“Playing against a defensive opponent is just as bad as making love to a tree,” said the colourful Argentine legend, Jorge Valdano once. Valdano is the ultimate football intellectual, quoting Jorge Luis Borges and comparing Anfield to a work of art, in his musings.
Yet, the man could be crass and curt, when it comes to things he didn’t like, and defensive football – whether it came in the garb of the exotic sounding Catenaccio or the rather more rudimentary version, “parking the bus” – is something the former Real Madrid forward loves to loathe. After all, the man is from the humid Pampas of Santa Fe, the hotbed – literally and metaphorically – of some of the most skillful attackers the game has ever seen.
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The long and illustrious post-Di Stefano era of Argentine football is epitomized by the uber cool Cesar Luis Menotti. A striker from Rosario, Santa Fe himself, the man possessed a gritty rebellious streak in his game; something we later witnessed in his coaching style. He crystallized the breed of the Argentine forward for decades to come, blazing a trail that many would scorch in the subsequent years.
Valdano himself, Mario Kempes, Claudio Cannigia, Hernan Crespo – long haired, tough-yet-silky legends of the game. And then, there was the matter of two other individuals; Diego Maradona and Gabriel Batistuta.
Another Rosario native, Batigol was the last truly great streetfighter-poacher that Argentine football has seen. The former on the other hand, was different; in fact, John Keats and his famous opening lines of Endymion seemed to have been written purely for the ethereal talent of Diego Armando Maradona – “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”.
A new revolution from Rosario
However, and one may add incredibly and unbelievably so, Maradona wasn’t the last of his species in Argentine football. Rosario, the land of the great revolutionary Che Guevara, had a son who would revolutionise the game to the point of numbing Ray Hudson’s vocal chords permanently.
The era of Lionel Andres Messi was here, and behind him followed a multitude of hugely talented forwards, all hungry to bear the torch of the Albiceleste.
And they have neither the bravura of Ariel Ortega or Pablo Aimar, nor the mindboggling mane that characterised the archetypal Argentine footballer of yore, including the likes of Mauricio Pochettino (yeah, you read right, the same man) and Juan Pablo Sorin (legend has it that the London Hidden City actually hides inside Sorin’s hair). They are Jogo Bonito’s great joy in an era where Europe is going through an alarming dearth of world class forwards.
This new breed hasn’t clicked together as a team yet and has been exposed to relentless vitriol and criticism, somewhat unfairly. However, one can’t help but fantasize about the level of brilliance to which Leo Messi and his band of merry men can take the game on their day.
Blessed with attacking players
Sergio Kun Aguero. Carlos Tevez. Gonzalo Higuain. Paulo Dybala. Mauro Icardi. And pulling the strings behind whoever makes the pitch among these men, would be the irrepressible Angel Di Maria.
Tata Martino’s team is like Richard Attenborough’s A Bridge Too Far. Probably the greatest ensemble the game has seen, but the plateau of “averageness” has made the failure to scale the peak of expectations look exactly like what it is – a failure.
One look at the quality of footballers who would probably fail to make the cut for Copa America this summer shows the depth and quality of their forward line – Ezequiel Lavezzi, Luciano Vietto, Angel Correa and Rodrigo Palacio.
Nevertheless, one can’t help but fantasize what this battery of ammunition is capable of, once it starts firing. And yet again, most of them, including Messi, Di Maria, Aguero, Higuain, Tevez and Icardi are from that golden stretch in Eastern Argentina which runs from Buenos Aires, the land of the Superclasico, to Santa Fe.
The calles of Rosario and the pitches of El Monumental, La Bombonera et al, soaked in history as they are, have been a conveyor belt of top notch attacking players for decades now. In fact, 150 miles towards the east is another city which has given birth to the likes of many a great forward, including Diego Forlan and Luis Suarez – Montevideo, Uruguay.
Also, this is a generation that hasn’t been lost to eternal rivals across Europe due to the Oriundi phenomenon. For more than 80 years now, right from Luis Monti and Raimundo Orsi to Mauro Camoranesi and Pablo Daniel Osvaldo, Argentina has lost a fair share of world class footballers to other nations, all of them being immigrants or expatriates. Even Alfredo Di Stefano spent his golden years playing for the furious red of Spain.
Imagine Albiceleste losing Paulo Dybala to Poland, where he was born, or Italy, where he traces his maternal roots from. Imagine them losing Gonzalo Higuain to France, where he was born (he even played for Stade Brestoise 29 as a youngster). Or worse, imagine them losing Leo Messi to Spain – and mind you, they could’ve lost him easily; Diego Costa playing for La Furia Roja is proof enough. Oh, the horror, the horror!
Needless to say, the onus is on these great men to carry their club form to the national team too; the onus is on them to translate moves into goals and goals into silverware; the onus is on them to be the sum of individual parts, if not more, rather than be a national team version of Florentino Perez’s much maligned Galacticos.
Success at the Copa America Centenario this summer would hopefully end the futile, eternal and meaningless comparisons between La Pulga and Cristiano Ronaldo (who am I kidding, it’s not going to happen).
With a straightforward group staring at them for the summer showpiece, Argentina’s stage is set. It’s now or never for the assortment of superstars to roll teams over with the kind of attacking brilliance they are capable of. Football, however, isn’t quite so simple. Yet, how exhilarating would it be to see the Albiceleste – accused for long as being scrappy, tough warriors – blow teams away with their artistry, during a time when their biggest rivals are staring at a 24-year-old for the solution to anything and everything.
In The Magnificent Seven, Vladimir Sokoloff’s character tells Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner “Vaya Con Dios!” – “Go with god”. 56 years later, and with a remake of the movie coming up coincidentally, Argentina have their own Magnificent Seven gunning for glory, determined to survive the final shootout, unlike last time. And in Leo Messi, they have a living, breathing footballing god leading them. Argentina’s time is now. Vaya Con Dios!
