Argentina on the brink

The margin of defeat could not have been narrower but there was a chasm between the two teams in Asunción on Wednesday evening.  Argentina may have had the big names on and off the pitch but there was only one good side in the match and they were wearing red and white stripes.

Four days after Argentina were humiliated by their biggest rivals of all on home territory, Argentina produced a befuddled, ramshackle, directionless performance in Paraguay resulting in a 1-0 defeat that sees them drop beneath Ecuador, 3-1 winners in Bolivia, to fifth place.  With two matches left, Argentina are clinging on to a play-off for dear life.

When Diego Armando Maradona became Argentina coach, he inherited a bad situation.  Argentina could not win away from home for love nor money, their top players were not replicating their club performances in international football and they were chronically lacking in tactical guile.  Ten months on, nothing has changed, except they have now lost at home as well.

Maradona the coach has been a complete, unmitigated catastrophe.  Under his tutelage, Argentina have won two qualifying matches and lost four.  His team selection is erratic and illogical.  The players look wholly psychologically unprepared; the Paraguay match, from the moment they fell behind, was played in a state of continuous, uncontrolled panic.  It was a caricature of England under Steve McClaren, only England were never remotely as bad.  The few chances that were made were wasted.  Lionel Messi, the best player in the world when he plays for Barcelona, was atrocious, constantly running down blind alleys and firing set pieces into the Estadio Defensores stands.

There is a theory that the World Cup will be the worse for not having Lionel Messi at the party; the argument is repeated for Cristiano Ronaldo and Franck Ribéry, whose nations are also struggling to qualify.  But what the World Cup needs is teams who are playing well and Argentina are not one of those.  Paraguay may have few household names but they not only beat Argentina but won me over.  Their goal was one of the best I’ve seen this year.

Nelson Haedo Valdez wins a header, straight to his strike partner Salvador Cabañas.  Cabañas jinks his way out of a cluster of Argentine defenders, exchanges a quick one-two with midfielder Edgar Barreto before feeding Haedo Valdez in the area, who drives a fierce low shot across Sergio Romero into the far bottom corner.  Quick, intricate, ruthless and beautiful to watch.

Such a goal is completely beyond Argentina in their current state.  In their last five World Cup qualifying matches they have scored three goals: A long-range Lucho González shot that bounced of the hapless Bolivian goalkeeper into the roof of the net; A functional volley by a centre back, Daniel Díaz, from a badly defended free-kick and a long-range punt from Jesús Dátolo.  Not once in that period have they fashioned a goal by beating defenders or passing acutely.

Maradona showed little leadership, merely standing in his now familiar pose, arms crossed over his barrel chest, while making bizarre substitutions.  When Juan Sebastián Verón was sent off for a silly second bookable offence, Argentina began to play with more urgency but no quality, their gameplan built around lumping the ball up to the big man up front in the form of 35-year-old Martín Palermo, a Boca Juniors flat-track bully who hadn’t been capped for since 2000, whom Maradona picked as an absurd response to the not unreasonable media calls for the involvement of a striker taller than a child.

In injury time, Palermo got onto the end of a long ball into the box and headed across goal.  The man who failed to turn his header into an unguarded Paraguayan goal was Rolando Schiavi, a giant substitute defender from Newell’s Old Boys, thrown up front in desperation.  Such was the albicelestes’ shapelessness.  They have no discernible strategy, no form and no leadership.

Who will be picked for the Peru and Uruguay matches in October?  Maradona seems to pick defenders using a yearbook, a blindfold and a pin.  Against Brazil, he used Vélez Sársfield team-mates Nicolás Otamendi and Sebastián Domínguez in central defense and Argentina proceeded to lose because they could not deal with Brazil’s prowess at set pieces or on the break.  In Paraguay, he dropped easily the better player of the two, Otamendi, and brought Gabriel Heinze inside to partner Domínguez with another Vélez Sársfield player, Emiliano Papa, coming in at left-back.  Their substitutes included such misfits as Schiavi, Palermo, Mario Bolatti and Rodrigo Braña while proper footballers such as Diego Milito, Carlos Tévez and Lisandro López sat in the stand and Gonzalo Higuaín, Martín Demichelis, Lucho González, and Maxi Rodríguez watched in despair in Europe.

Maradona has surrounded himself with his buddies and has few useful people assisting him.  No sooner had he accepted the post did he threaten to walk out because Óscar Ruggeri, a buddy from the 1986 World Cup whose managerial record is so sporadic and unremarkable as to barely merit an international appointment, was not installed as his right-hand man.  Maradona’s penchant for yes-men means Argentina are not receiving effective coaching.  The appointment of other useful brains such as a sports psychologist or a fitness coach is pie in the sky.

A home win over Peru next month is essential and Peru are so bad that there is little chance of it not coming.  But Argentina’s last match is across the border in Montevideo and could be a de facto play-off for fifth place between themselves and Uruguay.  Argentina, though, would add little to a World Cup in their current form.  Perhaps an open mind is required to appreciate that Paraguay, with Cabañas’s trickery and the ruthlessness of Haedo Valdez, would be a far more appetizing spectacle next summer.