Where’s the Hand of God now, Diego?

13th Oct 2009

It’s very unlikely that Diego Armando Maradona has heard of the well-known Travis song, “Why does it always rain on me”, but for three ago­niz­ing min­utes –roughly the length of the song– it would’ve been the per­fect song to play around the Esta­dio Mon­u­men­tal Anto­nio Vespu­cio Lib­erti in Buenos Aires.

Her­nan Rengifo came within moments of prob­a­bly cost­ing Maradona not just his job as coach of the Argentina National team, but also his sta­tus as a national icon. Peru­vian Rengifo headed in to can­cel out Gon­zalo Higuain’s ear­lier effort to make the score 1–1 on the stroke of ninety min­utes. Maradona could only watch as a game which his side had dom­i­nated from start to fin­ish seemed des­tined to earn the South Amer­i­can giants just a soli­tary point. How­ever, as the rain con­tin­ued to lash down in the Argen­tin­ian cap­i­tal, enter Mar­tin Palermo. The 35-year-old Boca Juniors striker, whom Maradona had called-up to his squad after a ten-year hia­tus from the national set-up, found him­self tap­ping the ball into the back of the net three min­utes into stop­page time – spark­ing wild cel­e­bra­tions from Maradona, who ele­gantly pro­ceeded to dive belly-first along the sod­den ground. I sup­pose “Singing in the Rain” might have been a lit­tle more apt at this point.

With one game left to play, Argentina sit fourth in the ten-team South Amer­i­can World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion table, with 25 points. Peru, for the record, are bot­tom of the table. The top four teams qual­ify auto­mat­i­cally, while the fifth placed team will play-off against the fourth-placed North and Cen­tral Amer­i­can team, which will be either Costa Rica or Hon­duras. Palermo’s goal at the week­end might just be the one that sends Los Albice­lestes through. Ecuador were the big losers on the week­end. They sat fourth in the table on Sat­ur­day morn­ing, but lost at home to sixth-placed Uruguay. Thus, as it stands now, Argentina are fourth (25pts, +2 GD), Uruguay fifth (24, +9) and Ecuador sixth (23, –3).

The final set of games, which take place this Wednes­day, could not have been set up bet­ter. Argentina will travel to Uruguay in a straight shoot-out for that final auto­matic qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot. Ecuador, mean­while, are ready to com­pound the mis­ery of the loser of that match and steal fifth place as they travel to already-qualified Chile. Real­is­ti­cally, Ecuador need to win as their goal dif­fer­ence is com­par­a­tively dis­mal, and much will depend on the strength of the side that Chile choose to field, hav­ing qual­i­fied for their first World Cup since 1998. A point for Argentina all but guar­an­tees them that elu­sive fourth spot, but Uruguay will be look­ing to con­tinue their strong week­end form.

Enough about qual­i­fy­ing per­mu­ta­tions, just why are Argentina in this posi­tion? It is impor­tant to remem­ber that South Amer­i­can qual­i­fy­ing for the World Cup began way back in Autumn 2007, and Argentina were under the lead­er­ship of Alfio ‘Coco’ Basile. He took charge after the pre­vi­ous World Cup and saw his side cruise through to the Copa Amer­ica final, before they were thrashed by Brazil.

Argentina had a fast start to their World Cup qual­i­fi­ca­tion, win­ning their first three matches, but that was as good as it got. Five win­less matches fol­lowed and even though they man­aged to beat Uruguay, Basile’s fate was sealed just three days later as they lost to Chile. He resigned on Octo­ber 16, 2008. Maradona was announced as his replace­ment about a fort­night later.

This looked rosy dur­ing his first com­pet­i­tive game in charge, a 4–0 thrash­ing against Venezuela with all the stars scor­ing; Leo Messi, Car­los Tevez, Maxi Rodríguez and Ser­gio Aguero. How­ever, what hap­pened three days later was almost unfath­omable. Bolivia shred­ded apart the Argen­tini­ans 6–1. It was dis­missed as a high-altitude blip, and Maradona won his next qual­i­fier against Colom­bia. Yet, it was that ‘three-day-span’ that cursed the coach again. This time, it was Ecuador get­ting the bet­ter of Argentina. It was not quite panic sta­tions yet, but the glass for the alarms were being bro­ken, and the ham­mers ready­ing to hit them.

