something is rotten in the football state of argentina...
Occasionally I check out the AS website to get some "insider" information about Spanish football, and a couple of days ago I found two articles about Lionel Messi and the Albiceleste that I need to share with you. My most awesome friends viewfromnowhen and mer5 were so kind as to translate them for me. YOU ROCK! *GLOMP*
Argentina raises a protest against Maradona and Messi: "Stop calling Leo the best player in the world!"
Argentina is fuming after the defeat against Paraguay (1-0) which drives the Albiceleste away from the 2010 World Cup. Maradona and Messi have become the main targets of furious criticism from the press and the fans. "Maradona has made every possible mistake you can make as a a national team coach - from messing up the strategy to demoralizing the players by leaving them on the bench all of a sudden (Otamendi, Burdisso, starters or completely out of the team), wrong substitutions (why did he take Dátolo out when they needed someone to draw crosses into the box? To add more confusion with Lavezzi?) and becoming haughty enough to blame the press for everything." This reflection crowned the chronicles published by the newspaper Olé.
Diego came out of this well compared to what was said about Messi after the game on television channel TyC: "Stop calling Messi the best player in the world, that's enough!", "He didn't five titles with Barcelona, the team did: Xavi, Eto'o, Iniesta...", "Messi gives his best for Barça, not for the national team", "He isn't good enough to be a starter with the Albiceleste"... Olé had their own harsh words against Messi: "He has disappointed everybody again. Expressionless, every dribble of his made us groan. And his attitude on the pitch, as if he didn't even want to be there. It's time to wonder if he should be playing at all."
The Azulgrana wasn't the only one singled out by Olé: "No one should miss 2-metre-passes, subside to pressure because of a lack of precision, or make crosses to a 1.70m tall striker surrounded by players who know their air game." Clarín described in an apocalyptic article that "Argentina is a team in free fall and, so it seems, without a parachute. Maradona doesn't understand, but he should accept the fact that this is not a coincidence. He should be grateful for the final 1-0 because the result could have been even worse. This last 90-minute scene has left everybody worried and with a fear of watching on TV what might happen in South Africa in 2010." Argentina, the country in which heaven and hell get mixed up once in a while, as Fontanarrosa* used to warn, now wants to burn its idols in a blaze.
***
A sad and speechless Messi returns to Barcelona
Striker Leo Messi and defender Nico Pareja returned to Ciudad Condal at 10 AM after an exhausting flight of twelve hours from Buenos Aires. A swarm of TV cameras, photographers and journalists were waiting for them in the newly-inaugurated T1, but the Barcelona player refused to make any statements. Together with his girlfriend he walked through the terminal in silence. It was Juanjo Brau, his physical coach, who explained that Messi hadn't made any statements in Argentina after the painful defeat in Asunción, and that he didn't think it was wise to make them in Barcelona out of respect for the journalists back in his country.
Messi's face was expressive enough. A serious expression, a huge desire of disappearing from the scene and a great sadness in his eyes, all explained that the player isn't going through his best moment and suffers not only from the effects of the defeats against Brazil and Paraguay, which jeopardize Argentina's presence in the upcoming World Cup, but also because he has been pointed out for the first time in his life as one of the people to hold the most responsibility in the football disaster his country is going through. This is the via crucis he shares with national coach Diego Armando Maradona. [...]
Leo Messi arrived this Friday in Barcelona with a gesture of defeat and sadness after the two losses he suffered with the Argentinian national team this week and, even though he made no statements, his blue-and-white teammate Nico Pareja from Espanyol did speak, confirming that Leo is going through "a very difficult" situation. "It is normal, people love him very much here and Leo shows that in the field. He's going through a very difficult moment in Argentina, but he's still the best player in the world. I think he leaves everything on the field just like everybody else, but nobody can play a great game every time. He's a good person and the greatest player in the world, so he needs to be supported," he explained.
________________________________
* Fontanarrosa was a local fiction writer. He was born in Rosario and died two years ago. He wrote extensively about football.
My two cents:
You probably know that I've always been a huge fan of Lionel Messi's, and - of course - of the Albiceleste. The situation they're in at the moment doesn't exactly fill me with joy, but whereas I do agree with one of the main culprits the Spanish and Argentine press are pointing out here, I can't bring myself to agree with the other. I haven't seen any of Argentina's recent matches due to either lack of time or lack of working streams, so I can't say whether the criticism Messi is facing at the moment is justified (or partly justified), but I don't want him to be turned into a scapegoat.
