Bielsa bolsters Argentina

December 3, 2001

South America's best are set to take the world by storm.

Marcelo Beilsa sits in his house in the hills of the province of Santa Fe watching videotapes and reading. The Argentina manager is said to see every match an Argentine plays in Europe and, courtesy of a team of translators, to read every potentially relevant article in the world's press (hello, Mr Bielsa). The coach, explains Mauricio Macri, president of Boca Juniors, is 'crazy'.

Bielsa is serious. The university-educated man who had never coached a big team before has created one of the two best sides in the world. Argentina should thrive against England. 'People ask us if this side can be compared to the one at France 98,' says Juan Sebastian Verón, 'and it is true that we had the same players then, but this time we are more experienced. Many people think, and I include myself in that group, that the next World Cup could be ours.' That would cheer up a people whose economy is sinking into the Third World.

Bielsa has broken with the country's footballing past. The game every Argentine fan has in his head is the shanty-town style, exemplified by Diego Maradona: a brilliant boy, a pibe, tricking his way past everyone to score. (In Saint Etienne, the Argentines immediately recognised Michael Owen as a pibe ). In real life, the Argentine game has often been characterised, as Alf Ramsey noted, by 'animals'. The pibes meshed with hardmen such as Carlos Bilardo, Daniel Passarella or Diego Simeone to win World Cups.

Bielsa's Argentina uses neither boys nor animals. It plays, he says, ' el sistema Van Gaal': in other words, Dutch total football, passing at top pace, with a centre-forward and two wingers. Simeone, 13 years in the national team, says: 'Bielsa's team is the most attack-minded I have played in. I had never before played in a team with three forwards and a 3-3-1-3 formation.'

You would think the fans love an attacking team that has lost once since early 2000, qualifying for the World Cup with games to spare. In fact the fans are sulking. The joyless perfectionism of el sistema leaves no room for tricks or egos. The players say they run far more for Argentina than for their clubs. 'He has mechanised football,' said Macri, the Boca Juniors president.

Argentina's numerous pibes - Juan Román Riquelme, Marcelo Gallardo, Pablo Aimar, Javier Saviola, Ariel Ortega - seldom get a game, and when they do, it is usually on the wing. Argentina have no natural wingers, so Bielsa presses into service midfielders or strikers like Ortega, Kily Gonzalez and Claudio 'Piojo' Lopez. Meanwhile, one of Argentina's two great centre-forwards remains on the bench. Ordaining that Gabriel Batistuta and Hernan Crespo can't play together, Bielsa usually favours Crespo.

Behind them, the 'number 10' (a heavy number in Argentina since Maradona) is Verón. If this team has a star, it is he. He is supported in midfield by the hugely efficient Simeone, Javier Zanetti and Juan Pablo Sorin. So far, so good: only France has a front seven to match Argentina's.

The worry is the defence. Bielsa tends to play with only three at the back, arguing that few opponents employ more than two strikers. The problem is the identity of these defenders. Arsenal fans may wonder how Nelson Vivas, now with Inter Milan, got into this team. Argentine fans wonder too. Roberto Ayala, twice skinned by Owen in Saint Etienne, may regret returning for more.

The difference between Saint Etienne and now, however, is the great AS Roma libero Walter Samuel. Visiting Oxford University 10 days ago, the Boca Juniors president couldn't stop raving about his former player. 'He's not human,' Macri said. 'He's a machine. He never misses. He never talks. He has zero charisma. He is strange because he doesn't mind money and he doesn't mind women. He only thinks about football, and this is a big advantage.' Against England, Samuel, sporting a 1950s short-back-and-sides haircut almost unique among Argentine internationals, will have to save Vivas and Ayala from Owen.

The Argentines remain terrified of the English pibe d'oro . Perhaps more devastating for England than David Beckham's red card that night was Alan Shearer's insistence on staying at centre-forward through the second half, forcing Owen into midfield, to the hysterical relief of Argentina's defenders.

However, England have more to fear of Argentina than the other way around. The Argentines possess not just individual superiority (who but Beckham, Owen and perhaps Steven Gerrard would get into their team?) but also a sistema that might have been designed to combat England. Argentina's wingers exist largely to close down opposing full-backs. English defenders won't have an unhurried second on the ball. The passing of Gary Neville, Sol Campbell and David Seaman may not withstand the scrutiny.

This is the game that counts for Argentina. Long before the Falklands War or the Hand of God or Saint Etienne, England was the country they wanted to beat. Argentina often feels like a British colony in the Edwardian era: the decaying railways built by British engineers, the Richmond teahouse and the names of players such Jose Luis Brown.

In Saint Etienne, wrote one commentator in the newspaper Clarín : 'What was on the pitch was the collective Argentine memory, that long series of episodes - some sporting, some political - internalised since childhood, which built the image of the unpleasant Englishman, first an invader, a usurper of our riches, then a model of the dominant classes.' Or as the Argentine football song has it: 'If you don't jump you're an Englishman.'

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