Maradona feels betrayed by Bilardo and a successor for him is being looked for now. (Kalerkantho, Bangladesh)

Now it is really the final of Diego Maradona’s cycle as coach of the Argentinean team. In what seemed a press conference in a hotel near his house in Ezeiza (a few kilometres from the principal International airport),he read a communication in which he accused the manager of the Argentinean team, Carlos Bilardo of betraying him and the president of the AFA, Julio Grondona of laying.
A sad but measured Maradona read the release in a few minutes, surrounded by several of his collaborators during the past World Championship (his ex assistants Alejandro Mancuso and Héctor Enrique, his ex physical assistants Fernando Signorini and Javier Vilatmijana, his ex companion in the World Championship in Mexico 1986, Oscar Ruggeri, who had worked as an extra official collaborator, his press chief Fernando Molina, and his daughters Dalma y Gianina and his girl friend, Verónica Ojeda) and soon he left the installations explaining that “somewhat later” he will allow questions of the reporters, though it is already well known that next Sunday he will grant an interview in a popular television program of the conductor Susana Giménez, who paid a big amount of money to the ex coach of the Argentinean team.
In one of the strongest parts of the release, the football star told that “meanwhile we were mourning, Bilardo was working in shadows to throw me out. And when Grondona asked me last Monday for the list of the convoked players for the match against Ireland (next August 11, in Dublin) “everything was a story because Bilardo and Humberto (Grondona’s son vice president of the department of the National Teams of the AFA) had already done it.”
Maradona also referred to the decisive meeting with Grondona on the last Monday, when he considers ”that the things have been disturbed” because, he recalled, in the lockers room and after the defeat by 4-0 vs Germany at the World Championship “he told me in front of witnesses and players that he was satisfied with our work and he wanted me to continue”. With this regard, the ex coach sustained that a month afterwards, in the meeting of this week, “after five minutes he told me that seven of may collaborators had to leave and he knows that I would not continue in the team because I have values and will not change codes I was taught by my parents”.
Maradona refers to the suggestive change of Grondona after he returned from South Africa but he did not mention the succession of activities occurred since the end of the World Championship until the reading of his release. For instance, though the Government of the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner sustained him for his backing of the program “Football for Everybody”, having past the television of football for the State channel, after the return from the World Championship the star did not want to present himself in the Government Offices in spite of having been cited by the president herself, considering that “there was nothing to celebrate” with a fifth position. This fact and his quick trip to Venezuela where he was present near the president Hugo Chavez breaking the relations with the president of Colombia Alvaro Uribe, even more angry the political power what freed Grondona from the pressure to renew him the contract, and the veteran directive opted to play as he usually does, generated the renounce of the coach without having to pay him the political cost of firing the popular idol and then, knowing that Maradona would not accept the removal of his collaborators, the directive suggested that seven of them should leave what meant the final of the cycle.
Maradona also was hard with regard to what happened in November 2008 when he took the conduction of the Argentinean team and found himself “with a group with internal problems, a group completely divided and we thought that we had to transmit the players what it means to wear the Argentinean vest and I think we got it” and also recalled that “since 1990, the team never surpassed the quarter-finals of a World Championship and it is not casual something is being done badly because all the players are successful in their teams and very little is done to change the situation”.
He also made a warning for the future. ”Anybody that will take the conduction of the team must know that the betrayal is in every corner and there are persons that only carry for their personal interests and their bank accounts”.
The release media reproduced during the whole days that sentence of Bilardo of April 13 2009 when he declared that in case that Maradona leaves the Argentinean team “all of us should do the same” something that evidently did not happen, meanwhile there is sought in by all means manager’s world, who not only continues in the position but has already suggested the name of the successor and the word of the AFA’s president Julio Grondona.
Meanwhile Maradona and his ex collaborators fight against Bilardo and Grondona (father and son), there began the ran for the succession for a new coach of the Argentinean team, specially bearing in mind that there have been concreted two matches for the next days, a friendly one vs Ireland in Dublin, on August 11, and nothing less but vs the World Champion, Spain, in Buenos Aires on September 7 next. For the moment, the AFA preferred to put a transition coach in the person of the ex midfielder world champion in Mexico 1986, Sergio Batista, previous coach of the team that won the Golden medal in Peking 2008 and who was in charge of the team sub-20 until this week at the point that he was disputing the mini contest in Paraguay. Batista will conduce the team vs Ireland and it is not impossible that he will do it also vs Spain and perhaps will have some chance to remain in the position if he obtains good results, though it is not clear who prepared the list of the convoked for the first match that includes most of the players of the last World Championship, though without those who form part of the local league (that will start on Friday August 6) another seven of the European leagues. Fabricio Coloccini, Jesús Dátolo, Fernando Gago, Ever Banega, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Emiliano Insúa and Pablo Zabaleta, namely, two pure lateral backs, when in the World Championship there were none who were in the European leagues, and two midcenters, when Javier Mascherano had no replacement in the World Championship in his specific function.
The panorama completes with other possible four matches until the end of the year, of which one will be vs another South American team, another vs Brazil in Qatar and probably other two in the United States.
Among the coaches in the race, except that in next hours Bilardo decides to renounce of his position, everything indicates that the one with best possibilities is Alejandro Sabella, of successful pass by Estudiantes de La Plata, Champion of the Copa Libertadores de América in 2009 and with very solid performances in the last seasons and who was one minute from a triumph over the Barcelona in the last World Championship of the Clubs. Sabella, ex creative player , had Bilardo as coach in the eighties and was the second assistant of Daniel Passaarella in the World Championship in France 1998 therefore he has some experience of the World championships. Another coach in the race is Miguel Angel Russo, now in Racing Club, and Champion in the Copa Libertadores de América 2007 with Boca Juniors and finalist of the World Championship of Clubs vs the Milan in the same year. In change, there is still an incognita the most successful coach in the history of the Argentinean football, Carlos Bianchi, who never had his opportunity though he is the first in all the surveys with an important difference over the others but there is no sympathy with Grondona who remembers that the two times he was convoked (1998 y 2004) he did not accept the proposition.