ARGENTINA IN MOURNING
Fury at home but suddenly there’s hope
The recriminations came thick and fast from Buenos Aires and they were brutal. ‘ Quebrados’ (‘ Broken’) proclaimed the Ole newspaper’s banner headline, borrowing from the description of the team offered by a helpless Jorge Sampaoli in the depths of the arena here in the early hours of yesterday.
And though the players took some almighty punishment — ‘ sin alma’ (‘without soul’) — Sampaoli was identified as the cause of all this. his forlorn figure was plastered across the front of the Uno title beneath the words, ‘ El
padre de la derrota’ (‘The father of the defeat.’) That was a vast oversimplification of things, as analysis so often can be in the raw pain of defeat.
There was even a minute’s silence in one TV studio back home.
That was before yesterday’s win for Nigeria against Iceland which at least renewed hope that Argentina can escape from Group D — if their result against the Super eagles next Tuesday is better than Iceland’s against Croatia.
Yet the national team has been failing for at least three years and the course of the past week has simply brought it all out into the open on the biggest stage imaginable.
A deeply unsuitable manager, a national obsession with how one individual might perform, a poorly run national game, a deeprooted conviction that they are going to win it as early adopters of the game. Sound familiar? Yes, Argentina are very much the england of years past. ‘We are one of those Sigmund Freud countries, like you in england,’ La Nacion’s distinguished football columnist ezequiel Fernandez Moores told Sportsmail ahead of this tournament. ‘It is a psychological affliction now. You can see that in the players’ faces.’ The decision to employ Sampaoli (below), a staunch advocate of the pressing game which turned perennial underdogs Chile into a world force, certainly took mismanagement to a new level. It might have worked if he had been working with a new group of players, not the ageing, lumbering topheavy outfit which has attacking options but cannot defend. The players don’t trust the manager, though suggestions that they want former player Jorge Burruchaga to take over for the last game against Nigeria seem wide of the mark. There have been some bad calls, though. Sampaoli selected Willy Caballero over River Plate’s Franco Armani because he was better at playing the ball out with his feet, but the Chelsea keeper made a disastrous error. england’s approach in the past year or so has been the antithesis of Argentina’s. Young, ballplaying, adaptable players have been fundamental to Gareth Southgate’s new way and there has been no room in the young manager’s squad for an air of entitlement or for those who might overpower. That’s why Wayne Rooney was so quickly dispensed with.
The challenge of playing with Messi has become suffocating for some in the Argentina side, who are so intent on seeking him out they cannot find their own way in games. Paulo Dybala has admitted as much.
It is not helping the individual in question either, of course. Messi was obviously preoccupied on Thursday night, uttering some kind of private supplication, eyes closed, before the game.
he carried the world’s weight while the opposing No 10, Luka Modric, looked as free as a bird. Ole concluded that ‘Messi did nothing, didn’t appear.’
You could see in the early moments on Thursday that there was deep unease. Javier Mascherano piling in, incomprehensibly, on Modric and conceding a free kick. Caballero playing a feeble ball out to Nicolas Tagliafico which almost saw the defender caught out.
But, though Sampaoli will be gone soon after this tournament is over, it will take more than a new manager — the nation’s fourth in four years — to rebuild this. More fundamental reform is needed for a side that has not won a trophy since the 1993 Copa America.
As in england, there is a running national post mortem, with the governing body part of the problem.m.
In his book about the gamee in Argentina, Angels With h
Dirty Faces, Jonathan Wilsonn relates that 1,869 Argentinians - were playing professionally abroad in 2015, leaving poor club standards behind.
Serious progress now would be ‘ Un milagro’ (‘a miracle’) — the one word everyone in the Argentinian capital could agree upon yesterday.