no one."Of the many people who continued to press for reforms, none was more disillusioned than Fernando Langenauer.Langenauer oversaw the Independiente pensin when the abuse came to light. He was one of the first people to learn about the sexual abuse in 2018. A former educator and actor, Langenauer and his longtime girlfriend had just had a baby, and he knew he was sitting on a "time bomb" that could endanger his future."For me there were no gray areas," he said. "Either you report it or you're complicit. There's no turning back."After informing police, Langenauer accompanied the players to provide statements. The interviews were held behind a one-way mirror. Langenauer was horrified by the trauma the boys had to endure. A psychologist told him that recounting the abuse was "like cracking their chests open, removing their organs and stuffing them back inside." Langenauer had to escort two boys to blood tests because one of the defendants was HIV positive (the tests were negative). Another victim was placed on suicide watch.Langenauer had imagined that the case would have an inspiring ending, "like an American movie." He pictured the victims and their families embracing in the courtroom. But there was only one trial from the Independiente case, delayed by six years. None of the victims testified. In the end, there was no one in the courtroom -- not Langenauer, not the media -- not even the defendant, the youth soccer referee, who was allowed to watch the proceedings over Zoom.The bitter experience changed Langenauer's life. A lifelong fan of Independiente, he decided to leave the organization to start a nonprofit organization, Validando, that supports boys and men who are victims of sexual violence. When I last met with him, he was raising money out of his apartment. He and his wife now have two children. Langenauer told me he could never look at ftbol in the same way."You know what I thought when Argentina won the World Cup in 2022?" he said. "Most of those players went through pensiones. Those kids who were basking in the glory and raising the Cup, at what cost? Why does everyone suffer? Why are the paradigms of soccer in Argentina like this? Something needs to change."In May of this year -- just one month before Argentina began to defend its title at the 2026 World Cup and eight years after the sexual abuse case first broke -- Independiente reported allegations that three more players had been victims of grooming. The club reported the cases to authorities.IN 2025, TOBAS earned a coveted spot in the Ferro pensin beneath the bleachers. He and best friend Lautaro shared a small room with a porthole view of the field, just steps away, as if the players could reach out and touch their dreams.The pensin is painted in Ferro's colors, green and white, with inspirational slogans on the walls. WHILE EVERYONE SLEEPS, WE DREAM, read one. Near the entrance is the No. 17 national team jersey of Marcos Acua, the pensin's most famous alum. A kind Ferro volunteer named Maril Falcone presides over the pensin; the players call her "Ta Mari."Tobas and Lautaro were named to Argentina's under-18 national team, and both recently signed professional contracts. Lautaro signed with a third-division club in Brazil, where he makes nearly $500 a month. Ferro, despite never having to pay him, received a "training rights fee," which Lautaro's agent estimated at $20,000. Tobas signed a deal with Ferro that pays him nearly $1,000 a month, according to his parents. He hired a new agent after he turned 18 and could make the decision for himself.Tobas sends part of his salary back to Vedia, to help out with his siblings, his parents said.ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this story, as did Lyndsey Armacost, Juanita Ceballos, Macarena Gagliardi and Gert De Saedeleer.
