Maradona adds incoherence in the Argentinean team (Yahoo)

If somebody trespassed the limit of logic in a job of a world championship team this was what happened during the last days with Diego Maradona in front of the Argentinean team when he reached the number of 102 players convoked since he took charge of the group about a year ago in a clear show of disorder and incoherence in his work.

Devaluated as it is known that as maximum two or three players will be at the World Championship, the Argentinean team composed by footballists of the local league –that besides is changing because some players are being transferred abroad- on last Wednesday confronted a friendly match vs a weak Jamaica with Maradona’s idea to continue evaluating the chances to convoke some of his players to integrate the definite list of twenty three for the World Championship in South Africa.

If it was not understood before how Maradona continue organizing matches with the “local Argentinean team” that complicate the calendar of the already straight Closure Contest, to quit for some days the players from their teams when the majority has no possibilities to go to the World Championship, has added another real nonsense.

In the moment to confirm the list of the convoked for the match vs Jamaica (that besides, Argentina won ended winning in the last four minutes of discount by 2-1 when failing ten minutes was losing 0-1) there appeared four players from Estudiantes de La Plata (Clemente Rodríguez, Enzo Pérez, José Sosa and Mauro Boselli), who evidently should not participate in this game because next day their team had to debut in the Copa Libertadores de América vs Juan Aurich of Perú, when it is known that it is not accustomed to convoke the footballists of teams that have to take part in the International contests.

The amazement lasted forty minutes, when the media started to distribute the news with the error of Maradona and his technical body and it was there that the coach was obliged to change those four players for others, among whom he included the mid fielder Juan Pablo Pereyra, of Atlético Tucumán, and it was also known that neither he should play because he had gone under a small operation. This generated a new communication and it was necessary to call urgently the forwarder of Racing Claudio Bieler, who at end did not come due to a slight injury.

At this moment, many are asking whether it is possible that Maradona can come to the World Championship as coach without any intention on behalf of some directives of the AFA to make a change, and even in case that eventually the Argentinean team wins the World Championship this cycle cannot be qualified as poor, having remained without chances to conduct the Argentinean team a coach like Carlos Bianchi, four times winner of the Copa Libertadores and three times of the Intercontinental, or they were not capable to maintain in the charge Marcelo Bielsa in 2004, now respected and valued with the Chilean team for his excellent job.

Neither is clear the way in which Maradona chooses the players or gives clues on the players that are entering in the definite list of the twenty three for the World Championship including almost surely the veteran scorer, Martín Palermo, who saved him providentially with the mythic goal under the rain vs Peru, for the eliminatory, leaving aside some others like Diego Milito (Inter), Lisandro López (Olympique of Lyon), Fernando Cavenaghi (Bordeaux) or Gonzalo Bergessio (Saint Etienne) not citing the most technical Mauro Zárate (Lazio).

In change, there are constant appeals for help or for the intuition as when he maintained that the anguishing victory vs Peru he told to the substitute of Palermo to enter and finish the match, and them called him “San Palermo” or now he did the same with the defender Ignacio Canutto, author of the goal with which Argentina won Jamaica on the final. “I told him he will enter and will make the goal, shear intuition”, he confessed

That is not all. Maradona opted also to confront any declaration contrary to his work. That is how he took as enemy his ex comrade and friend Jorge Valdano, sport director of the Real Madrid, about whom he stated that “he is one of our hardest rivals because formerly he fired Gabriel Heinze (transferred to Olympique of Marsella), and now goes for Fernando Gago”, that has no minutes in the team and does not play, though it occurs due to his low rendering and not for the directive’s action. However, the coach believes that all is directed against him.

And not only this: he also responded strongly to Claudio Vivas, the coach of Racing who follows Bielsa’s line and who dared to complain for the convocations to the team of many of the players in his team meanwhile those have not many possibilities to go to the World Championship and they lose time in working towards the Closure Contest, other coaches think as well but do not dare to say it in public thus not to enter into enmity with a social icon as Maradona.

But perhaps the hardest critic came from the mid fielder of Velez Sarsfield, Víctor Zapata, when he stated that perhaps it is the first time in years it is better not to be convoked for the Argentinean team, because one loses prestige due to the lack of serious work. It is easy to imagine that Maradona responded immediately saying that it is not casual that no coach in the different teams convoked him ever.

What can be seen is that Maradona puts too much energy in responding to the critics and to look for enemies and it seems that he cannot find the way for the position that he never ought to have and to which arrived due to his name only, for what he represents from his times as player. But now he is coach that is another job. And it does not seem that this cycle is coherent, winning the World Championship or not.