Messi isn't the only one who underperforms under Maradona's hand. All the others do, too. So I personally think it's unfair to pick him out just because he displays excellent skill at Barcelona and fails to reproduce this for the Albiceleste. You just can't compare the midfield of Argentina (in any of their recent matches) with the one of Barcelona, and it's the midfield that serves the strikers. If they don't get any useful passes, they can't do much about it.
If you want to put the blame on individuals, why not acknowledge the fact that Argentina has been playing poorly under Maradona for quite a while now and that he is the one who should be held responsible? His footballing skills are beyond dispute, undoubtedly, but whoever thought he'd be as awesome a coach as he was a footballer was sorely mistaken.
If you consider what a national team coach should be like, you're likely to imagine someone who doesn't make a spectacle of himself, someone who puts his country and his team before himself, someone who pulls the strings in the background. In short, someone completely unlike Maradona. Maradona is a star, and he wants to be treated and perceived as one. The Albiceleste seem like his stage, his private playground, his real-life Football Manager game, and his wishes are everyone's command. He threatened to quit his post just two weeks after he was signed, merely because the AFA refused to let him choose his own assistant. He fell out with his playmaker, Juan Román Riquelme, who might not have been as good as he once was but who still did a lot for the national team and more or less held the whole thing together.
Granted, Argentina were doing badly under Basile also, but that's why he was fired as soon as it became clear that he wouldn't be able to fix the problems anymore.
Maradona won his first two matches - a friendly against Scotland, and a qualifier against Venezuela (4-0), who had admittedly had a rather good qualification up to that point. However, one can safely say now that this was due to the (usual) motivation that comes with a new coach and doesn't necessarily say anything about whether the new coach is better than the old one. The team needed a change, they got it, and they signalled that they were willing to do their best, given proper guidance. Maradona's first real challenge was against Bolivia - and we all know how this turned out. In his post-match interview, Maradona blamed the altitude (which he had previously defended with a lot of effort, saying that every team should play in its home country, regardless of the altitude), but the following defeats against Ecuador, Brazil and Paraguay showed clearly that his bad results were logical consequences of, amongst other things, wrong (or insufficient) coaching. Except for a part of the match against Venezuela, the Albiceleste haven't shown any trace of the greatness they used to display, for instance at the World Cup 2006 and the Copa América 2007.
As I haven't seen any of Argentina's matches ever since Maradona took charge, I must admit I don't have much on which to base my claim that Maradona's line-ups and call-ups don't make much sense. I'm sure that those of you who have seen the matches have more to say on this matter, and I pray you to please do so. Any information is appreciated.
What I do know, however, is that his plan of having an Argentina B-team from the local league was a bad idea. Why call up an entire additional squad for a test match, raise high hopes in those players, and then drop most of them because they're not good enough after all? Why not have a call-up system based on performance in the leagues? I admit that it's pretty difficult to focus on two different continents, but it's not impossible with the right staff. Maradona quickly seemed to have abandoned the plan of Argentina B, but I think it would have been for the best if he had just called up a few local players for the A-team and tested them there.
Then, there's the matter of the strikers. Up to this day, Maradona refuses to call up Gonzalo Higuaín of Real Madrid, even though the guy was Real's top striker last season. He scored 23 goals, more than Agüero, more than Tévez, as many as Messi. There was this unfortunate incident of Higuaín rejecting call-ups from both Argentina and France when he was still at River Plate, as reported by Olé, and the AFA still resenting him for it, but honestly, when the qualification for a World Cup is at stake, one has to put those childish sentiments aside and do what's best for the national team. Of course, there's no guarantee for Higuaín becoming the saviour of the Albiceleste, but even if he should fail, at least then the AFA can say they did everything they could.
On the other hand, Sergio Agüero has the bonus of shagging the daughter of the coach and therefore seems to have a safe spot in the Albiceleste's starting line-up, no matter how effective or ineffective he is. A good coach would contemplate whether a certain type of striker would be of any help against a certain kind of opponent, but it's not very likely that this thought has ever entered Maradona's head. Unless he's injured, Kun plays. This is incredibly unfair towards the other promising strikers Argentina has, and especially to Carlos Tévez, who, more often than not, is left on the bench as the fifth wheel. There's no healthy competition amongst Argentina's strikers, and therefore it's not particularly surprising that they lack efficiency.
In view of this, the recent return of Martín Palermo to the national team makes even less sense.
