No matter how much time passed, César Luis Menotti kept that figure that the archives of the 1978 World Cup in Argentina remember. Tall, thin, serious, with a lucid mind and in its purest form every time he talked about soccer. In his office there were usually piles of books stacked on the table. Images of his children, black and white paintings with Diego Maradona, Skin, Johan Cruyff and Jorge Luis Borges, sitting in the armchair at home. At 85 years old, The skinny He preferred to avoid visiting doctors, because he was ready for combat. These men insist on making our lives longer and less pleasant
he said, forced to stop smoking, although looking for the smoke through the doors of the restaurants.
The Argentine Football Association (AFA) reported yesterday that the 1978 world champion, standard bearer of the offensive game and inspirational teacher of players and coaches of different generations, died in Buenos Aires after being admitted to a sanatorium in March for a medical condition. severe anemia, for which he was discharged at the end of April. The causes are still unknown.
“We try to write some words in the golden book of football, but there always has to be someone who produces those memories. The skinny He achieved it in that World Cup,” says former soccer player Mario Kempes, also a monarch in the final against Holland in the midst of the military dictatorship. Those times were so different that no one wanted to play for Argentina. Since the so-called ‘Sweden Disaster’, as the elimination in the first round in the 1958 Cup is known, the mainstream in the AFA recommended changing the old values for others that privileged physique and speculation instead of beauty. .
Menotti considered that an outrage. His first great work in his career on the bench was the 1973 Huracán, a team that got half the country to follow with enthusiasm by winning its first professional championship. I want this football for my country
said the man from Rosario; because anyone can win a title, but the most important thing is the search, the path, defending an idea to be happy.
.
Some called that way of playing the football that people like
. The skinny He defined it with two words: ‘Ours’, a style of touch and dribble with a first and last name. This football revolution will be eternal
wrote former goalkeeper Ubaldo Pato Pancake on one collage of photos next to the Rosario. Few remember a phrase from the former strategist that was not a teaching, a fair praise, a well-founded criticism.
Maradona (left), attentive to the lesson of his coach Menotti. In the image on the right, with Daniel Passarella, captain of the Argentine team in the 1978 World Cup final. Photo taken from social networks and Facebook FifaWorldCup
The best thing was to remain silent and listen to him
describes his former assistant Roberto Saporiti, so used to pressing the keys of rec
(record) and stop
(stop) imaginary in front of his friend. Long before winning the World Cup, Menotti played for Rosario Central, Boca Juniors, Racing and Santos of Brazil; He trained as a technical assistant and at the age of 36 he made it a condition that his contract with the national team would last until 1978 with the final of the tournament.
It was four years. Nobody imagined such a long process
says Tasty. At least 10 or more coaches had paraded
. But then The skinny, a heavy smoker, managed to return to the roots of his country’s soccer with a seductive idea. More than once he was recorded on camera alongside the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, but he was never complacent with the regime. When the coup d’état came, I went to present my resignation
confessed the former coach in 2018. But Alfredo Francisco Cantilo, one of the best leaders I knew, told me that the only serious thing they had found in the AFA was my project.
.
In his bohemian nightlife as a young man, Menotti frequented milongas, neighborhood dance centers. He met his admired directors of tango orchestras such as Osvaldo Pugliese and Aníbal Pichuco Troilus. From boxing, he collected Ray’s fights in his mind Sugar Robinson, Carlos Monzón and Nicolino Locche, but especially Julio César Chávez, because he was the first one who taught me to put my left hand
he once confessed.
Your vision in the field
From his way of understanding football, he led a dialectical struggle with Carlos Bilardo, world champion coach in Mexico 1986. The call billiards
stated that The only thing that matters in a game is to win no matter what.
while The skinny responded: It’s more or less like saying in life that the only thing that matters is breathing.
. Shortly after becoming world champion, he met Jorge Luis Borges, one of his favorite authors in addition to Mario Benedetti, Gabriel García Márquez and Joan Manuel Serrat. “Do you read me? –Borges asked him–. What a way to waste time! It left me dead, I didn’t know what to say
he laughed when he remembered it.
Born on November 5, 1938 in Rosario, Menotti also coached Spanish clubs Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid. He was a political activist as an affiliate of the Argentine Communist Party, created the school for professional technical directors and maintained a close relationship with Diego Maradona, who always reproached him for leaving him out of the 1978 World Cup due to his lack of experience. In Mexico, he coached the national team between 1991 and 1992, during which time he laid the foundations for a change of mentality in his players.
And, although he never feared death, his health problems kept him away from football and the AFA, where he served as director of national representatives since 2019 and celebrated, alongside Lionel Messi, the third Cup won by the Albiceleste in the final. of Qatar 2022.
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– 2024-05-12 13:05:28
