Argentina v Mexico – Waxwings & False Idols

Well, it’s a story of love, deception, greed, lust and unbridled enthusiasm

You are a bad man, Mr Quemegusta, is a line oft heard in the rag and bone shops that are this city’s heart. It may have to do with our, to some, controversial way of earning our living. Others insist, however, that it is owing to our insufferable use of the royal we. Yet if a childhood midst the sensual delights of Zemblan palaces, and twenty years worth of doctors’ receipts, do not entitle one to at least JT-levels of delusion, we we we… we don’t know what does. Neither, in any case, will be changing any time soon.

Indeed, like all such chancers of the vanguard, such as Bertie Ahern, we know we will be vindicated in future years. For Maradona this time appears to have arrived. In fact, the last few days have seen a departure from the Uncle Diego persona he has so successfully cultivated recently and a return to the spiky Maradó of the wilderness years.

Although he has been nothing like the foul-mouthed loony of Montevideo, he did make use of the few days following qualification to the last 16 to put his big pot of grievances back on the hob. If he didn’t settle scores in his usual inimitable manner, the word ‘respect’ was used with the lack of thriftiness we had come to expect from el Diez. Success gives you the right to make these comments; class, however, usually advises against it.

Nevertheless, Diego has not lost his rag and pegamequemegusta was busy hailing his icon yesterday when news began to come through of what the team would be for the Mexico game. By golly, he hasn’t made one bad decision yet! Although he got his squad horribly wrong, it’s as if once the dreaded fax shuttled off to Zurich Maradona was blessed with a newfound lucidity; as if the sending of the fax functioned as some kind of exorcism of the fetid phantoms that had so assaulted his soul and clouded his vision until then.

Many will point to the Jonás experiment with derision ‘pon reading those lines, but pegamequemegusta reckons it was worth a go. It didn’t work, however, and Maradona made use of the Greece friendly to try out alternatives. Learning from one’s mistakes is key to the ant-like hoarding and gathering of experience that characterises an inductive scientist such as Diego, of course.

In the past, however, his experiments were not given enough time to judge the results. Even the few that were worthy of greater attention were abandoned rashly as he chopped and changed like a transvestite lumberjack. These days he is striking an admirable balance between changing the team whilst maintaining the team spirit that has been credited with transforming their performances.

Even players widely considered to be undroppable have been cut with a practicality and ruthlessness few considered probable. Today there will be no Jonás and no Verón. Instead, Otamendi comes in as the flat back four is re-established, and Maxi Rodriguez will aim to get forward when he’s not nipping at the heels of nippy Mexican giles. This should make Argentina both more solid at the back and, arguably, make them more dangerous going forward.

After all, Verón’s principal strong point, his passing, was conspicuous by its rubbishness in his games so far. He takes a mean dead ball and racked up a million passes in front of the ten-man Greek defence, but most of them were more Pinewood than Hollywood, in Gilesy’s phrase, and he showed little or no aptitude for going forward. Moreover, in what is likely to be a stretched game this afternoon, Maradona wisely deemed he’d be found out.

Jonás, meanwhile, in theory was supposed to make up for a possible lack of solidity at the back with hungry darts to the by-line. When it became clear he was doing neither, however, the man who had been put on the same pedestal as Macherano and Messi in terms of importance to the team, was rightly dropped in favour of someone who can at least do the former, Nicolás Otamendi.

Pegamequemegusta hears your scoffs, oh dear handsome readers. After all, is that all you’ve got? Jaysus, a back line where Inter cast-off Burdisso is supposed to be the stand-out man among a panicky gaggle of stooges? Where Javier ‘booking’ Mascherano is supposed to anchor an oil tanker that looks like it’s been spilt down the middle by an iceberg? Where you’re counting on a guy who couldn’t even get first team football with Atlético Madrid to inspire fear in a Mexican team with a thirst for vengeance not seen since Yahweh stomped out a short-lived fondness for Ba’al? Where one of your supposed game-breakers, Di María, is flopping so hard he looks like a sated sea-lion, and the other couldn’t buy a goal even if he did underwear ads until well into his eighties? And where your main striker needs to be one-yard out against a one-eyed keeper in order to have a chance of scoring?