Concerning the back four, I read recently that Martín Demichelis was sorely missed against Brazil and Paraguay. This didn't really fill me with hope either. You know I'm a huge fan of his, and I was incredibly disappointed when he was dropped in the last minute before the World Cup in Germany, hours before the players left Argentina on the plane, and apparently for no proper reason. When he was called up again, it was after a very successful season at Bayern which ended with a league and DFB Cup double, and it was deserved. However, he hasn't really been the most reliable defender ever since. His last season was disappointing - there's no other way of looking at it. If a team misses a defender who isn't at his best at the moment, there must be quite something wrong with that team. And honestly, I refuse to believe that there aren't any good Argentine defenders at the moment. Surely, Maradona could have done better than to pick relative newbies (Dominguez, Otamendi and Papa) for important matches like Brazil and Paraguay. Didn't he have any more experienced players to choose from? Why did he call up Schiavi if he didn't plan on using him? And I don't understand why he keeps calling up Heinze despite his bad performances instead of giving a chance to Javier Pinola or Emiliano Insúa.
And what about Cambiasso? And Federico Insúa? After his return to Boca, I think he'd deserve a call-up again.
Of course, all this won't change unless Maradona gets the boot, but Maradona won't get the boot. Grondona installed him as the successor of Basile in 2008, ignoring applicants such as Diego Simeone, Carlos Bianchi and Sergio Batista. There's no love lost between them from what I've gathered, but Grondona had had to face a lot of criticism before that because the Argentine NT has been playing badly for quite a long time. His main reason to sign Maradona was because he's pretty much a "saint" in Argentina and therefore immune to criticism - or so he thought. From what I read in a little article in Kicker yesterday, the fans have started protesting publicly against Maradona, wanting him to get fired before it's too late and the qualification has failed. Grondona must be aware of this, and also of how badly the team is still playing. However, if he sacks Maradona now, it would mean admitting he's made a mistake when he signed him, and I doubt he has the guts for that. The way I see it, he'll stay with Argentina until his contract ends (in October 2009), and Argentina will continue to have problems.
There are two qualifier matches left: at home against Peru and away against Uruguay, currently sixth and with one point less than Argentina. Undoubtedly Uruguay's remainder of the qualification reads more difficult than Argentina's (away against Ecuador and at home against Argentina). Ecuador (fourth) need to maintain their current position to qualify directly, and they won't hand out any presents. If the Albiceleste don't want the last match against Uruguay to be the decisive one, they have to win against Peru.
Argentina raises a protest against Maradona and Messi: "Stop calling Leo the best player in the world!"
Argentina is fuming after the defeat against Paraguay (1-0) which drives the Albiceleste away from the 2010 World Cup. Maradona and Messi have become the main targets of furious criticism from the press and the fans. "Maradona has made every possible mistake you can make as a a national team coach - from messing up the strategy to demoralizing the players by leaving them on the bench all of a sudden (Otamendi, Burdisso, starters or completely out of the team), wrong substitutions (why did he take Dátolo out when they needed someone to draw crosses into the box? To add more confusion with Lavezzi?) and becoming haughty enough to blame the press for everything." This reflection crowned the chronicles published by the newspaper Olé.
Diego came out of this well compared to what was said about Messi after the game on television channel TyC: "Stop calling Messi the best player in the world, that's enough!", "He didn't five titles with Barcelona, the team did: Xavi, Eto'o, Iniesta...", "Messi gives his best for Barça, not for the national team", "He isn't good enough to be a starter with the Albiceleste"... Olé had their own harsh words against Messi: "He has disappointed everybody again. Expressionless, every dribble of his made us groan. And his attitude on the pitch, as if he didn't even want to be there. It's time to wonder if he should be playing at all."
The Azulgrana wasn't the only one singled out by Olé: "No one should miss 2-metre-passes, subside to pressure because of a lack of precision, or make crosses to a 1.70m tall striker surrounded by players who know their air game." Clarín described in an apocalyptic article that "Argentina is a team in free fall and, so it seems, without a parachute. Maradona doesn't understand, but he should accept the fact that this is not a coincidence. He should be grateful for the final 1-0 because the result could have been even worse. This last 90-minute scene has left everybody worried and with a fear of watching on TV what might happen in South Africa in 2010." Argentina, the country in which heaven and hell get mixed up once in a while, as Fontanarrosa* used to warn, now wants to burn its idols in a blaze.
