Nico Vidal Law: Safeguarding Amateur Football Protects Our Communities

Original article: Ley Nico Vidal: Cuidar el fútbol amateur es cuidar nuestros barrios

By Damaris Astete Marchant, social worker, candidate for the National Central Committee of the Broad Front, community social leader, and spokesperson for Ukamau Valparaíso

Amateur football is much more than just 90 minutes and a ball rolling on a pitch. In hundreds of neighborhoods across our country, it represents gathering, organization, identity, and memory. It is the place where children play or accompany their families, where entire generations meet every weekend, and where leaders often support clubs with voluntary effort and limited resources.

Therefore, the general approval of the so-called Nico Vidal Law by the Sports and Recreation Commission of the Chamber of Deputies is a significant signal. Its unanimous approval further demonstrates that protecting amateur football can and should be a cross-cutting task.

This initiative stems from a tragedy that should never have happened. On March 1st of this year, Nicolás Vidal Faúndez, a player for Club Estrella Roja in Valparaíso, a father, port worker, and resident of Cerro San Juan de Dios, lost his life amidst violent incidents during the Champions Cup in San Antonio.

From this pain, his family and the club decided to transform their loss into organization and collective demand: ensuring that no family has to endure such an experience again while supporting their children, relatives, or friends at a game.

However, reducing the Nico Vidal Law merely to a response to an act of violence overlooks the depth of what is under discussion.

The project proposes something that Chile has long needed: to acknowledge amateur football as an activity of public interest, valuing its social, community, and preventive functions. It also seeks to establish minimum safety standards, protocols for addressing risk situations, violence prevention, transparency, and clear responsibilities for those organizing competitions.

This distinction is crucial. We cannot mechanically transfer the same rules designed for professional football or any large-scale event to amateur football.

A neighborhood club is not a sports corporation. Often, it is the club members themselves who sell tickets, mark the field, organize youth teams, secure transportation, and maintain their facilities. Regulating this reality requires understanding it and, above all, not financially penalizing those who sustain it.

That is why it has been essential to listen during the legislative discussions to clubs, associations, municipalities, rural football organizations, sports authorities, security agencies, and, especially, Nicolás’ family.

The challenge now, during the specific discussions, will be to incorporate those experiences and find mechanisms that allow for enforceable safety measures without making it impossible for clubs to exist.

State Responsibility

The State must also assume responsibilities. We cannot demand protocols, infrastructure, training, and safety conditions if we once again leave clubs and their leaders to finance and implement them alone.

The safety of amateur football requires coordination among associations, municipalities, sports institutions, public agencies, and communities.

We also need to talk about prevention. Violence does not begin when someone enters a pitch with a weapon. It builds beforehand when we normalize threats, aggression, intolerance towards opponents, or the idea that insulting and hitting are inevitable parts of football.

Thus, this law also presents an educational opportunity. We need to reclaim the pitch as a space where children and young people learn coexistence, respect, solidarity, and community life. This is perhaps the deepest challenge left by Nicolás Vidal’s story: ensuring that his name is not solely associated with the tragedy that ended his life but also with the ability of a family and a community to transform pain into a proposal for all of Chile.

The general approval is an important step, but there is still a long way to go. Now, it is time to improve the project, listen to those who experience amateur football from Arica to Magallanes, and create legislation that comprehends the vast territorial differences.

Because protecting amateur football does not mean filling pitches with restrictions or distancing families. It means exactly the opposite: creating conditions for them to become safe spaces for gathering. A mother should be able to take her children without worry. A child should be able to cheer for their club. A leader should be able to organize a tournament without feeling abandoned in the face of violence.

Teams should be able to meet as rivals for 90 minutes and continue to recognize each other as neighbors when the match is over.

The ball remains unsullied, and taking care of that ball, that pitch, and its people, is ultimately about building community and a better Chile.

Damaris Astete Marchant