Luckily, however, the same, and worse, could be said about the Mexicans. They were roundly beaten by Uruguay and struggled against a South Africa team so piss poor they must have a potato stuffed up their collective urethra. Pegamequemegusta has heard all the talk of there being plenty of money and so forth in the Mexican league but we’re pretty sure it’s as useless as Argieball (and that the money may have something to do with the headless lads that are fast making the Sonora Desert the new Butlins).

Just as there’s no reason to believe Maxi Rodriguez will repeat his vaseline advert of 2006, we have no reason to believe Mexico will suddenly become a cohesive, counter-attacking unit, not to mention a pressing, quick-passing, possession-retaining outfit of the likes not seen since… Argentina plastered Mexico 3-0 in 2007. Moreover, for all the talk of Argentina’s wonky defence, no-one has got behind it consistently in the World Cup so far and it has only received one goal.

Bullish doesn’t even begin to describe us: you could add ‘arrogant’, ‘insufferable’, ‘boring’ and ‘foul-smelling’. Yet taking Mexico seriously would be a wimp’s way out, a sick, consensus-building throwback to the scandal-less nineties, when even the communists just gave-up. Being wise before the events beyond one’s control is as useless as being wise afterwards.

Maradona has got everything right so far: from his team selections, formations, to his man-management and substitutions. Gone are the days of speculating as to who should be in the squad, long gone indeed. In twenty minutes a new World Cup begins and we feel more confident of scoring than a bull before the advent of artificial insemination.

If our waxwings are slain today, it won’t be down to any false azure in the windowpane. It could only be down to some thoroughly horrendous twist of fortune or because Yahweh finally decides that we have been worshipping a false idol. Pegamequemegusta reckons, however, He will smile on our fatty offerings this afternoon.

Argentina 2-0 Greece – Mad Bromance

The industrial quantities of love sloshing around la Selección these days have forced pegamequemegusta to acquire a pair of wellies. Needless to say we’ll be pleading the 5^th as to how they came into our possession, but it’s a good job they did as the last 24 hours have seen an outbreak of love unprecedented since the 2008 Chelsea squad appeared on Wife Swap.

Pegamequemegusta confessed before the match to being as giddy as a gaggle of goosestepping schoolgirls high on laughing gas at a Greyhound track. Yet our prepubescent, Sweet Sixteen magazine excitement was nothing compared to the amount of man love, bromance and frilly shirt and doublet gushing going on in Polokwane yesterday.

Of course Maradona’s Argentina has been the omphalos of amorous feeling in this World Cup so far. Suprisingly, perhaps, for a team managed by a man supposedly touched by God, their World Cup has been marked less by agape than it has by eros. From the closed-doors team-building camp complete with inspiring notes from el Diez, to the fist-pumping and serial displays of emotion that have characterised their matches, the press love-in with Diego, Messi’s apparently doomed love affair with the net as he tries to reignite the old flame of ’86, and Palermo’s made-in-Hollywood moment last night, romantic sub-plots just keep multiplying in Argentina’s relentless two-step towards the final.

The tv and newspaper output since yesterday evening has been one long love letter to San Martín Palermo. The interview count, at least those pegamequemegusta has seen, stands at about seven thousand and four. Within two minutes of the end of the match he had given two already: one on the pitch, another in the tunnel. This is the story the press has been waiting for – and Maradona, too, qué vindicación! Palermo is of course a very loveable and media-friendly guy – in fact that’s one of the many differences he has with Riquelme, who regards the press with about as much trust as a three-legged rabbit does a hungry fox – but the outpouring of sugary love has left pegamequemegusta reaching for our toothbrush.

In today’s Olé, Leo Farinella writes:

“Palermo’s not caviar in Monaco, he’s not Champagne or Paris, Palermo’s an asado with red wine from Ushuaia to La Quiaca, a couple of matés and dulce de leche. Vamos Argentina, carajo!”

