Argentina bets on a new change with Sabella (Yahoo)

The Argentinean football passes through a very complicated moment. The surprising elimination in the quarter-final of the Copa América they organized and that could have been in the first phase, generated the end of the contract of the coach Sergio Batista, who a year ago took the position and now to contract Alejandro Sabella, who will be presented next Tuesday.
If it concerns the antecedents, there are no doubts that, excluding the one that wins in all the surveys by ninety percent of the votes - Carlos Bianchi - badly related with AFA’s president, Julio Grondona, Alejandro Sabella has a good antecedent, because not only he had good championships with Estudiantes de La Plata, but he had experience with the Argentinean team having been the third member of the technical crew of Daniel Passarella between 1994 and 1998, World Championship in France, included.
Sabella is a pragmatic coach but who likes the football well played. As player he was a great creative midfielder, coming out from the juveniles of River Plate and transferred afterwards to the English football (he played in the Sheffield United and the Leeds) returning in 1982 to Estudiantes in the best period of his carrier, conduced Carlos Bilardo, and was Argentinean champion.
In Estudiantes, Sabella was also Champion as coach. In 2009 he won the Copa Libertadores de América and was a minute from turning out into the World Champion of the clubs, but there appeared Lionel Messi and tied for the Barcelona in the last game and afterwards the Catalonians won in the thirty minutes of enlargement and in 2010 won the Argentinean Aperture Contest.
But the matter is not Sabella, but to ask oneself how it is that Bianchi, the maximum winner of all the Argentinean coaches continues without having an opportunity, or why since 2004 up to now, the Argentinean team counts with five coaches (Pekerman, Basile, Maradona, Batista and Sabella) and since 1974 to 2004 had the same quantity (Menotti, Bilardo, Basile, Passarella and Bielsa). If in the first thirty years it had the same quantity than in the last seven it is something wrong that occurred in the last times.
As to Bianchi, Grondona uses to repeat that the coach refused twice to conduce the Argentinean team in the past (in 1998 Boca arrived first and signed the contract to generate an Empire almost for decade and in 2004 he did not accept to conduce until World Championship 2006 for less than two years of work considering that it was not enough time) and that he used to repeat he will not work in the AFA meanwhile this directive continues in his position.
The strange is that when one consults these days Grondona on the reason not having granted more time to Batista, who was enjoying the acceptation of the group and particularly that of Lionel Messi, the reply is that “I do not want that tomorrow there will be said that due to a caprice of mine the results obtained were bad”. It is not his caprice that Bianchi, the best of all, continues without coaching the Argentinean team?
It is certain that Sabella will have to work hard. The context does not favour him because with eighteen years without triumphs the moral is not high. Nobody thought in losing at home the Copa América and the fact not to win left the Argentinean team without playing in 2013, in Brazil, the Confederations Cup in a gala contest where will play Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Uruguay and the next champions of Eurocup, among others.
But even worse, in October the Argentinean team will debut in the classification for the World Championship 2014 vs Chile as local, in a contest with nine teams and four and half places, something that in other times, and without the participation of Brazil, due to being local in the appointment of the World Championship, it would be almost dishonour to think about a minimum danger, but today the situation is different and there are no certainty not even in such circumstances..
In the AFA is recognized that in the passed Copa América, the Argentinean team played as local vs three of the next eight rivals to classify for the World Championship (Bolivia, Colombia and Uruguay) and could win none of them. Why would it be so different now to go to the World Championship with the rivals even more motivated than in the Cup? It will be necessary to work a lot.
From the footballistic point of view there are several reasons to be worried. One of them is the communication between the members of technical body themselves. For that reason, Carlos Bilardo was oriented to a role of Grondona’s “consultant” ending his job as manager and there still continues to be studied the role that will occupy in the new structure Humberto Grondona, son of the president, who had not a happy pass in the former cycle.
Neither will continue in the different positions in the juvenile teams department, not Oscar Garré nor Julio Olarticoechea (sub-17) , that added to the withdrawal of Batista and his assistant, José Luis Brown, and formerly Diego Maradona and Héctor Enrique (one of his assistants) and the bad relationship that there is with Oscar Ruggeri, who was not allowed to work in the previous cycle that lasted a year and half only, it may be said that there ends the opportunity for the so called “generation 1986” who were world champions as players and for years they claimed for an opportunity.
Everything indicated that now there opens a time for Sabella, possibly with Gabriel Batistuta forming part of the technical body and it will be necessary to see how the new coach would work surrounding Messi the best possible, in exploiting better the great forwarders that Argentina has over the World and the bad moment that is passing the defence.
The big question is whether they will let Sabella to work or whether in the first bad result everything will exploit again. Time will give again the answer.