“I was born in Argentina, land of Diego and Lionel, of the kids from Malvinas, that I will never forget. I can’t explain it to you, because you won’t understand, the finals we lost, how many years I cried for them.”
‘Muchachos’, anthem of the Argentine national team until December 18, 2022.
“I was born in Argentina, land of Diego and Lionel, of the kids from Malvinas, that I will never forget. I can’t explain it to you because you won’t understand. I cried the final with Germany for eight years. But that’s over: Because this year in Qatar the final with the French was won again by dad. Guys, now all that remains is to celebrate. We already won the third We are already world champion. And we tell Diego to rest in peace…”
‘Muchachos’, anthem of the Argentine national team, Qatar, December 19, 2022.
hungry to win
One could think on the morning of Sunday, December 18: with the French team having a regular day and Messi A special inspiration, the result will allow Argentina to take home the world championship trophy from Qatar. The French team did not have, in a large part of the game, that is, until the 80th minute, a regular but frankly bad behavior and the Argentine team had a Messi quite inspired, but, above all, with a team that, like the Moroccan team, had hungry to win, to put an end to “the finals we lost”, in reference to the defeat after defeat until the 2021 Copa de América.
But this Sunday the 18th, Messi’s inspiration and the coach’s decision to launch the striker onto the field from the start angel di mariawere inserted in a team of kids as compact as what was for years the barca of Pep Guardiola.
Look where, it was in Qatar, in 2014, when the Telefónica executive, Pablo Rodriguez, worked with a group of computer experts to decipher the secrets of the Guardiola model. The team analyzed in the emirate the 380 games played in the Spanish League during the 2009-2010 season. The players who passed the ball (triplets or triangles) were more frequent in Barça than in the other teams and the passes were much shorter.
That was the tiki-taka
And this was the game dynamics of the Argentine team in Qatar and, especially, in the match with France. It seemed that the specter of Guardiola, delegated to Messi, floated on the tiki-taka with which the Argentine team made the French dizzy, for whom one could only hope for the escape of Kylian Mbappe and his mastery for the dribble, the escape at full speed, and the kick on goal.
But that didn’t come until very late in the 80th minute, when Argentina was in control of absolutist waywith a 2-0 that could have arrived, due to the missed opportunitiesseveral more goals ahead, simply because the ball, in the style of Barça of yesteryear, was magnetized at the feet of the Argentine players.
four in one
Four games in one. Like in tennis. Two to zero, which would be said in the first set; three to three in the second and three to three in the third set, or overtime, and four to two in the fourth or on penalties. A football match in four sets that was winning, that is, since the French team, as has been pointed out, woke up in the 80th minute, with a crescendo in intensity, danger, suspense and emotion.
If in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, the Argentine team went to the final after defeating England With the help of the goal from the hand of God, Maradona dixit, the Qatar 2022 World Cup hands first and the save of the goalkeeper’s left leg Emiliano Dibu Martinez coming out at minute 122:42 after a shot from Colonel Muani, who avoided the goal and the almost certain victory of France, allowed them to go to the fourth set, following the analogy with tennis, that is, to penalties, where the goalkeeper from Mar del Plata also saved the balls of the French in an extraordinary way.
Technician ignored
what a brilliant Mbappé could not manage -despite what he did- to save the French team, Messi was able to achieve it because, and this is perhaps the essential thing, he was not alone, he had a team hungry for victory and deeply involved in the need to control the ball.
A hunger and a spirit of control of the ball also inoculated by a almost anonymous coach or rather, ignored, even if he won the America’s Cup 2021 and the 2022 Conmebol Champions Cup.
But, it must be said, nobody in Buenos Aires gave a penny for Lionel Scaloni and the coaching baton fell into his hands because no one was willing to take the risk of leading the Argentine team. They lacked, it was said, the human resources to do so.
Scaloni and his so-called Scalonetawith the exception of the best-known figures, those who play in European clubs, became a team outside the establishment, both from the Argentine Football Association (AFA) and from political parties.
Cold with Macron
The President of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez, invited, like the president of France, to watch the game in Qatar, he decided not to appear, unlike Emmanuel Macron, to encourage his team. The coldness and indifference of Mbappé and the players of the French team in the hug that the French president gave them was a postcard worth saving.
Would 4 or 5 million Argentines those who turned to receive Messi and the team in the so-called AMBA (Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area), the common urban area formed by the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and forty municipalities, an area of 13,285 square kilometers and 14,800,000 inhabitants .
Or 700,000 in Rosario, Messi’s hometown. And it has been tried to explain that gigantic mobilization for that unique, apparently mysterious passion of Argentines for soccer. Which, in fact, exists.
above the elites
But there is something else, apart from the posthumous tribute to Maradona, who died in 2020 during the pandemic, almost a suicide, and the demonstration of affection for Messi. And overcoming “the finals we lost.”
people needed identify with a fantasy, and a wish now fulfilled, which the ruling classes and the system they maintain in an Argentina in secular political, economic and social crisis -with indices of poverty, hunger and foreign debt- deny them day after day and year after year since time immemorial.
A nation which nature has endowed with exceptional conditions, of unparalleled wealth within reach, and that the successive elites -oligarchic, Peronist and anti-Peronist, that is, the Argentine pendulum- have privatized and looted for their own benefit.
lost argentina
It is likely that seeing the millions on the streets of Buenos Aires, crowding the sidewalks of his old family apartment on Maipú Street, a few steps from San Martín Square, Borges I would say once again: “How strange that the English, unjustly hated, have never been blamed for having filled the world with stupid games, purely physical sports like football, which is one of their greatest crimes… Football wake up the worst passions. Awake above all that is worse in these times, which is the nationalism related to sportbecause people think they are going to watch a sport, but it is not like that…”
The goalkeeper of the national team, Emiliano Dibu Martínez, said that one of his goals was bring joy to the people of his country in economic crisis who could not make ends meet.
In a lost argentinaThat, precisely, is what the millions who took to the streets expressed.
