The trauma and near excellence of Argentina (Part 2)

Argentina have just completed one of the best performances of their history, stringing together repeated slick passing movements to crush Paraguay 6-1 in the 2015 Copa America semi-final.

They will contest a wonderful Copa America final against an almost equally skilled Chile in Santiago.

Before they finally got to this point, however, they had to pass through a despairing six or seven years, where with dread I had stopped short in yesterday’s article.

In the decade of the 2000s, the single attacking central midfielder (the number 10) had been going out of fashion at the expense of wingers and eventually, towards using multiple and versatile attacking players from all angles with all-round game instead of specialists.

But Argentina played one of their purest tournaments yet in the 2007 Copa America. They waltzed through the month with Juan Roman Riquelme controlling things even more supremely, for the last time, and Lionel Messi, for now at least, seamlessly integrated.

In the other half of the draw nemesis Brazil had not only sent a B-team to Venezuela but had struggled to the final. Argentina were heavily favoured. But this set the stage for perhaps Argentina’s most devastating loss yet. Brazil were a one-two punch team, who attacked quickly and directly and whose superior goalmouth intuition ripped Argentina apart 3-0. The Argentines worked the ball slowly from player to player and found their attacks broken on a wall.

That was it for Riquelme, whose haughty personality had alienated a number of important teammates. He ended his Argentina career as an enigma, the man who had missed the penalty for Villarreal against Arsenal in 2006, who had come back to Boca Juniors and led them to a messianic victory in the 2007 Copa Libertadores, who had not been able to prevent the meltdown against Brazil.

The next years heralded a crisis. Argentina lost to Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Paraguay in World Cup qualification and, briefly out of their freaking minds, tried using Diego Maradona as coach. They barely qualified for the World Cup.

The result of picking Maradona was a tactical mess, which provoked unprecedented thrashings of the record 6-1 loss to Bolivia, South America’s weakest team, and the 4-0 reversal in the 2010 World Cup quarter-final against, once again, a Germany who had completely reinvented their football culture.

Argentina had now gone five World Cups without even reaching the semi-finals. Without the procession of their talented players sustaining the Champions League, on this record it could have been argued that Argentina were no longer a top-tier national team.

The most galling part of these years was that they were the same ones in which Messi became not only the undisputed world star in the club game with Barcelona, but to such an extent that people were suggesting him as the greatest ever player since Maradona himself.

Yet he was oddly powerless to prevent the Argentina team from crumbling from 2008-11. In the Germany quarter-final, Carlos Tevez, Gonzalo Higuain and Messi were detailed to attack but never helped out to keep the team compact on defence, an absolute modern day no-no.

The connection between the Argentine public and certain players is definitely an intimate one. Juan Sebastian Veron, Riquelme and now Tevez all prematurely returned from Europe, from outsider eyes in failure, but from their perspective to return to the heart of their people. These selected heroes are often the ones intimately connected to the Boca Juniors team of working-class Buenos Aires.

Tevez has arguably never delivered for Argentina’s senior team, and has even been a disruptive influence. Yet as a local boy who grew up poor in Buenos Aires, Argentines will barely countenance the idea of the Argentina national team playing without him. This week he has oddly returned to Boca Juniors after two very successful years at Juventus, aged only 31.

This connection, needless to say, did not exist with Messi, who left with his family to live in Spain aged 12. They say that what redeemed Messi until he finally started clicking with Argentina around 2012 was at least he had not lost his Rosario accent.

There was a further failure at home in the 2011 Copa America before the team finally seemed to get it together in the lead-up to the 2014 World Cup.

Despite finishing runner-up in Brazil last year and only losing to a spectacular goal seven minutes from the end of the tournament, I would argue that the World Cup was a huge chance wasted for Argentina, one that will not come again even if they beat Chile on July 4.

They were playing in placid southern Brazilian cities close to home (while, say, Italy were crucified in places like Manaus and Natal). Their attackers Sergio Aguero, Messi and Angel Di Maria were a who’s who of recent European seasons. They were given a marshmallow of a draw.

I had always said that Argentina’s conception of the game has in recent years been great, but they’ve never gotten the breaks. This time they did not have to play a single difficult team until the semi-final. It was an open invitation to turn on the style. But Argentina trudged through forgettable match after forgettable match.

Messi provided a childlike thrill that the biggest star was delivering on the biggest stage with four early goals, including an iconic last-minute winner over Iran. But he had gone through the two worst seasons of his career approaching the World Cup and he was too jaded to continue in the same vein. Argentina’s other two potential match-winners Aguero and Di Maria were both injured.

It led to Argentina not scoring for the last five hours of the 2014 World Cup. Victory would have been an aberration, despite an impressive showing in the final against, yet again, Germany. Higuain, Messi and Rodrigo Palacio all missed their chances for immortality when each had a one-on-one with German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. None of their shots found the target.

Argentina continued in the same vein in this year’s Copa America. But in the quarter-final against Colombia, Argentina were finally able to sort out their movement, playing their best match since, say, the 2006 World Cup.

The ball agonisingly didn’t enter the net, however. Argentina could thank the gods that, when they soul-crushingly missed two penalties that would have won the match, they were magically handed a third chance.

Against Paraguay, the goals finally came. Now they contest possibly the biggest grudge match in South America. How do I put this delicately? Everyone in South America loves to beat Argentina for reasons that are not due to sports. Chile, who have had numerous political spats with Argentina, is at another level. It would be a nightmare to lose ‘their’ tournament to the Argentines.

But both teams are the currently the best exponents of the sport of football in the world. On paper this could very well be the perfect final.