Is it better to show the cards or hide them in front of the powerful Germany? (India-Bengol)

At these hours, Diego Maradona feels that at times it is good to be alone. This is the moment when he appeals to his magic intuition, as when his two best collaborators, Alejandro Mancuso and Héctor Enrique, advised him to let Diego Milito enter vs Greece, and the pigheaded coach opted with another goaler, Martín Palermo. He, as in the defining match vs Peru for the eliminatory, entered and did not disappoint. Immediately he marked the definitive 2-0, the one of tranquillity.
Maradona feels that he is at the threshold of his essence as coach. The match against Germany of the next Saturday in Cape Town for the quarters, will be what this Argentinean team is for. Whether it is to aspire great things or it was scarcely an illusion winning over a priori inferior teams, in the four cases.
For that reason, in a free day as yesterday in which all the team were resting or went for a walk with their relatives or friends, Maradona began to draw the team he wants to present vs Germany.
The technician has an advantage that he tries by all means as not to transform it in a disadvantage at the final. And it is that three months and a half ago he won the same German team by 1-0 at the Allianz Arena, Munich, in a friendly match. In that opportunity many people in Argentina started to change the mentality though the national press sustained that it was not such a great triumph and that the German team appeared weak without the game volume, erratic.

But many circumstances changed from that time and the German coach Joakim Löw had to change some pieces due to force majeure, such as the withdrawal of the talented Michael Ballack, due to injuries, however, this resulted positive because the midfielder of Chelsea tends to stop a lot the ball and generates too much slowness in trespassing in the last meters, and in his absence entered Ozil, one of the World Championship figures, who together with Schweinsteiger, Podolski and Klose, generate a permanent feeling of danger.
Maradona’s subject goes through thinking what to do vs this German team. It seems easy in theory and repeating the scheme of March in Munich would be enough, but would not be better to take into account some of the lessons that match left exactly four years ago in Berlin (June 30 2006) when Argentina resulted also eliminated in quarters by Germany, by penalty shots?
After that match, the Argentinean ex coach José Pekerman was strongly criticized for not having appealed to the classic game at grass level to repel the attack with fury of the locals who were losing by the minimum difference and were being left out of the World Championship. But Pekerman did not make enter Lionel Messi, nor Javier Saviola, but a forwarder of better physical structure, Julio Cruz who could do nothing vs two powerful and tall German centrals.
Everything indicates that against Germany you should play at grass level, quitting the ball and making it circulate with short touches, as Argentina made in the friendly match in Munich in the last thirty minutes, when it already maintained the possession of the ball after the goal by Gonzalo Higuaín.
The difference is that in said match Maradona ended with his plan with a tactical system with four defenders (in this case Otamendi, Demichelis, Samuel and Heinze), four midfielders (in that moment Jonás Gutiérrez, Mascherano, Verón
and Di María) and two attackers (Messi and Higuaín). Following months and the different matches proved that this system left Messi very far from the midfielders and had nothing to do with everything that accompanies him in the Barcelona team.
So it was that in the last months Maradona decanted to accompany Higuaín with Carlos Tévez, leaving Messi somewhat behind, near Verón so leaving Gutierrez to sacrifice physically with a double function in the mark and being near the line of midfielders, a 3-4-1-2 they performed at the World Champions but neither Gutierrez nor Di Maria were as he pretended and though it means almost that his deputy in the stadium had to sacrifice also Juan Verón because he does not see him in good health. If this were not enough, Samuel injured and so there started the variety of changes.
What will be passing in Maradona’s head today when the team returns for trainings at High Performance Center of Pretoria University? Maybe, as the rumour runs, there will start a new defence, moving the efficient Nicolás Burdisso at the right as lateral, leaving two centrals for Demichelis and Samuel, and the left lateral for Heinze. In the midfield, everything indicates that Gutierrez will return as in the friendly match vs Germany, by the right, Verón could return to accompany Mascherano, and possibly he will revert to Tevez for this time to cover the German exit from the left with Messi and Higuaín as forwarders.
The next days are those that will count before the team travel to Cape Town and will concentrate for the match.
In the Argentinean concentration, Carlos Bilardo does not want even to talk. He know that the date of the match, superstitious as he is, coincides with a World Championship defeat, vs Rumania in the United States 1994 the day that Argentina was eliminated few days after Maradona was accused for doping. And he also knows that just this dated, July 3rd is the 80th birthday of the ex President Carlos Menem who is considered as the bearer of bad luck.
Maradona, this time is too concentrated and feels he has no time for such things. He knows that his success as coach and to remain as the definitive icon of the Argentineans is being judged next Saturday. And he cannot fail.