Argentina's midfielder Fernando Gago, left, and Australia's defender Mark Milligan, right, battle for a head ball during a group A first round men's soccer match at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Shanghai, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008. AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko
Diego Maradona’s worldwide ban from football has ended. The former Argentine football playing idol had been put out to pasture since FIFA forbade him from any involvement in world football after his foul outburst in a broadcast news conference in November.
He is now free to resume his job as Argentina’s football manager.
Maradona and the Argentine team’s vitriolic attacks were aimed at his home country’s press.
I won’t repeat what he said, but it was rude and suggested that the press were against him and to blame for the team’s bad performances.
At the end of the win over Uruguay in a qualification decider that cemented their trip to South Africa to compete in this year’s FIFA World Cup, Maradona used his post-match comments to let rip at his critics, aggressively releasing frustrations that had been building up over the previous weeks, not least for the press orchestrating a campaign to have him removed and starting rumours that he was even threatening to resign.
Maradona had been euphoric upon the final whistle, crying tears of joy, and hugging Carlos Bilardo, the 1986 World Cup-winning manager, who is now his technical director and with whom the press had claimed there was a rift.
But in a show of unity in front of the cameras in the centre of the stadium, Maradona, Bilardo, the coaching staff and all the players jumped up and down in celebration, singing rude songs about the Argentine journalists.
Up until Diego was appointed late in 2008 he had zero credibility as a football manager. He was chosen by the aging Argentine Football Association executive Julio Grondona out of desperation and sheer hope that former greatness as a player would rub off on the new generation of players.
With less than five months now to the World Cup kickoff on June 11, Maradona has to show he knows how to make sense and create harmony out of all that undeniable Argentine talent.
He has to demonstrate that he is in control of his own volatile nature as well and he must very quickly convince the players that he can make the world’s best football team out of their very evident individual talents.
Talent is one thing the Argentine football team doesn’t lack.
Lionel Messi, the World Football Player of the year recently scored another exquisite hat trick for Barcelona. Carlos Tévez netted three goals for Manchester City, Gonzalo Higuaín kept up his scoring spree for Real Madrid and Sergio Agüero also keeps scoring for Atlético Madrid.
And the list of options for Argentina’s attack goes on.
Diego Milito, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Lisandro López and Hernán Crespo — the man who calls out “Remember me, I’m not too old” — all seeking to catch Maradona’s eye and win his favour.
Then there is Ángel di María, the dynamic scoring midfielder already a Maradona pick and very likely to be the next big purchase of the January transfer window in Europe.
Di Maria is currently with Benfica of Portugal, but Manchester United has bid for him and Chelsea and Inter Milan are raising the stakes and the asking price for the 21-year-old’s coveted talents.
Some argue that Argentina, for all its skills, only just scraped into this World Cup and Maradona is not the manager to take them to South Africa. Even Messi, the player of 2009 for his week-by-week brilliance with Barcelona, was a little forlorn and confused in Argentina’s confused and almost forlorn qualification campaign.
Guus Hiddink, a proven World Cup manager with the Netherlands, South Korea and Australia, might be for hire after his latest job with Russia proved to be a failure.
The Argentine press are calling for him to replace Maradona, although there are plenty of football journalists around the world calling for Guus to replace somebody or other at the moment, including Rafa Benitez.
With expectations low, even in Argentina, that could work to Maradona’s advantage.
There is a good team in there somewhere and the truth is Maradona is not quite the buffoon he is sometimes portrayed, or indeed portrays himself as, especially when it comes to football.
Some of the criticism has been over the top and unfair, considering he inherited a squad that was in poor shape and in decline, having won only one of seven World Cup qualifiers before he took over.
Diego has succeeded in his first big challenge to get the Albicelestes to the World Cup. Maradona truly believes he will return Argentina to the top of world football once again.
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