Tag Archives: argentina

Rich as an Argentine

Destiny is a dangerous phrase in sports. Many suspect they know it when they see it, most of them blinkered partisans who believe in what they know. It’s impossible to capture fully, scorned not without good reason by the quants who have distilled so many sports down to the barest essentials that can separate wins from losses. To call a squad a team of destiny is to make an irrational leap, to claim to see something others cannot, likely in athletes one has never met, seen only on a TV screen from half a world away. It is perhaps even more ludicrous for someone who is only a passing fan of a sport; someone who’s followed on and off over the years and has down the names of the main protagonists, but has no claim to deep expertise.

As this World Cup went on, however, it became clear that Argentina was one of those teams. It didn’t guarantee they would win the thing, but it did mean they would be there at the pivotal moment, would rise to the occasion, would push to the brink in ways others could never will themselves because they just felt it in their bones. It simply meant more in Argentina. They have known they have a window for a championship ever since Lionel Messi began showing the world what a different level of skill meant, and as the five-foot-seven magician from Rosario turned thirty-five, knew this would be his last chance. Their fans, after 36 long years of waiting, overflowed with raw emotion. Argentine tears flowed out at every goal (insert Evita joke here), and as they fought past the resilient Dutch in the quarterfinals, triumph felt more like relief, like completion of a solemn mission, than the mere victory enjoyed by other nations.

By that point, I was fully on board the bandwagon for the ride, using unspent work personal time to catch their remaining matches. After the sky blue and white carved up Croatia in the semifinals, they earned a clash for the ages against France. The final was about the juiciest imaginable: perhaps the greatest of all time against the golden child of the next generation, two otherworldly talents trading blows on the world’s most dramatic stage, the defending champions against the fútbol-bleeding nation determined to send out a sporting deity on top. It somehow outdid all the hype.

Messi had the supporting cast in his quest; the Argentines, unless defending a late lead, were the most cohesive unit of this tournament almost all the way through. The work rate in the midfield, from Alexis Mac Allister to Rodrigo de Paul to Enzo Fernández, took apart their vaunted French counterparts. On the sideline, the other Lionel, the little-heralded Lionel Scaloni, pressed all the right buttons as he molded his squad, boldly putting a few stars on the bench in favor of the right supporting cast for Messi’s skills. His master stroke: starting the wily veteran Ángel di María, who had the half of his life in the final, as he drew the penalty converted by Messi for Argentina’s first goal and finishing off a majestic passing sequence on their second. The Argentines were in complete control against the world’s deepest footballing machine, and in normal times, this would have been enough for a coronation.

Destiny, however, demands drama. No podía ser de otra manera sino sin sufrir, sobbed Andrés Cantor to his Spanish language audience at the end of the night: they had to suffer, there couldn’t be any other way. The source of that drama, aside from suddenly ragged defending: Kylian Mbappé, the French virtuoso who drifted through most of the game who needed just 93 seconds to knot the score. His vicious strike on the second goal hushed the singing Argentines for the first time all tournament; soccer, perhaps, was ready to pass the torch to a new superstar. But after that it was sheer, magical chaos, the teams powering up and down the pitch trading chances at reckless abandon, substitutions one-upping another, a net-crashing Messi seemingly winning it all before Mbappé snatched it back again in the dying minutes of extra time. So often in soccer penalty shootouts seem unspeakably lame, a way of euthanizing a game that has long since run out of energy, but it felt like the only sane conclusion here. One by one, the Argentines came forward and clinically finished their penalties, while their keeper, Emiliano Martínez, rose to the challenge once again.

When Gonzalo Montiel sealed the Cup with the final penalty, Argentina went into a catharsis to end all catharsis, a pure release, from the pitch to the broadcast booth and everywhere beyond. Montiel ran around cluelessly before his teammates swarmed him, di María bawled for the third or fourth time in the span of two hours, and Messi raised his hands to accept the worship of the masses and channel it through him. On the other side, abject shock, with dazed stares of exhaustion and Emmanuel Macron down on the pitch to console Mbappé. (I here picture Donald Trump coming down to the pitch to inform a United States team in a similar spot that they are all losers, or Joe Biden forgetting who all these people are anyway.) Who needs great conquests or wealth when a two-hour game can provide the apogee of human emotion?

The next night I found myself ignoring Monday Night Football to pour myself a Mendoza Malbec and watch footage from Buenos Aires: a drone sweeping over the Avenida 9 de Julio, the view from a lonely cyclist peddling up a deserted street as the city suddenly explodes, relentless song and dance, a few insane souls scaling the obelisk in the Plaza de la República. Then came the scenes from the victory parade, which had to be abandoned and completed by helicopter to get around the crowds. Oh, to someday be able to party like an Argentine.

And then it occurred to me: a few months ago, I’d been offered a spot on a trip that would have begun in Argentina in late December. I declined: a bit too much money, a bit too complicated logistically. I looked back at the old string of emails and, sure enough, if I’d accepted, I would have been in Buenos Aires on the day of the final. FOMO, you have consumed me.

Life goes on, though, and rewards in Christmas parties and holiday retreats and good hockey. And before long there will be new windows into that full range emotion, life to the fullest, joie de vivre in the face of everything. May the bursts never stop coming.

