Mourning in Argentine football but also universal for the loss this Sunday at the age of 85 of César Luis Menotti, the legendary coach who led the Albiceleste to win the first World Cup in the controversial 1978 contest, organized … in this great South American country under the military dictatorship of Videla and always under suspicion.
The fatal news was announced by the Argentine Football Association (AFA) late in the afternoon. “We regret to report with great sadness the death of the current technical director of national teams and former world champion coach of Argentina,” the organization wrote on its official account of the ‘X’ social network. Menotti, one of the great masters of Argentine soccer, had been hospitalized since last March.
An inveterate smoker and a great talker about football with that slow and cultured speech that characterized him and that preluded other classic commentators such as Jorge Valdano, Menotti directed Barça in Spain, where he had a young Diego Armando Maradona under his command and won three titles in 1983, and also to Atlético de Madrid in times where all the coaches ended up paying Jesús Gil and the charismatic Rosario was no exception.
Menotti transcended the benches not only because he was champion but because he led a current of opinion that carried his surname and endures to this day. The ‘menottistas’ always lined up next to him, lovers of touch and possession, of the form or how that Xavi Hernández would say almost above the background. In front, the so-called bilardistas, followers of Carlos Salvador Bilardo, the coach who also led Argentina to the title in Mexico-86, who led Sevilla in the League and who put the result before any other circumstance, even at the cost of stepping on his opponent. and not treating him if he was lying on the grass.
Both represented irreconcilable styles. Behind them, journalists, technicians and fans forged their careers. They faced each other on the field on very few occasions, but they fought in the media a thousand times. ‘El Flaco’ and ‘El Narigón’ distanced themselves almost half a century ago and never reconciled.
In the difficult and harsh 70s, in the midst of the dictatorship, the two coaches came to have dinner together and talked for a long time about the beautiful game. A juicy talk that defines both and described in the book ‘Bilardo-Menotti, the true story’, written by journalists Nicolás Cayetano Cajg and Néstor López. At that summit, remembered this Sunday by Clarín and held on October 29, 1976, both expressed their ideas.
«You have to have the ball to dominate the game. For this it is necessary for the team to be mobile. When a footballer has the ball at his feet, his teammates must move intelligently to give him passing options,” Menotti explained. «I think the important thing is to recover the ball and attack immediately. Not waste time. If I defend well, ensure zero in my goal and take advantage of the possibilities I have to score a goal, I am doing things well,” Dr. Bilardo replied. Controversy from 48 years ago, but fully current.
In Spain, Menotti’s main scourge was Javier Clemente, who at the head of Athletic won a double against a great Barça in 1984. Both starred from the bench in the historic Cup final played at the Bernabéu, resolved with a goal from Endika to favor of the lions and closed with a pitched battle. Basically, that treacherous tackle by Andoni Goikoetxea that months before had caused a very serious injury to none other than Diego Armando Maradona.
Born in Rosario, Menotti played for Rosario Central, Racing and Boca Juniors, and also had a short career in Brazil, with Santos and Juventus. However, his legendary career was created on the bench when in 1978 he led Argentina to the first of its three stars. The final repeated so many times in which the Albiceleste defeated the Dutch Clockwork Orange 3-1 at the Montumental stadium in River in the middle of a deluge of papers and with a double from Mario Kempes, the Matador, brought the closure to an abominable contest due to the circumstances in which it was held.
Menotti did not share those political ideas but he was the head of a team that represented a country governed by a dictatorship that had imposed a state terrorist regime. The assignment of that championship to Argentina and Videla’s relations with the Brazilian Joao Havelange, then president of FIFA at that time, caused sports results to be questioned, with matters of corruption long debated and investigated.
A World Cup and a Menotti used by the dictatorship to obtain international support and cover up massive violations of human rights. Key figures for the Argentine coach, such as goalkeeper Ubaldo Fillol or defender Osvaldo Ardiles, would later regret having been used as distractions to cover up 30,000 disappearances.
