“The Argentine team suffered a lot when the former AFA president (Julio Grondona) thought he was the team’s top scorer,” recalled César Luis Menotti, who today is the General Director of National Teams, in an exclusive interview with the Télam agency at 10 days before the start of the World Cup in Qatar. “That is why it is so important that in this time the technical director, Lionel Scaloni, has been able to develop an idea in freedom, even with the obstacles of the tight competition schedules that exist throughout the world,” he stressed.
El Flaco Menotti has just turned 84 on Saturday, November 5, according to his identity document, but he maintains that his real birthday is actually October 22: “When I was born, in 1938, in Rosario they wrote you down a few weeks after , and in my case they did it 14 days later”.
And this new anniversary of his birth finds him active again “after a few days of having a disease somewhat similar to hepatitis, although that is not exactly the diagnosis. But I’m fine now, because I take good care of myself, since there are many viruses going around there,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not going to be in Qatar for the World Cup group stage because of that, but in the next rounds I hope to be able to go.”
And this advance puts him fully into the management that he has been carrying out since January 2019, when he was appointed by Claudio “Chiqui” Tapia for the position with which he will now face his first world championship, after having won the title as coach in Argentina 1978, and tried to repeat without the same success in Spain 1982.
“I am satisfied with what has been done in all this time, since the project we faced had an objective and this was more than fulfilled from the group that Scaloni put together in the National Team. Later, in the World Cup, you can win or lose, because In this type of championship, luck also has a great influence, and a shot on the post leads to success if it is in your goal or to failure if it is in the rival’s”, he sentenced.
El Flaco from the Fisherton neighborhood in Rosario can attest to this when he recalls the shot by striker Robert Resenbrink, which bounced off the right post of the goal defended by Ubaldo Fillol one minute from the end of the 90 regular minutes of the decisive match of Argentina 1978 against to the Netherlands, when the score was tied 1-1. Argentina then came out on top, winning 3-1 after 30 minutes of extra time.
“But this Argentine team is going to compete, of that I am convinced, because it was prepared for that, and fundamentally, I have no doubts, it is going to leave the dignity of Argentine football in Qatar well up,” he remarked.
“It is that Argentina is going to arrive at the World Cup holding the flag of the history of our football, because this team is prepared for that, and I can attest to it,” he insisted.
And the merits for such affirmations were turned by Menotti on who exactly 40 years later will be his successor as coach of the Argentine national team in a World Cup, Lionel Scaloni, from Santa Fe. But not only from Pujato does this Menotti have a high concept that marked a before and after in the history of the national teams from the second half of 1974.
There, Menotti planted the flag with an imprint of projects with a minimum of four years, from which all those who came after him later benefited because the path that had to be followed when carrying out this task had already been weeded. “Scaloni was questioned that he did not have any experience when he was in charge of the national team, but I maintain that this is not an impediment, because when I had to do it I was only 35 years old, and although he had just been champion with Hurricane last year before, in 1973, it was not the same”, he appreciated.
“It is that directing a club team for 10 years, even with good success, does not mean that it will serve to later take charge of the national team, because it is something totally different. That is why it must be said that those who reach that position do not have a specific experience in how to exercise it. Only those who assume a second term have it, “he argued, referring to some antecedents of renewals such as the cases of Alfio Basile, Marcelo Bielsa or himself.
The “cloak and dagger” defense that Scaloni and his collaborators make has a justification for which Menotti fought from the first moment that Tapia offered him to take on this responsibility, which Carlos Bilardo had previously had when Alejandro Sabella was the coach of the selected team. . And previously José Pekerman when the one who directed it was Bielsa.
“When I accepted Tapia’s offer, Scaloni had a contract until December, and then I spoke with the president of AFA and told him that it couldn’t be like that, that he had to sign until the qualifiers and, if he qualified, extend it until the World Cup. And so on. It was,” he revealed.
“When I arrived, from the Scaloni coaching staff I only had a relationship with Pablo Aimar, because I didn’t know him. And I had dealt with Roberto Ayala a little too, but I hadn’t had contact with Walter Samuel before either,” he described.
Menotti ended up demystifying all the previously mentioned prejudices regarding the leader of the “Scaloneta”, who at the time was “inexperienced with no resume” enough to direct nothing less than the prestigious Argentine team. “The four of them are perfectly qualified to be the members of the National Team’s coaching staff, because they have something in common that very few have: they all wore the Argentine jersey for many years, they all played in World Cups and they all have extensive international experience because they played many years abroad and in important clubs”, he pointed out.
“And this last one is as important as all the previous ones, since in this team almost all of its members play in Europe as they did. So, they speak the same language in terms of training, game attributes and preparation, and that It is key to arming and leading a group like the one they assembled,” he said.
Menotti seems to have built a conductive trilogy with Tapia and Scaloni that led the team led by Lionel Messi to win the Copa América last year in Brazil and, from there, to dream big for the World Cup in Qatar. “This National Team had its space because the AFA gave it to it, the one that previously only managed its own businesses,” closed the talk who also lived his moment of glory as a coach with the consecration as world champion in the 1979 Japan Youth “.