Sep­tem­ber 2009 and the two qual­i­fiers that came with them would see Argentina slump in both of them. Firstly, a 3–1 home defeat to the arch-enemy (Brazil), and then an away defeat to Paraguay, who clinched a qual­i­fi­ca­tion spot. The ham­mers were in full force…

Ques­tions were being asked about Maradona. This was his first real coach­ing job in his career. Why was he cho­sen? Did he have any tac­ti­cal knowl­edge? The signs clearly pointed to ‘no’ as the answer. You only have to look at the harsh world of club coach­ing to see how expe­ri­ence is every­thing. Paul Ince, for exam­ple, worked won­ders with MK Dons but lasted just a hand­ful of months in charge of Black­burn Rovers; a story shared by many man­agers. But this is dif­fer­ent, right? It’s Maradona! He spends as much time in Argen­tin­ian tabloids as Katie Price does in ours! Foot­ball, drugs, hand-of-God, game-show-hosting, stomach-stapling, the list goes on. Oh wait, this is foot­ball man­age­ment, a com­pletely dif­fer­ent kettle-of-fish to any­thing else he has faced. Many for­mer great foot­ballers have avoided a career in man­age­ment for fear of tar­nish­ing their legacy, and you can see why. while oth­ers have made low key entries and exits at smaller clubs, also avoid­ing any blem­ish on their careers, Maradona went for it all on his first go, and now his rep­u­ta­tion is hang­ing by a thread. Falling-out with the country’s FA was another unwise move, and some ques­tion­able team selec­tions and choices have also plagued his tenure. Although Mar­tin Palermo’s goal will work won­ders against the doubters, but only if they qualify.

Come Thurs­day morn­ing here in Eng­land, he’ll either be the luck­i­est man on earth, or a man run­ning for his life from the angry Argen­tin­ian mob. One thing is for cer­tain, unless he goes on an inten­sive course in man­age­ment before next sum­mer, Argentina will strug­gle in South Africa. The way he has han­dled the national team is un-erringly sim­i­lar to how the ‘wally with a brolly’ han­dled England’s chances in Euro 2008 qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Two teams so won­der­fully gifted with indi­vid­ual tal­ent fight­ing for their lives. Capello proved this but will there be some­one prov­ing this to Maradona come 2010? If Argentina want to lift the Cup next year, they might want to recon­sider their options. The team is clearly gifted; the man­ager is also gifted – just not at man­age­ment. Argentina should be within the top two teams in South Amer­ica, not bat­tling to be fourth.

Sto­ries like this are being seen all over world foot­ball. Closer to home, Por­tu­gal might just get out of jail and qual­ify for the World Cup. Jakob Poulsen’s 79th minute strike for Den­mark against Swe­den put a huge dent in the Swede’s chances of clinch­ing that runner-up spot, while Den­mark qual­i­fied. Por­tu­gal, under the guid­ance of Car­los Queiroz (Sir Alex’s old number-two at Old Traf­ford), have made very heavy work of their qual­i­fi­ca­tion. They have needed back-to-back wins over Hun­gary to give them­selves a chance. That may sound easy, but Hun­gary were ahead of Por­tu­gal prior to that, and looked good for the runner-up spot before this and a 93rd minute home defeat to Swe­den, who have had their fair share of luck as well – not just in that game, but cour­tesy of Malta own-goals help­ing them out. Por­tu­gal find them­selves sec­ond in Group 1, with just hap­less Malta to face, and so can pretty much start plan­ning for the play-offs – which will be loaded with top teams. Rus­sia, France and Ire­land are all guar­an­teed a spot in there, the Czechs could also be in the play-offs as will one of Ukraine/Croatia. One thing is for cer­tain though, in my opin­ion any­way, France, Por­tu­gal and Argentina (should they all qual­ify) will not be of any threat to the likes of Eng­land, Brazil, Spain or Hol­land (to name a few) at South Africa 2010 for one rea­son; their man­agers. Queiroz and Ray­mond Domenech have faced sim­i­larly tur­bu­lent times to Maradona.

Writ­ten by Blayne Pereira