Days of definition in the Argentinean team (Yahoo)

Meanwhile the Argentinean team in full arrives to Tokyo to play the third friendly match with Sergio Batista as coach, since the end of his participation in the World Championship of South Africa, in Buenos Aires, the Argentinean Football Association (AFA) hurries to decide who will definitively conduce the team towards the World Championship of Brazil 2014.

In fact, before the end of October, a commission of directives designed by the Executive Committee of the AFA will be in charge to decide the coach (Batista is as interim coach), between a quantity of names (it seems among three or four) who will be elevated by the manager, Carlos Bilardo, the only one from the whole technical crew, together with Batista, that continues working in the national team after the World Championship.

Among the names that are mentioned, in accordance with the taste of Bilardo, there would certainly be, the present coach of Estudiantes de la Plata, leader in the Aperture Contest and champion in the Copa Libertadores 2009, Alejandro Sabella, as well as the present coach of Racing Club and champion of the Copa Libertadores 2007 with Boca Juniors, Miguel Russo. Both were Bilardo’s players in the eighties and very well known by the coach champion of the World Championship in Mexico 1986 and finalist in Italy 1990.

The big incognita goes through three coaches more. The first of them is Carlos Bianchi, winner of all the surveys of absolutely all media for specialized reporters and fans all over the country, due to his seriousness in the job and because he is considered an absolute winner. It is strange in these times of urgency that a coach is fired by two clubs with fireworks and this happened due to his job in Velez Sarsfield (1993-2002) and in Boca Juniors (1998-2004) with a short interval in 2002.

In that time, Bianchi won seven local contests between both teams, four Copa Libertadores and three International Cups (two won vs Milan and one vs the Real Madrid), besides other International contests and it is hard to understand, as from a foreign view, how a coach with such success never conducted the Argentinean team and even it could be said to integrate a group with other coaches is almost impossible because none resists a comparison.

Actually, two of the possible voters of the commission, the representatives of Velez and Boca, would have decided their vote and there are even chances that the Lanus may be also added with what he would have chances to be designed but there is a problem that he had always had a distance relationship with the AFA’s president, Julio Grondona, because he did not coincide with his methods and because the directive sustains that when he was offered the position in 1998, after the World Championship in France, he rejected it. What happened there is that Bianchi had already everything settled with Boca, what afterwards turned out into a notable cycle and he wanted to maintain his word, what speaks about his seriousness.

The other case is that of Maradona, and everything indicate he has closed doors to his return as coach meanwhile Grondona continues in the presidency, after the strong words against the directive in that press conference in which he declined the offer to continue without his collaborators

However, now, desperate because time is finishing and the decision to contract the new coach must be taken, Maradona appeared with all the mediatic fire saying that he would reconsider the decision to come back alone, with another technical crew (with what he forgets what he formerly declared on the ethical code and the respect for his companions) and attacked even Batista, there do not seem many possibilities for his return.

And as a third case, Batista himself, designed after the World Championship as interim coach, now seems winning ground to remain with the position due to a very good job realized in these months, beside the success vs Ireland in Dublin (0-1) and particularly vs Spain in Buenos Aires (4-1) and his very good management of the group in which Lionel Messi feels at ease and backs him.

Batista, with criterion, sustains that even with the good results, he does not want his job to be evaluated only for that but for what he did previously with the juveniles teams he conducted until the World Championship of South Africa, in particular, the Olympic triumph obtained in Peking in 2008, though the manager Bilardo insists that what will determine his possibilities will be the results obtained, namely, all the contrary what the coach sustains.

In this point we must detain because it is medullar. If Bilardo’s contract as manager has been renewed in spite of the defeat in the passed World Championship and that he almost did not appear in all the contest, it is because Grondona deposits in him the power of what will happen to the team in the future and that is why it is the clue that the new coach has a good relationship with him.

In this regard, Batista was his player in the Argentinean team of the World Championships of 1986 and 1990 (Sabella and Russo were not world champions) and Bianchi has no relationship with Bilardo since years.

What they never talk, sadly, is about footballistic projects. An evil that continues too many years in the Argentinean football that continues to bet more on names than on ideas.