What Went Wrong? Argentina at the 2010 World Cup
GOAT on GOAT
Welcome to another one of these retrospectives, on teams that were widely expected to be serious contenders in previous tournaments but, for whatever reason, it just didn’t happen at all. What went wrong? What are the key takeaways? Can we learn important things about how sides should approach the World Cup? I think these failures should tell us just as much as the success stories.
Previous editions: France 2002, Brazil 2006
There’s an easy story to tell here.
It goes like this: Argentina had all the talent a team could ever need going into the 2010 World Cup. The star man everyone looked to was surrounded by illustrious names like Ángel Di María, Javier Mascherano, Carlos Tevez and Gonzalo Higuaín. This was the most talented group of players at the tournament in South Africa. The only problem was that the Argentine Football Association (AFA) lost their minds and hired Diego Maradona as manager. Any good work was undone by nonexistent tactics and a naive “attack, attack, attack” philosophy. Yes, everyone loves Maradona, but come on now. It would be like England hiring Gazza.1
But is any of this actually true?
Despite all this talent, Argentina were a mess. Veteran coach Alfio Basile had made a mess of the early stages of World Cup qualifying, picking up just one win in his last six competitive games. A 1-0 defeat to Chile was the final straw, and he got the sack. Another coach vastly experienced in Argentine domestic football, Carlos Bianchi, had been considered the frontrunner, while under-20s coach Sergio Batista, journeyman coach Miguel Ángel Russo, and some young chancer by the name of Diego Simeone were also thought to be in the running. I joke, but he already had an impressive CV managing Estudiantes and River Plate by this point, along with obviously being a famous former player. But not nearly as famous as Maradona.
The AFA had at least thought about Maradona’s lack of coaching experience. Carlos Bilardo, manager of the 1986 World Cup-winning team that Maradona played in, was brought in as technical director. Bilardo was a pretty strict tactician who had his Argentina team play a very disciplined style of football, relying on a few moments of magic from Maradona but otherwise keeping it tight at the back. If this was going to work, Maradona probably needed to rely on Bilardo’s tactical acumen here. This was someone he could trust after his most famous career success.
Maradona was, as much as anything else, a magnetic and galvanising personality. I do think that if he had recognised his strengths were as a man manager, and hired others to do detailed coaching and tactics work, there was potentially something here. Instead, he went a different route. His assistant was Alejandro Mancuso, a man without any prior coaching experience. He desperately needed his opposite, but instead chose someone close to him.