The story of Lionel Scaloni: the cause of his fear of airplanes, where his fame for shooting down “giants” was born and the technician who had him mistreat

It is twelve at night in Madrid and the Santiago Bernabeu stadium is almost empty. The few remaining screams of Deportivo La Coruña fans are barely heard, waving their flags. They have just won nothing less than Real Madrid in the final of the Copa del Rey just in the year of the club’s centenary and almost all the players of the Galician team have already paraded through the cameras of TVE, the Spanish state channel, which no longer knows how to continue filling in a space initially intended for You meringues. All, even with their shirts out or changed with their rivals, had highlighted what it meant to win there, when at last, with just a slip, in leather and barefoot, he was located Lionel Scaloni, who when asked about the meaning of the triumph only shouted “We screw up the party, we screw up the party !!!”.

That was always Scaloni. Pure energy, an electricity that needs it in constant motionIf it is not thinking, or making a joke, it is going from one place to the other, sleeping for a very few hours, “four or five”. Familiero, married to Elisa, has two children, Ian and Noah, and in addition to soccer, he has fields in Pujato, where he grows corn, wheat and soybeans.

It is no coincidence that Scaloni seemed like just another player, at 40 years of age (May 16, 1978, just a little more than a month before Juan Román Riquelme, one of his teammates from that Argentine team that won the U-20 World Cup in Malaysia in 1997) during the last World Cup in Russia, when he was an integral part of Jorge Sampaoli’s coaching staff. Nor that he became captain of a great Deportivo La Coruña team that marked an era in the early years of this century under the technical direction of “Basque” Javier Irureta and won a Spanish League (1999/2000), a Copa del Rey. and a Spanish Super Cup (both in 2002), once two referents like the Brazilian Mauro Silva and the talented Fran left.

Scaloni, together with his brother Mauro, two years older than him, took his first steps at the Club Sportivo Matienzo de Pujato, 33 kilometers from Rosario, until his father, Ángel – “capable of doing anything for his children”, as defined by those who know him-, who trained them there and highly respected for their tough character that undoubtedly influenced their personality, placed them first in Newell’s Old Boys in 1994 and had no qualms about taking them back, with just 12 games played, to Estudiantes de La Plata in 1996.

Lionel wanted to play later on the court, but the technical director at Newell’s at that time, Raúl Donsanti, decided to place him as a right-back and then soon after the two brothers were in La Plata, but after winning the U20 World Cup in Malaysia with José Pekerman as coach, they were transferred to Deportivo La Coruña. His brother Mauro went to team B.

The story of his brother deserves a separate mention, because it was his shadow. He built a career without playing a minute in First, following him at every step. After the 2006 World Cup, when Lionel left for West Ham United and then Racing Santander, Mauro could no longer follow in his footsteps. Today he is his No. 1 fan. The family grows corn, wheat and soybeans in their fields in Pujato, where it all started. And there is also the older brother, putting the shoulder from the low profile. Or, from behind the scenes, supporting his brother on social media, liking or RTing complimentary posts.

Returning to the Gringo, at Depor he would begin a 17-year career in European football, although his debut on January 4, 1998 against Sporting de Gijón could not have been worse. His expectations were high but within three minutes of his entry through the right back Armando, he had to leave because the Cameroonian goalkeeper Songo’o was expelled and coach José Manuel Corral brought in the substitute goalkeeper, Rufai in his place …

Scaloni’s anger was twofold because in addition to the very short time of his debut, they made a mistake and the number of his shirt said “Leo Scaloni” instead of “Lío”…

Without being a technically undisputed player, Scaloni was gaining a place in the dressing room, especially when Irureta arrived as technical director, who put together a solid team with a goalkeeper like José Francisco Molina (Diego Simeone’s former teammate at Atlético Madrid of the “double “1995/96), Mauro Silva ,. Víctor Sánchez, Juan Carlos Valerón, Fran, Diego Tristán or his compatriot and also former Newell’s, Aldo Duscher.

When “Superdepor” won the Spanish League in 2000, the celebrations were impressive in La Coruña, and especially in the Plaza de María Pita, the city’s Plaza Mayor, and there, with the players present. on the balcony and dyed blonde, the reveler Scaloni appeared again to impose the classic of “La Mosca” “I want to give you”, which ended up being the hit of the summer.

