“Finally the government sent my father on behalf because he was a minister, and he was immortalized in that final image in which Maradona receives the World Cup,” says Federico Storani. Cornado Storani was Raúl Alfonsín’s Minister of Health and Social Development, he was in charge of the Sports Secretariat. Alfonsín had received an invitation from the Mexican embassy for the final to which he sent his friend and his minister. “As I once wrote,” says his son, “in that photo where everyone sees Maradona, I see my dad.” The iconic image of June 29, 1986 continued with the return trip with the players that led to the balcony of La Rosada. Some say that Alberto Fernández lacked his Conrado Storani in Qatar. What happened on that trip and how were the bagels on the balcony.
According to Fredy Storani, his father traveled because it was up to him due to his position but also because the government could not send any official from the Sports Secretariat from where the head of Carlos Salvador Bilardo had been requested. In Sports there was Rodolfo O’Reilly and his second was Osvaldo Otero. Some say that it was Alfonsín who did not want Bilardo, Storani’s reconstruction is different and in any case a detail of what happened.
“During the previous months, from some, in general from the press and from a very small sector of the government, including O’Reilly and Otero, there were questions about Bilardo, especially because of the poor performance they had had. But I know that Alfonsín did not want to get involved at all, it was already a process underway and any change was absurd and that was the way it was happily”, says Fredy Storani to Página12. “Alfonsín did not give him a ball, that did not go beyond a low-volume proposal, part of that I know because Coti (Nosiglia) told me, because O’Reilly raised it with him. Happily they didn’t give him a ball. All this was due to the bad results that the team was having in the previous one, including a defeat against Israel”.
– How was your father’s trip decided and what happened next?
– The decision for my old man to go was to respect the institutional, the scrupulously correct. Indeed, he was a ministry, therefore he corresponded. Obviously they were not going to send those who questioned the technical direction of the National Team and to the happiness of my father he ended up going. On that trip, and according to what he told me and I published for his hundred years, there was an institutional relationship until, obviously, the development of the final. At that moment, the German chancellor sailed away shouting the goals and my dad said that he, then, abandoned his ‘polite’ behavior and effusively shouted Burruchaga’s third goal in that final. Later, there was the award ceremony; the photo with Maradona –who, by the way, had expressed sympathy with Alfonsín. I’ll tell you more, when I was a candidate for deputy with Marta Maffei in an act in Platense, he sent me a statement of support, that is, he had that vibe with us with that progressive thing, although later he wanted to make it appear different. The return trip, according to my younger brother, who was lucky enough to go, was full of hullabaloo and partying as it is seen now in the dressing room of Argentina, neither more nor less, and my old man was able to take a picture with the cup. Everyone very happy and it was very natural, according to what I know, they went to the Casa Rosada to greet President Alfonsín.
— In other words, that link ended up bringing the Selection closer to La Rosada. How was the balcony?
– And it is strictly true that Alfonsín received them, greeted them one by one. And he said: Boys, the balcony is yours. That was the procedure. Indeed, only the players and their relatives went out on the balcony and Alfonsín kept a second plane. But it was because of Alfonsín’s characteristics. Later many things were woven with the previous one, but that responded to the purest Alfonsinista style. There was never an attempt to capitulate which is absurd, in fact the subsequent elections were lost. For this reason, the impact that a cup as important as the Soccer World Cup can have does not have a transfer to politics as some think, it is a very ephemeral situation. Right now, I don’t think that Emmanuel Macron’s performance is going to have an effect on the consideration of the French.
–There are those who say that Alfonsín did not go out on the balcony because he was in the shadow of the image with Videla. Did they discuss it? And besides, was that previous relationship enough?
– I don’t think it was a frank debate. I think it responds to Alfonsín’s behavior. Alfonsín I think he understood that it was an opportunistic approach to appear on the balcony. Hanging on to victory and not because of a complex, because he had not been part of the maneuver to question the selection but because, knowing him very well, he must have told them: boys, the balcony is yours. And he did not join as a pirate parrot, which is exactly the opposite of what Menem did later with second place in Italy. Menem was not only mufa –because he was in the first game and we lost against Cameroon, Roger Milla scored a goal for us, a 40-year-old guy– but he hung up on that epic performance of the Argentine team, greatly diminished by various injuries , with Maradona playing with a swollen ankle, nothing to do with Alfonsín’s behavior in 1986. And I don’t remember debates, it was what arose naturally.
Alberto Fernández did not travel to the final in Qatar, according to some so as not to mock her. He also strictly prohibited any member of the government from doing so. The AFA took the interlocution in the place of the Government before the players. There was no balcony. There was a flag displayed for several hours in Casa Rosada as at a party with no guests. There was no Cornado Storani. Missing, as in other fields, the real bagel for the balcony.