***
A sad and speechless Messi returns to Barcelona
Striker Leo Messi and defender Nico Pareja returned to Ciudad Condal at 10 AM after an exhausting flight of twelve hours from Buenos Aires. A swarm of TV cameras, photographers and journalists were waiting for them in the newly-inaugurated T1, but the Barcelona player refused to make any statements. Together with his girlfriend he walked through the terminal in silence. It was Juanjo Brau, his physical coach, who explained that Messi hadn't made any statements in Argentina after the painful defeat in Asunción, and that he didn't think it was wise to make them in Barcelona out of respect for the journalists back in his country.
Messi's face was expressive enough. A serious expression, a huge desire of disappearing from the scene and a great sadness in his eyes, all explained that the player isn't going through his best moment and suffers not only from the effects of the defeats against Brazil and Paraguay, which jeopardize Argentina's presence in the upcoming World Cup, but also because he has been pointed out for the first time in his life as one of the people to hold the most responsibility in the football disaster his country is going through. This is the via crucis he shares with national coach Diego Armando Maradona. [...]
Leo Messi arrived this Friday in Barcelona with a gesture of defeat and sadness after the two losses he suffered with the Argentinian national team this week and, even though he made no statements, his blue-and-white teammate Nico Pareja from Espanyol did speak, confirming that Leo is going through "a very difficult" situation. "It is normal, people love him very much here and Leo shows that in the field. He's going through a very difficult moment in Argentina, but he's still the best player in the world. I think he leaves everything on the field just like everybody else, but nobody can play a great game every time. He's a good person and the greatest player in the world, so he needs to be supported," he explained.
________________________________
* Fontanarrosa was a local fiction writer. He was born in Rosario and died two years ago. He wrote extensively about football.
My two cents:
You probably know that I've always been a huge fan of Lionel Messi's, and - of course - of the Albiceleste. The situation they're in at the moment doesn't exactly fill me with joy, but whereas I do agree with one of the main culprits the Spanish and Argentine press are pointing out here, I can't bring myself to agree with the other. I haven't seen any of Argentina's recent matches due to either lack of time or lack of working streams, so I can't say whether the criticism Messi is facing at the moment is justified (or partly justified), but I don't want him to be turned into a scapegoat.
Messi isn't the only one who underperforms under Maradona's hand. All the others do, too. So I personally think it's unfair to pick him out just because he displays excellent skill at Barcelona and fails to reproduce this for the Albiceleste. You just can't compare the midfield of Argentina (in any of their recent matches) with the one of Barcelona, and it's the midfield that serves the strikers. If they don't get any useful passes, they can't do much about it.
If you want to put the blame on individuals, why not acknowledge the fact that Argentina has been playing poorly under Maradona for quite a while now and that he is the one who should be held responsible? His footballing skills are beyond dispute, undoubtedly, but whoever thought he'd be as awesome a coach as he was a footballer was sorely mistaken.
If you consider what a national team coach should be like, you're likely to imagine someone who doesn't make a spectacle of himself, someone who puts his country and his team before himself, someone who pulls the strings in the background. In short, someone completely unlike Maradona. Maradona is a star, and he wants to be treated and perceived as one. The Albiceleste seem like his stage, his private playground, his real-life Football Manager game, and his wishes are everyone's command. He threatened to quit his post just two weeks after he was signed, merely because the AFA refused to let him choose his own assistant. He fell out with his playmaker, Juan Román Riquelme, who might not have been as good as he once was but who still did a lot for the national team and more or less held the whole thing together.
Granted, Argentina were doing badly under Basile also, but that's why he was fired as soon as it became clear that he wouldn't be able to fix the problems anymore.
Maradona won his first two matches - a friendly against Scotland, and a qualifier against Venezuela (4-0), who had admittedly had a rather good qualification up to that point. However, one can safely say now that this was due to the (usual) motivation that comes with a new coach and doesn't necessarily say anything about whether the new coach is better than the old one. The team needed a change, they got it, and they signalled that they were willing to do their best, given proper guidance. Maradona's first real challenge was against Bolivia - and we all know how this turned out. In his post-match interview, Maradona blamed the altitude (which he had previously defended with a lot of effort, saying that every team should play in its home country, regardless of the altitude), but the following defeats against Ecuador, Brazil and Paraguay showed clearly that his bad results were logical consequences of, amongst other things, wrong (or insufficient) coaching. Except for a part of the match against Venezuela, the Albiceleste haven't shown any trace of the greatness they used to display, for instance at the World Cup 2006 and the Copa América 2007.