Oh but he’s not done there. No, no, this is the guy who came back from the three missed penalties in the Copa América in ’99, who scored his 100^th goal for Boca with torn ligaments in his right knee, who broke his leg when a wall collapsed under him as he celebrated with Villareal, who scored a header from 38 yards, the guy who saved Maradona, saved Argentina with that Shawshank moment against Peru. No, there must be more. There is, of course:

“Messi can’t, Milito can’t, no-one can. He’s immortal, historic, unbeatable. In that impassioned embrace with Messi, yet another mystical embrace with Diego, he’s a miracle worker, faith incarnate on a football field. South Africa on its knees: the ball that no-one can can get the hang of, Martín tames it first time with his weaker foot. And in the net. From time to time God recalls a country that seems like it’s about to disappear off the map. He chooses someone and before you know it he is imbued with the divine spirit. We hail you, Saint Palermo.”

For his part, Maradona revealed after the game that Mancuso and el Negro Enrique had wanted to bring on Higuaín and had even gone so far as to write down the change for the 4th official. El Diego countermanded the order, however: “Bring me Martín.” Despite it being a token gesture, the words will go down in Argieball folklore as another chapter in the Book of Palermo, a chapter written with so much love it comes with a special pair of gloves.

Fans celebrate at the monument to, you guessed it, San Martín, in Mar del Plata, yesterday evening

One of the other main romantic threads running through this World Cup is that of Messi and Maradona. The comparisons have been going on for years now but show no sign of letting up. La Pulga was even given the captain’s armband for the first time for the match against Greece, an honour he had only ever had once before in a meaningless friendly against the LA Galaxy, just as Diego had in ’86, and became the youngest ever Argentina captain in the process. Now even the fact that he hasn’t scored in the first few games has brought more comparisons with Maradona. The great man himself pointed out: “Remember that against South Korea Valdano scored two and Ruggeri one; and against Bulgaria it was Burruchaga who got one.”

While the Messi-can’t-score story is becoming almost as vexing as the Messi/Maradona one, there is an unprecedented amount of devotion towards the erstwhile ‘Catalan’ these days. The paper comes equipped with diagrams recreating his genius and there’s hardly a murmur to be heard anywhere of his supposed disaffection. Still, many were faux-outraged that the Barcelona man had been awarded the man of the match award instead of Palermo. Marcelo Sottile wrote in Wednesday’s Olé: “Messi hugging Palermo was […] the first proof that God exists and he loves un loco.”

From Olé. Awful photo but you get the idea.

If it’s true, however, that love is seeing an imperfect person perfectly, there were plenty of examples in the post-game reaction to Javier Pastore’s contribution. Pegamequemegusta has plenty of time for talented young playmakers, especially considering what Özil has been up to in this World Cup. Yet the praise raining down  today on the Palermo player has been somewhat misleading.

In barely 15 minutes on the pitch, Pastore managed to rack up massive 7/10 (the same as Messi, for example). Olé praised his ‘remarkable ability’ to come on and get straight into the rhythm of a game. Martín Eula gushes that in only a couple of passes he managed ‘to infuse his teammates with confidence and set up a few moves’. In the crappy picture above, he is credited with having an important role to play in Palermo’s goal, but all he did was play a simple five or six yard pass to Messi, the Héctor Enrique to Messi’s Maradona. Bizarre stuff: the need for romance sees them spinning more threads than are necessary.

Fine, of course they do – sure there’s about 40 ad-filled pages on the match and something needs to go on them. The contrast with the treatment doled out to Milito could hardly be starker, however. The Inter striker received a 4/10 for his thankless toiling in and around the packed box, which seemed pretty harsh to us. The reason Verón managed to break the record for passes in a game is that, despite having many players eager to make an impression, the ball just rolled about in midfield for much of the game. Argentina were hardly chomping at the bit to get beyond the Greek defence. Milito saw precious little of the ball yet in the media the drawling centre forward’s performance was labelled as being down to fate! Olé sum up: “It just doesn’t work. [Milito’s] games for Argentina seem to be marked by some kind of karma.”

What he did in a past life to deserve such a curse remains unclear. To pegamequemegusta’s tear-filled eyes, it seems far more plausible to put the rush of goals in the last few minutes down to the near-inevitable crumbling of Greek resistence. It was neither Palermo in the guise of Priam or Pastore as Hector that managed to drive the Greeks from the beachhead on which they were encamped. It was simply that they got tired, frustrated with their utter inability to control their own fate. Indeed, news coming through of a topsy-turvy game between South Korea and Nigeria most likely did nothing to quell their nerves. That’s about as romantic a tale as pegamequemegusta’s trip to the social security offices.

