Argentina’s Victory Highlights Contradictions in South American Soccer

Argentine players celebrate after beating Brazil in the South American U-23 Pre-Olympic Tournament at the Brígido Iriarte National Stadium in Caracas (Venezuela). EFE/ Rayner Peña R.

Due to popularity, generation of resources and investments, specific weight and territorial deployment, soccer seems to run separately from the rest of the sports. Something like athletics, swimming, basketball or gymnastics are part of a large group of disciplines with a more or less common logic, synthesized in Olympism, but football “is something else.”

This sensation, probably debatable in certain relevant parts of the planet – the United States and China are two fundamental examples of unsuccessful attempts to turn football into a massive activity without the need for anabolics – becomes even stronger in Argentina, a country in which Not even the sports arm of governments, if they existed or had existed, interfere with the activity that captivates us most. It doesn’t matter if the political authority of the sport was, precisely, an excellent footballer and as such knows the matter infinitely more than a minister or a president (Perfumo, Morresi, MacAllister), the slogan always seemed to be “leave that issue to me.”

In these times perhaps more than ever, we can also subdivide football within its own scope. There is domestic football. Ordinary, incomprehensible, increasingly difficult to sell not only outside our borders – many parties have unsustainable audience levels for any other television product – and with a bar phenomenon that no one is in charge of putting in box. There is much more than this: unstable competition systems, extreme saturation of calendars and other charms resulting from this ridiculousness of having more than 120 teams spread across the three main categories. There is no point in insisting on listing much more: you, just by going to the court from time to time will have your own list in good faith with the right to inventory.

It is, furthermore, a domestic football accustomed to an almost omertá silence. Out of conviction, convenience, comfort or fear of reprisals, there are almost no club representatives who raise their hands with the intention of expressing even the slightest objection to the impositions of omnipotent power. This logic, which in many cases turns the same person into two different individuals – off, opposed to nonsense, on, absolutely submissive – has been going on for decades; As many as it smells of decadence, a competition that some microphones sell you as one of the most competitive on the planet.

There is also national team football. There was a time, I will arbitrarily simplify it as before the arrival of César Luis Menotti to the AFA, in which the demand for excellence was synthesized with the fact that we could never do well in a World Cup or in a South American if the national team was not capable of play better than club teams.

For some time now, luckily and even with some chronological bumps, we have been navigating other waters.

These days, and without letting ourselves be decisively influenced by the no less important fact of being world champions, it is clear that our team plays much better than any team in the local market. This happens, even, despite the little work time that Scaloni has available. Despite, also, the incredible level of demand to which he is exposed in each friendly. However, until last Friday, in that kind of televised foosball that was the non-match against El Salvador, the non-negotiable intention of being a team that plays to make plays and the extraordinary predisposition to turn a game in pajamas into something serious was evident. .

It would be wise not to assume that all this continues to flow while the quality of the commitments of such a team is not improved from the desks.

The big dream, obviously, is to repeat the title in two years. Historical detail: only two countries, Italy and Brazil, achieved it. The first had his streak cut short by World War II and Vittorio Pozzo and his boys stayed with the 1934-38 combo. The second was from the hand of Pelé. And not even he could continue it when the World Cup in England arrived in 1966. The last two-time world championship was, then, that of 1958-62. It has been more than 60 years since any team has scored the double.

There must be as many reasons why this was the case as there were teams that tried. From the presumption of gentrification of Argentina on the way to Spain in 1982 or the lack of replacement in Brazil in 2006 to the spell that Dibu Martinez made on Kolo Muani in Qatar.

Without trying to simplify, I would be attentive to the quality of these post-Qatar friendlies. Panama, Curacao, Australia, Indonesia, El Salvador, Costa Rica. I was educated in soccer with the conviction that, for the national team, I enjoy, suffer and am passionate about any game. But if we add to this list the previous World Cup (Estonia, Honduras, Jamaica, United Arab Emirates) I begin to suspect that the things on the desks bear little resemblance to what our boys capture on the field.

Is it so difficult to sell the world champion team, with or without Messi? Is it a snobbish journalist’s fetish to believe that, to aspire to continue being the best, we would have to raise the bar and not depend only on official competitions to face teams that we could even meet in the next FIFA Cup?

Finally, a cross for the Olympic preselected Javier Mascherano. Along with the good victory against Mexico and the viral magic of Soule’s great goal, there are more desk issues underlying it. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that FIFA is really interested in being part of the Olympism.

Of the 16 teams participating in Paris, 4 will be European. Logical thinking about the home of France and, especially, that it was countries from that continent that obtained the greatest number of medals. By overwhelming majority. 17 gold medals out of a total of 27. Next comes South America, with 6 gold medals and a total of 15 podiums: Brazil accumulates 7, Argentina 4, Uruguay 2, Chile and Paraguay 1.

Despite this, Conmebol only has two places for the games. Argentina and Paraguay.

The issue is not having less than Europe, but also being below Africa and Asia (3 each and a fourth that will come from a head-to-head between two teams from those continents). Or have the same places as North and Central America, which has barely three podiums in its Olympic history.

Probably the best explanation for the ridiculousness is that of the Oceania place, won by New Zealand after defeating Vanuatu 8 to 0 and the FIji Islands 9 to 0. Clarification: for FIFA, Australia is not part of Oceania but rather competes in Asia. Whims of geography.

It is likely that both in the overcrowding of teams in our leagues and in the unsustainable distribution of Olympic quotas the answer is “it’s the votes, idiot.” In any case, it occurs to me that it might be good to make a few announcements so that getting to an Olympic game is no more difficult than crossing Route 2 on a Thursday during Easter. Although it is not with the enthusiasm with which the leaders were asked not to complain about the arbitrations. Nor anything that involves altering the status quo, no matter how stupid it may be.

2024-03-24 04:47:00
#Argentine #football #ordinariness #excellence