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Deutschland Victorious

This German boy can be proud of his heritage today, as Deutschland took home its fourth all-time World Cup title. The 1-0 victory over Argentina wasn’t quite a scintillating end to what had been a high-scoring tournament, and the game had slowly degenerated after a cracking start, but it was certainly deserved. Mario Götze’s 113th-minute strike was remarkably similar to Andrés Iniesta’s goal four years earlier, a final stroke of brilliance rewarding the better team and sparing us the misery of a final going to penalties.

The similarities to Spain don’t end there, though: this German side overcame my skepticism over any team’s ability to win by playing possession football in the 2014 Cup. Oh, me of little faith. I didn’t think anyone had the talent to pull it off, especially under the wilting Brazilian heat, but as a staunch defender of that brand of play, I’m happy to be wrong. I’d picked the Argentines before it all began, and across six games and 112 minutes of a seventh, they followed the predictable formula to a tee, relying on their well-organized defense and the occasional moment of magic out of Lionel Messi and company. It was a fine showing for the second-best team on earth, but injuries slowly hobbled Messi’s partners in crime, and Messi himself, despite being the most feared player on the pitch, was not quite at his stratospheric peak. He remains the best player of his generation, but there is still room to add to his legacy.

The German triumph, on the other hand, had nothing to do with any one star; ask five people who their best player in this Cup was, and you might get five different answers. Instead, they played a complete team game, a style not unlike Spain’s famed tiki-taka, only with an added dose of directness that made them even more dangerous. They were hardly a plucky underdog in that regard—they might be the deepest squad on earth, with an embarrassment of riches across the lineup—but, to quote someone I read over the past few weeks but cannot properly attribute, “the ball was the star.” In classic German fashion, they’re a seamless machine, playing a team sport as it’s meant to be played, and at the highest level possible. With the Spanish dynasty at an end, Joachim Löw’s men may be on the verge of their own great run. They’ve been threatening to go on one for years, and with this breakthrough and a relatively young core playing some of the most appealing soccer imaginable, what’s not to like? They’ve proven they can destroy teams that aren’t at their best defensively, and they have the patience to outlast those who are.

Still, the most memorable part of this World Cup was probably the hosts’ unequivocal on-field disaster. Brazil set out to replace the memories of the 1950 championship debacle against Uruguay, and they achieved it in the worst of ways in that 7-1 semifinal demolition in Belo Horizonte. A new generation of Brazilian fans has its own World Cup nightmare.

It wasn’t hard to see this ending poorly. The pressure was brutal from the start, and not once did the Brazilians impress; they always looked wobbly, and the resulting questions had coach Luis Felipe Scolari snapping at the media. The reaction to the Neymar injury likewise did not portend good results; the players holding up his jersey as if he were on his deathbed was a clear overreaction, and underscored the squad’s Neymar dependence. Brazil should have the depth to adjust to that sort of injury, but Scolari’s squad just seemed a disorganized throughout. The defense was filled with erratic players with little interest in defense, while the midfield was an inconsistent, revolving door; among the strikeforce, only Neymar and Oscar were remotely threatening. This Brazil squad had an identity crisis from the start, with no one really knowing his role, and the end result managed to combine the recklessness of o jogo bonito with the goonish defense of a modern, bus-parking squad, the worst of both worlds rolled into one. Brazil is in desperate need of new leadership that can seize control and impose a vision of some sort. If Alejandro Sabella can take an Argentine squad that had been so erratic four years earlier and turn them into a corps of defensive stalwarts, Brazil can certainly do something similar.

The team that dispatched of Brazil with little trouble in the third place match deserves a mention as well. The Dutch, written off before the Cup as both too old and too young, performed admirably, with Louis Van Gaal proving the anti-Scolari with his shrewd tactical moves. The Dutch weren’t always terribly fun to watch, but they got the job done, and Arjen Robben, despite the dives, was a marvel: he manages to be one of the most predictable players on earth, yet still, no one can really stop him. He gives hope to one-footed, prematurely bald bad actors everywhere.

It was a memorable World Cup, from German class to Brazilian infamy, from a very welcome goal explosion to a hungry Uruguayan. The U.S. and Mexico both took a step in the right direction, the French got their mojo back, and the Costa Ricans came ever so close to stealing our hearts with their stout defense. Chile and Colombia continue to climb in the right direction, and the Belgians, with a little more inventiveness, could be dangerous over the next few major tournaments. Spain’s golden age may be over, but there is still plenty of talent in the pipeline, and they’ll be back. In the end, Brazil put on a fine show, and even if their own fate was cruel, they, too, have hope for the future.

For now, though, the enduring image will be a bunch of young, swaggering, sculpted German models who had the ladies at my bar table swooning (and the grudging admiration of us gentlemen). The sweeper-keeper Manuel Neuer, the diminutive but dominant Philipp Lahm, the mercurial Mesut Özil, a bruising and bloodied Bastian Schweinsteiger, on the floor yet again. Mats Hummels upped his stock with a superb performance, Tomas Müller scored enough to make people forget his flopping, and Miroslav Klose wrote his way into the history books by surpassing Ronaldo on the all-time goals list, yet another indignity at the expense of Brazil. The crowning moment, however, belongs to Götze, the baby-faced Bayern Munich boy (he’s 22!) who will live in football fame forever. It was a triumph for a great footballing nation, a triumph for lively and attacking football, and also for Götze, who might have himself a northern Minnesota doppelganger when I finally get around to getting a haircut this week.

karl and mario

I can dream, can’t I? And sorry about the mate, Mario; I have some loyalty to all my Latin American countries after spending so much time studying them as an undergrad.