BarcelonaThe town of Pujato, in the Argentine province of Santa Fe, has two illustrious children. One is coach Lionel Scaloni. The other does not exist. Less than 4,000 people live in Pujato. It’s an agricultural town an hour’s drive from Rosario, with a half-abandoned train station and children playing in the streets until late. Until one of these children, Lionel Scaloni, began to excel in football, Pujato was only known because the writers Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares decided that it was the birthplace of Honorio Bustos Domecq, a heteronym that they had to write detective novels. They even wrote a short biography of Bustos Domecq in which they said that at the age of ten he was already publishing articles in the Rosario press, to see if anyone thought he had really existed.
By the age of ten, Scaloni wasn’t writing articles, but he was spending a few hours on the road with his father, who would pick him up after working for an agricultural company to take him to train in the lower categories of Newell’s Old Boys, the same club from which Messi would emerge a few years later. The father didn’t even have lunch to be able to make the long journey with his two sons, as he wanted them to be footballers. Both would be, although only Lionel would go very far. The father was a disciplined person who would control the career of his children during the early years. He was the one who decided to leave Rosario to go to Estudiantes de la Plata, first, and Deportivo de la Coruña, later. Those were the years when the Galician club was a power that always fished good players in South America. And despite the fact that in his debut at Deportivo he played just ten minutes (they changed him to make room for the substitute goalkeeper after the expulsion of Songo’o), he would end up becoming quite a hero for the fans of the Riazor stadium, for his fast play on the wing and his combative nature. Scaloni was a key player in the great successes of the Superdepor and won a League, two Cups and two Supercups, as well as playing in the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2004. He would then go through clubs such as West Ham, Atalanta, Lazio, Mallorca and Racing de Santander where he joined , things about life, with the current Morocco coach, Walid Regragui.
A Mallorcan by adoption
Scaloni stayed to live in Mallorca after falling in love with a Mallorcan woman, whom he married. The family has a house in the town of del Toro, in Calvià, where they spend a good part of the year when the technician’s job allows it. A job, by the way, that forces him to take a lot of planes, which he doesn’t like at all. As a youngster, Scaloni won the World Youth Cup in 1997 with a key role in a match against the Brazilians. He went up to the podium with a flag on which he had written “Pujato-Santa Fe” himself. Few Argentines knew where this town stood. That trip, however, ended with a scare due to an emergency landing of the plane that was returning them home. And since then, whenever he can, he avoids planes, which is why he has more than once been seen making the Mallorca-Barcelona journey by boat. A few months before the World Cup, when Argentina played a friendly in Pamplona, the players each returned to their club in a private jet. He took the train from Pamplona to Barcelona. An Argentinian journalist found him in the bar of the station, analyzing videos of other teams, concentrating on his world and traveling in tourist class. “He’s a very calm guy; when he was a player he didn’t believe it. He wasn’t one of those who think he’s a star and buy crazy clothes, he’s always been close, hardworking. And it was clear that he wanted to train,” explains goalkeeper Leo Franco, with whom he played for several years and with whom he obtained the title of coach with a course of the Spanish Federation in Madrid, where there were also other Argentines such as Javier Saviola.
An international with the absolute selection – in 2006 he was Messi’s teammate in the World Cup in Germany -, Scaloni began to train Mallorca’s youth team. Before, however, he had coached a youth team from the Son Caliu CF club, as he had it close to the school where his children went and he needed a place to practice coaching. Few could imagine that that first experience would end in the final of a World Cup. After finding work in Mallorca, he received a call from Jorge Sampaoli, who invited him to be part of Sevilla’s coaching staff. And when the Argentine federation offered the position of coach to Sampaoli, Scaloni found himself on the coaching staff of thealbiceleste acting as an analyst of rivals. The adventure did not last long because of the bad results, but taking advantage of the fact that he was already in the Federation, Scaloni asked to lead the youth team together with his friend Pablo Aimar. And in a few months the team was already winning titles. “He was in the ideal place at the right time”, explains Franco, since at the end of 2018 he was offered to direct two matches of the absolute selection at a time when the national team had neither a coach, nor direction, with the players angry with the leaders. In theory, he was supposed to lead the team for just a few weeks. But he is still there and has broken the record for matches without losing on the national team’s bench.
Scaloni opted for a more offensive style, initially, and got results. Now, in the press conference of the official presentation, he had to endure a lot of high-pitched questions, where he came to doubt whether he had the title of first-level coach. Since he had completed the course in Madrid, some Argentine journalists doubted a coach with almost no curriculum vitae. When the team was knocked out in the semi-finals of the 2019 Copa América, criticism fell on them, even though the Argentines had had more shots on goal than the Brazilians. Listening to the players, the Federation decided to trust Scaloni. It was good business, as Argentina would break a 20-plus-year title drought in the 2021 final against Brazil at the Maracanã.
Now Scaloni is one game away from sitting at the same table as Menotti and Bilardo, the two world champion Argentine coaches. If he wins, it will be necessary to see how he is received in Pujato, where everyone knows each other. When he won the World Youth Cup as a player in 1997, he was taken for a ride on top of the town’s fire truck. He plans to return there to see family, before trying to maintain an anonymous life in Mallorca.