As I haven't seen any of Argentina's matches ever since Maradona took charge, I must admit I don't have much on which to base my claim that Maradona's line-ups and call-ups don't make much sense. I'm sure that those of you who have seen the matches have more to say on this matter, and I pray you to please do so. Any information is appreciated.
What I do know, however, is that his plan of having an Argentina B-team from the local league was a bad idea. Why call up an entire additional squad for a test match, raise high hopes in those players, and then drop most of them because they're not good enough after all? Why not have a call-up system based on performance in the leagues? I admit that it's pretty difficult to focus on two different continents, but it's not impossible with the right staff. Maradona quickly seemed to have abandoned the plan of Argentina B, but I think it would have been for the best if he had just called up a few local players for the A-team and tested them there.
Then, there's the matter of the strikers. Up to this day, Maradona refuses to call up Gonzalo Higuaín of Real Madrid, even though the guy was Real's top striker last season. He scored 23 goals, more than Agüero, more than Tévez, as many as Messi. There was this unfortunate incident of Higuaín rejecting call-ups from both Argentina and France when he was still at River Plate, as reported by Olé, and the AFA still resenting him for it, but honestly, when the qualification for a World Cup is at stake, one has to put those childish sentiments aside and do what's best for the national team. Of course, there's no guarantee for Higuaín becoming the saviour of the Albiceleste, but even if he should fail, at least then the AFA can say they did everything they could.
On the other hand, Sergio Agüero has the bonus of shagging the daughter of the coach and therefore seems to have a safe spot in the Albiceleste's starting line-up, no matter how effective or ineffective he is. A good coach would contemplate whether a certain type of striker would be of any help against a certain kind of opponent, but it's not very likely that this thought has ever entered Maradona's head. Unless he's injured, Kun plays. This is incredibly unfair towards the other promising strikers Argentina has, and especially to Carlos Tévez, who, more often than not, is left on the bench as the fifth wheel. There's no healthy competition amongst Argentina's strikers, and therefore it's not particularly surprising that they lack efficiency.
In view of this, the recent return of Martín Palermo to the national team makes even less sense.
Concerning the back four, I read recently that Martín Demichelis was sorely missed against Brazil and Paraguay. This didn't really fill me with hope either. You know I'm a huge fan of his, and I was incredibly disappointed when he was dropped in the last minute before the World Cup in Germany, hours before the players left Argentina on the plane, and apparently for no proper reason. When he was called up again, it was after a very successful season at Bayern which ended with a league and DFB Cup double, and it was deserved. However, he hasn't really been the most reliable defender ever since. His last season was disappointing - there's no other way of looking at it. If a team misses a defender who isn't at his best at the moment, there must be quite something wrong with that team. And honestly, I refuse to believe that there aren't any good Argentine defenders at the moment. Surely, Maradona could have done better than to pick relative newbies (Dominguez, Otamendi and Papa) for important matches like Brazil and Paraguay. Didn't he have any more experienced players to choose from? Why did he call up Schiavi if he didn't plan on using him? And I don't understand why he keeps calling up Heinze despite his bad performances instead of giving a chance to Javier Pinola or Emiliano Insúa.
And what about Cambiasso? And Federico Insúa? After his return to Boca, I think he'd deserve a call-up again.
Of course, all this won't change unless Maradona gets the boot, but Maradona won't get the boot. Grondona installed him as the successor of Basile in 2008, ignoring applicants such as Diego Simeone, Carlos Bianchi and Sergio Batista. There's no love lost between them from what I've gathered, but Grondona had had to face a lot of criticism before that because the Argentine NT has been playing badly for quite a long time. His main reason to sign Maradona was because he's pretty much a "saint" in Argentina and therefore immune to criticism - or so he thought. From what I read in a little article in Kicker yesterday, the fans have started protesting publicly against Maradona, wanting him to get fired before it's too late and the qualification has failed. Grondona must be aware of this, and also of how badly the team is still playing. However, if he sacks Maradona now, it would mean admitting he's made a mistake when he signed him, and I doubt he has the guts for that. The way I see it, he'll stay with Argentina until his contract ends (in October 2009), and Argentina will continue to have problems.
There are two qualifier matches left: at home against Peru and away against Uruguay, currently sixth and with one point less than Argentina. Undoubtedly Uruguay's remainder of the qualification reads more difficult than Argentina's (away against Ecuador and at home against Argentina). Ecuador (fourth) need to maintain their current position to qualify directly, and they won't hand out any presents. If the Albiceleste don't want the last match against Uruguay to be the decisive one, they have to win against Peru.