Maradona and Argentina Are on the Brink
By ROB HUGHESThe end is nigh for Diego Maradona, and one hopes that is only as a supposed trainer of men that he is falling apart.
Fantastic as a player, clueless as a coach, Maradona watched, strangely detached, on the touchline in Asunción late Wednesday as his Argentina team succumbed for the second time in a week, its fourth loss in five World Cup qualifiers under his coaching.
He not only looked alone, he looked trapped in his own body. Maradona has some of the most gifted players on earth at his command, but after Paraguay stunned them with a spectacular goal, those players resembled orphans on the outside of the World Cup party.
Lionel Messi looked as if he might cry. Sergio Agüero, Maradona’s son-in-law, seemed isolated, and was replaced within the hour. Juan Veron was sent off after 52 minutes.
Throughout it all, knowing of course that the television cameras would be on him, Maradona barely moved. His arms were folded, or behind his back. He stared straight ahead. Only the two diamonds in his left ear sparkled.
His head was held high, but he consulted no one. He knows, or should know, that he has too little experience of coaching to be alone, yet reports from inside his camp suggest that he humiliates Carlos Bilardo, once Maradona’s coach when Argentina ruled the soccer world.
Julio Grondona, the 77-year-old president of Argentina’s soccer federation, who gave Maradona the job of inspiring the team 10 months ago, also installed Bilardo as mentor. But Grondona has no powers to persuade Maradona to tap Bilardo’s experience. At what point the president will act?
Grondona has created this mess, just as he has overseen a soccer league in Argentina that has fallen into destitution. All Argentina has are players who look great, on somebody else’s teams.
On Wednesday, after England and Spain cruised to join the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, Paraguay’s victory meant it had qualified under its own Argentine-born coach, Gerardo Martino.
Maradona refused to see that he had become the problem, the albatross.
“I will not be broken,” he told reporters after the 1-0 defeat. “I did not imagine being in this position, but this is our reality. I am going to face it. We still have a chance, we must start the jigsaw puzzle again, but Argentina has the players to get us out of this.”
Indeed, it does. But will Maradona pick them? Does he know how to instruct them, how to balance the lineup, how to share the knowledge that is all around him?
The pressure is intense. Maradona is a man who, under the pressures of withdrawal from his own peak as one of the finest players in history, developed a chronic drug addiction.
It isn’t too melodramatic to fear for him, and to cry for Argentina at the same time. Here is a country that exports players fit for any stage, and one that even now, with games against Peru and Uruguay to play next month, is capable of joining the other 31 teams at the World Cup — and as a potential winner in South Africa,
But first, Argentina must recognize what isn’t working. The bizarre selections, changing from match to match, included on Wednesday Martín Palermo, an aging striker who last played for his country nine years ago, and Rolando Schiavi, a 36-year-old defender of Newell’s Old Boys in Rosario.
Schiavi had never been chosen for Argentina before. He came on as a substitute long after the confusion in defense gave up the goal after 27 minutes.
Salvador Cabañas, the Paraguayan playmaker, ran rings around three Argentines. He spun with the ball under his spell, three times to outwit defenders. Then he slipped the ball to Nelson Haedo Valdez who, from the left of the penalty box, gave Sergio Romero not a glimmer of chance of stopping his angled shot low inside the far post.
Romero was a debutant, at 22. He was assertive and blameless in defeat.
Watching from London for Sky television, Osvaldo Ardiles, a former team-mate and protector of Maradona, said at half time: “It’s hopeless. We are not a team, we are a collection of individuals — and even the individuals are not showing up.”
If Maradona saw the same performance, he was not letting on.
“I don’t fear critics,” he said. “I don’t fear anybody. I’ve battled the critics since I was 15, now I am 48 and I will keep fighting journalists.”
It isn’t about him. It’s about the team, though that sadly seems to be far from what Argentina now is.
Can a coach be responsible for that?
The evidence from England is that a coach makes a world of difference. England failed to reach the Euro 2008 after losing at home to Croatia. On Wednesday, England crushed Croatia 5-1, its eighth successive victory in its group.
Fabio Capello, the Italian hired to give England order and belief, has the same players who lost two years ago performing with good old English physicality and aerial power.
Spain does it with more subtlety. Vicente Del Bosque, the coach discarded as old-fashioned by Real Madrid, has the team playing to its strengths: at speed and with movement and accuracy. Spain’s record is also played eight, won eight.
England believes it is forging a potential World Cup winner. Spain surely is. Brazil, more pragmatic but potent under Carlos Dunga, has such reserves that it must be a favorite. Four days after beating Argentina, 3-1, in Rosario, Brazil fielded almost a second string and won its 11th straight game, beating Chile, 4-2.
Three of the goals Wednesday came from Nilmar, who will, if he is lucky, be the fourth choice in the World Cup finals. Nilmar, 25, has just returned to Europe, with Villarreal three years after leaving Lyon.
“He’s a player who carries out what you ask him to do, and a little more besides,” Dunga told the media.
In Brazil, the player and the coach know their tasks.
Information Source: NY Times.com