Milito gets bundled over once again

What these guys make of the game and the spin they put on it is important as for all the ground Maradona has made up over the last month or so in charge of the team, he remains very much a media man and, annoyingly, we seem to be seeing more and more of him on telly as the tournament goes on. Indeed, on Tuesday while supposedly out to check out the playing surface he gave an impromptu pre-match interview with his old buddy Niembro and chatted away to his daughters live on TV with many an ILOVEU etc. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but we worry at times about him losing his focus (today a series of interviews are coming out in various publications…).

Thankfully, however, midst all the praise, love and tinsel in today’s papers, there were some criticisms and suggestions for Maradona. Although he eventually ended up getting a 7/10 for his goal, Demichelis again came in for criticism. He did make one or two decisive interventions in the very rare Greek/Samaras sallies forward, but Roberto Perfumo and others make the point that he has no reason to be out of position in the first place considering the lack of pressure Argentina were under. Then at the start of the second half he once again stumbled under a dropping ball and lay prone on the turf as the Greek striker contrived to blast wide with most of the goal at his mercy. Adrián Piedrabuena writes in Tuesday’s Olé:

“The warts on this team’s face need to be acknowledged while there’s still time. Before breaking the deadlock, Demichelis had already committed a damning error, of the kind that can get you knocked out of a World Cup. Samuel’s return should force the manager into a rethink as to whether the number 2 [Demichelis] deserves to keep his place.”

The real bit of good news to come out of the match was the experiment we had discussed in advance – that of the two new full backs, Nico Otamendi and Clemente Rodriguez, at right and left full respectively. While pegamequemegusta is not at all convinced of the latter’s defensive prowess, he got forward with great frequency and gusto, looking dangerous as he did so. On the other side, Otamendi, too, showed uncharacteristic aggression in getting to the by-line and even sent in a cross or two. Although nominally a centre back, it would be quite excellent if he were to reconquer the right back spot from Jonás.

The match did confirm, more or less, that if the two weakest links in the back four – Jonás and Demichelis – were to be removed, there are a few more options, including Burdisso at centre back (‘would Heinze be better than Demichelis?’ we cry ourselves to sleep) and alternate full backs. There is some kind of Plan B in defence. And there is hope: maybe it was a means of letting him down gently, or just keeping his confidence up, but Maradona said after game that “in my humble opinion, Otamendi was man of the match.”

You see, love just keeps a-flowing in the church of el Diez. And the great thing about love in football is that it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And besides the niggling facts, Palermo’s story proves that miracles, on one level at least, are indeed possible.

Ariel Garcé, say again? Argentina World Cup Squad Confirmed

Ariel Garcé, say Olé, will definitely be in the final 23 man squad. Say again? Garcé (30), has not been hiding under a rock his entire career. His brilliance has been recognised by the likes of Morelia de México, Colón, Olimpo and Rosario Central. Olé, in one of its most bizarre lapses of all common sense, of all dignity, is dancing like a giddy child at seeing what it seems to regard as one of its own, touched by God.

Once the decision has been made (or even hinted at) it becomes sacrosanct, ponderable only in terms of what it offers as a glimpse into the mind of an unquestionable genius. This mystical occasions are accompanied with the kind of vertiginous joy bloggers feel when their nappies are changed and the world to its very vanishing point becomes an avenue of freshness.

Even in a bizarre paragraph outlining his achievements to date, enthusiasm leaves doubt on its flabby ass: “Ariel Hernán Garcé is ‘el Chino’. On his CV one sees that he has played for Morelia de México, Colón, Olimpo and Rosario Central and he has played three times in the celeste y blanca. Marcelo Bielsa called him up back in 2003 to play against Honduras and the USA. He could not finish the first match as he was sent off; the second, he did. And the third was against Haiti, in Cutral-Có. It was his first game under Maradona. He played right back against a team far down in the world rankings that barely attacked. He sent in the cross for Palermo’s goal and was rewarded with the ‘good stuff, Chino, good stuff’ from the bench. And got himself in contention.”

