Scaloni, the peacemaker who eats at Menotti and Bilardo’s table

Lionel Scaloni already sits on the throne that César Luis Menotti and Carlos Salvador Bilardo once occupied, apostles of two antagonistic ways of seeing football and life. The Santa Fe coach, who took the reins of Argentina after the debacle in the World Cup in Russia and with the rank of interim, has resurrected the Albiceleste, returning it four years later to the Olympus where Flaco and Narigón installed it.

He was excited: «It is to enjoy, we are used to being hit and today the boys have done it again, they have gotten up. If my dad is watching me and my mom, which I think is… they have given me a way of understanding life, of never giving up, which is what I have tried to convey to the players. All the coaches want to do well and I have been lucky that it has gone well for me.

Argentina, which touched the sky as host in 1978 with Mario Alberto Kempes acting as flagship and again in Mexico’86, already by the hand of the god Maradona, sewed the third star on the chest of his shirt at the Qatari stadium in Lusail at the end of a final that ends up elevating Leo Messi as the best footballer of all time and that brings to the altars of the South American country a coach with a theoretical low profile but a right hand and a meteoric rise who went from sharing a dressing room with the Rosario’s genius to serve as a guide in the greatest conquest in an unparalleled career.

Because Scaloni has managed to form a supportive group without edges at the service of a cause: provide Messi with the only title that was missing from his record and allow him to sit to the right of Diego. With a group of workers dedicated to the sacrosanct task of enthroning the Rosario star, and the number ’10’ offering brilliant flashes of the supernova that it is at 35 years of age, Argentina has once again positioned itself at the epicenter of the soccer planet, leaving a mere anecdote the unexpected slip against Saudi Arabia with which he dishonorably opened a tournament that has riveted with infinite greatness.

At 44, Scaloni has pacified a team that went through stormy times after losing the World Cup final in Brazil’14 and crashing four years later in Russia against Kylian Mbappé’s France in the round of 16. With a discreet but determined disposition, the former footballer for Deportivo, Racing de Santander or Mallorca, among other teams, has closed the bitter debate that began as a result of his appointment as Argentine coach, motivated by the reluctance generated by his short experience on the bench.

Jorge Sampaoli’s assistant in Russia and then coach of the U-20 team, his promotion was seen by the press as a mere patch, a provisional appointment waiting for a more veteran coach to take over a team that was sinking. «Scaloni is a good boy, but he is not even worth directing traffic. The problem is that one day he thinks he is a coach and he wants to go to a World Cup. He can go to the motorcycling World Cup, if he wants, but not to the soccer one”, Maradona even said of him, who preferred that Tata Martino take the reins.

The triumph of the ‘Scaloneta’

Possibly Messi thought the same. The then Barça footballer was fed up with the national team, the scene of continuous disappointments and where he was looked at with suspicion, always a loser in the hateful but inevitable comparison with Maradona. Scaloni endured as he could, biting his lip, because he had a definite plan.

His main objective was to convince Messi that the present and future of Argentina passed through his boots. And to shelter him as he should. With old gladiators like Walter Samuel, Pablo Aimar and Roberto Ayala as main assistants, he undertook a profound renovation of the team and bewitched La Pulga so that they would put on the Albiceleste again.

Soon after, his methodical and diplomatic character had earned the respect of the locker room and the acquiescence of the Rosario star. His first litmus test came with the 2019 Copa América. Argentina succumbed in the semifinals, but giving a good image. Enough for the AFA to extend his contract for a new attempt in 2021. That’s where Scaloni’s first firecracker came. With Messi already showing his teeth to the taste of the fervent Argentine fans, the Albiceleste knocked down Brazil in the final held in Maracana with a goal from Ángel Di María to end a 28-year drought without tying the scepter. Shortly after, he gave an account of Italy in the ‘Finalissima’ played at Wembley and appeared in Qatar with a historic streak of 36 games without defeat.

The coach under suspicion for a meager resume on the benches, whose first line he had written in the Mallorcan Son Caliu cadet shortly after hanging up his boots in 2015, had silenced the critics, but the final step was missing. The one that he has given in a World Cup that places him next to Menotti and Bilardo, 36 years after the last planetary conquest by the Albiceleste. Big words for El Caballo who, without making noise, has turned the ‘Scaloneta’ into a fundamental part of the Argentine soccer dictionary.