Deportivo then played the 2000/2001 Champions League and in their debut against Hamburg, with the 2-1 victory, Scaloni scored the final goal, closing his eyes and hitting the ball with soul and life. At that time, Scaloni was not captain in the team but he was leader of the dressing room, and he was loved, respected, although technically he never managed to consolidate himself in the starting eleven, although since the U-20 World Cup won with the Argentine team in Malaysia he had returned with a trauma: their fear of flying after a hard landing. So on the trips with the Deportivo delegation to Spain, he used to go on the first leg with his teammates for a matter of time and physique, but on the way back, he did it with his father in an Alfa Romeo, be it the thousand kilometers to Barcelona , or the six hundred to Madrid.

In 2006 everything seemed perfect. He was going to be part of the World Cup with the Argentine team in Germany 2006 (although he only played against Mexico for the round of 16) and had already won with Depor La Liga, the Spanish Super Cup and especially the Copa del Rey del “Centenariazo” in the Bernabeu against that Real Madrid of the Zidane, Figo, Roberto Carlos, Makelele, Hierro or Raúl, when, suddenly, everything fell apart.

I knew the version that the new coach of Depor, Joaquín Caparrós, did not have much sympathy for the Argentine players. And the first surprise was when In January 2006 Pekerman came to see him and Duscher in a game in Valencia, thinking about the World Cup in the middle of the year, and the DT did not even put them on. Scaloni then preferred to go on loan to West Ham, just half a year before Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano arrived from Corinthians, to be able to play and show themselves, but he always had resentment with Caparrós, whom he does not hesitate to point out as “selling smoke “in every interview they do in the Spanish media and of the one who maintains that” he did a lot of harm to Depor and disarmed a team that took years to put together “(Duscher, the other Argentine, was displaced after the fourth training session because for the coach it was “Overweight,” as he counted).

“I had remained as captain because Mauro Silva and Fran had retired, and I spoke often with Caparrós and he came up with a different idea, even for how to occupy the rooms in the hotels, and we would argue a lot, and then for the cameras he would hug you. We collided a lot and I went, not through the back door but from the side, with people asking me when I was coming back to the club, “he told the popular Spanish television program” Punto Pelota. “

Perhaps thinking that after half a year without meeting or crashing, the situation could have been different, Scaloni decided to return to Deportivo after the 2006 World Cup, and just when he saw him, Caparrós decided to suspend training (“I don’t know why the coach cut off practice , because it is a beautiful day “, ironized the Argentine a few minutes later, with the press). The situation remained the same, or worse, to the point that Scaloni left Depor a year before ending his contract “when President Augusto Lendoiro never lost a euro in a transaction and I had just come from playing a World Cup and they left me get paid all year without playing, “he remembers.

There then he emigrated to Racing de Santander led by Miguel Angel Portugal, but it was enough for him to be replaced by Marcelino Toral (current Valencia coach) to be the team’s first dismissal, and he went to Lazio, and after the 2008/09 season in Mallorca, returned to Italy to return to Lazio and finish at Atalanta in 2015.

Mallorca captivated him so much that once he left football, he returned there to work in the lower divisions of the club, once he was received as technical director, and came to the selection as a collaborator of Jorge Sampaoli, with whom he became part of the Sevilla coaching staff.

Although he likes high pressure and attack, it is not by chance that he likes direct football when his teams recover the ball, because he considers himself a guy who does not walk around. When he returns to Caparrós, the DT who had him mistreat him as Deportivo coach and who is the current sports director of Sevilla, says that “he speaks well but he is a chicanery, he likes curves. I, on the other hand, speak well like him but I’m straight, I go straight, straight ahead”.

That led him, for example, to lead a renewal in the National Team that deposited him in the final of the Copa América. With the recognition of the proposal and the criticism in tow for his propensity to back down after taking advantage and his inexperience in the bank, which emerges at some key moments. You will have a colossus like Brazil in front of you, at home. But the Gringo already knows what it is to knock down a giant. Real Madrid can attest to this. Who knows, maybe his voice will be heard at the Maracana shouting “Let’s screw up the party!”

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