Next time you feel tempted to complain about journalism in your part of the world, remember this. Both of pegamequemegusta’s hearts skipped slightly as the words struggled to align themselves to the globules of grammar and logic that supposedly float inside us. You’d swear this was a school report, a show and tell piece cobbled together from a Wikipedia entry written by a drunken, shell-shocked squirrel.  Besides the fact that it omits Garcé’s five year stint with a good River team (ten years ago), consider the reasoning behind the inclusion of this ‘quote’: ‘Good stuff, Chino, good stuff’ – the demented babbling seems to come in slow motion as if it were being spoken in that computer robot voice and dubbed over the denouement to Platoon.

Pegamequemegusta was sure that of all the nobodies – and we royally reiterate, they’re nobodies even in Argentina – called up to the provisional squad, Garcé had no chance.  Nonetheless it looks like the idea is that he goes as back up for Otamendi. It’s not personal, Masche, he just has no place being at the World Cup.  This isn’t a case of being such a Eurocentric that you can’t recognise a player’s good unless he’s not playing in foreign lands. After all, although he wouldn’t be in our squad due to the sheer number of awesome to semi-awesome players that have proven themselves in the ‘top flight’, pegamequemegusta does condescend to find Maradona’s selection of Sebastián Blanco quite interesting both for his qualities as a player and as an alternative left winger (though he’s no Maxi Moralez…). Diego’s taken the not-recognising-a-prophet worry and blown it into a complex that would make pegamequemegusta’s virgin though vicious and violent cat look like a vicarious vicar vying for veldspar in a Venezuelan valley (where said ore proliferates – and anyway, verbosity is not a vice).

Who cares, jaysus, we all knew really that this nonsense was going to happen. As chance would have it, though, just this evening pegamequemegusta was peering at the Guardian website and re-discovered an excellent Marcela Mora y Araujo article from last September. Yes, just after the spanking defeat doled out by Dunga’s Brazil.

One of the best parts is this: “The press, over whom descended a bizarre fear of stating the potential unmitigating disaster this could be, are beginning to suggest that soon they will become more critical.” Genius: they never said a thing when Basile started calling up random players and then discarding them nor when Maradona intensified the nonsense.

This goes to the black heart of the ‘Good stuff, Chino’ nonsense above – ‘uncle’ Julio Grondona is not only the head of the AFA but also an important stakeholder in Grupo Clarín, Olé‘s parent paper. While we hardly think Grondona was barking down the phone to big up Garcé, the reluctance to antagonise him in any way appears to have led to the craven bullshit outlined above.

Olé is a joke when it comes to what we shall tentatively refer to as editorial policy. Yet it’s the biggest-selling sports paper. The situation makes an even bigger joke of Diego and others’ claims of persecution by the media.

One more quote from the professional’s pen: “The clear lack of leadership within the squad needs to be resolved. The players are apparently suffering from the well-known social loafing syndrome, whereby in a collective enterprise each individual in the group underperforms relative to individual potential. Someone from within needs to redress this and bring out the best from each of the 62 young men who have been called up to duty and then left out to hang.” A slightly more sophisticated analysis than Diego’s somewhat simplistic players-in-Primera-have-balls-‘outsiders’-don’t, wouldn’t you say. And yet Maradona’s hopes appear to be resting on a sudden metamorphosis occurring in the chrysalis that is the tunnel in Johannesburg. Garcé is just one who’ll either be a butterfly or a Gregor Samsa.

Something tells me their wax wings will neither be slain by shadow nor by the sun. O sea, they’re coming back in the quarters, as usual.

*No-one’s feelings were hurt in the drafting of this post, though the cat did scratch the missus quite badly. Usual prize for last line reference(s).

………………………..

Later that day, squad confirmed:

-Romero, Andújar, Pozo

-Otamendi, Demichelis, Samuel, Heinze, Burdisso, Garcé, Clemente Rodriguez

-Mascherano, Jonás, Verón, Di María, Maxi Rodriguez, Pastore, Bolatti

-Messi, Tevez, Diego Milito, Higuaín, Aguero, Palermo

Yes, there are almost as many strikers as defenders.