Unpredictable Maradona not retained as Coach of Argentina
Diego Maradona was one of the strangest yet most brilliant picks to be Argentina’s coach during the 2010 World Cup. He was the most flamboyant and energetic coach that the world had seen for many years. Prior to the World Cup, he went through almost one hundred players to finally come up with his final team. With him at the helm, Argentina was being picked to win the tournament but they fell horribly to a very strong German side. After the crushing defeat Maradona had said that he did not want to continue as coach of the team. But then reports came in that he was being offered a deal. Finally yesterday it was learnt that Maradona will not be retained as the coach.
Maradona made the World Cup very enjoyable to watch for a lot of fans. His on pitch antics were matched by his off pitch behaviour and his brilliant statements to the press. He was such an enigmatic character that he managed to take the limelight away from his team and push all of the media’s attention onto himself. He ran over a cameraman’s foot, could be seen jumping around on the touchline and once showed off a pair of sunglasses that his daughter had bought him as a father’s day present. Besides all of this craziness, he turned out to be a pretty good coach who inspired his players and brought a sense of enthusiasm to his whole team.
He made himself a very solid part of his team and became one with his players. People who loved him for his antics were also impressed by his coaching ability and his unpredictable style of coaching. Besides the fact that he seemed like the one coach out there who actually united Argentina and brought out the best in his players, his team formations on pitch were very interesting as well. In a match against Nigeria which Argentina won 1-0, Maradona had six players in his starting 11 who were attackers or play makers. Not a lot of coaches would have the confidence to do something crazy like that. But Maradona is crazy, so he had no problem with a strategy such as that. The strategy seemed to have paid off as well with Argentina winning that match.
After Argentina’s disastrous exit from the cup losing 4-0 to Germany, Maradona had stated that he was going to step down as coach of the team. But it seemed that he was not to blame completely for that devastating loss and it was actually a bad call by one of his assistants that led the inexperienced Maradona to make a few bad decisions. There were rumours that he would be asked to stay on after he met with Argentine Football Association president Julio Grondona. The talk going around was that Maradona would be asked to remain as coach until the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Then the meeting with Julio Grondona took place yesterday and the news was not good for the fiery little super coach. Reportedly a deal was offered for the next four years but a condition was placed by Maradona that he wanted to retain his entire back staff as well. Since one of his assistants at the World Cup had made some bad decisions, the Federation wanted to remove this assistant. But Maradona’s insistence to keep the entire back staff apparently resulted in a breakdown in talks and the offer was revoked. Maradona was not offered the job in the end and he walked away from the meeting not becoming the coach of Argentina for the next four years. In his place, current Under-20 boss Sergio Batista will take over temporarily as coach of the national side.
A lot of fans had wanted to see the superstar of Argentinean football lead his team to glory at the next World Cup. They felt that with his crazy antics and amazing ability to unite his team coupled with some more experience, Maradona would be the perfect coach. But alas it was not meant to be and we all will now have to wait and see what the new coach can do to revive the South American country’s glory in football, whoever he may be.
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