Diego Maradonna: neither victim, nor hero

Thank God Diego Maradonna didn’t win the World Cup.

A powerful notion that I have quite vocally mentioned in the past has been dispelled. It takes more than inspiration to win a World Cup. It takes organization and meticulous preparation. It is not a job that any layman can do. It is not a role that any unqualified ruffian can simply assume and achieve success because he believes in his team. It is more than that. Amen.

Diego Maradonna is now living proof of that fact, yet the Argentinian Footballing Association (AFA) are looking to bring him back for a new 4 year contract. Ladies and gentlemen, all sanity has exited stage left if what we are hearing is true. Or maybe something far more sinister is afoot; Politics.

Often ignored and swept under the rug are the issues that plague sporting bodies' abilities to pick the best teams. Every national team selection includes a series of personal motivations for selectors, under the table deals and mutual back scratching exercises. This is one of the ugliest sides of the sport, one that is often not well publicized because it cannot easily be proven, seeing it as though national teams only are allowed one entry into each tournament, not an A team and a B team. So how would we ever know who really deserved to be there?

The other often ignored area of world sport is the political blame game that ensues after a team loses and is on its way back home. Gone are the days when mere rotten tomatoes were enough to silently protest hurt feelings and broken dreams. In a world of mass communication we are actually in a situation where jobs change hands hours after the flight home lands and people go out of their way to ruin individuals they feel chose poorly or incorrectly for the rest of their professional careers.

Argentina has a legacy of teams that raised the national expectation only to disappoint, especially in the world of football. The truth is, the Argentines really aren’t as good as they think they are or want to be, but which man wants to tell his own people that?

The answer is no one does. What ensues after each disappointment is a blame game involving resignations and severance payments. The Argentinian Football Association have found somewhat of a loophole in the system. His name happens to be Diego Maradonna and he is the ultimate scapegoat.

The Federation has to figure that the usual ire directed at them for losing the World Cup was soaked up by a crying Diego Maradonna rather effectively. So much so, that giving the people what they want in him as the coach of Argentina all over again should trump what is best for the nations football side, especially if it means they all get to keep their jobs. In my opinion, truer words could not have been spoken about a situation from a neutral perspective and while I am sure our token Argentinian fan who reads the blog has all but deleted it from his favorites, I like to think that many but not all of us learn early that the truth hurts the most sometimes.

The tragedy in all of this, is that Diego Maradonna is being used but knowingly, I am sure, for his own pig headed ambitions and is prepared to deal with the consequences. The tragedy part comes in when one realizes that he is deeply committed to this cause and his intentions are genuine, despite his inability to deliver the goods which is really not for him to determine. He is neither a victim nor a hero. Just an overconfident idiot that isn’t qualified enough to win a World Cup. Plain and simple.

While I do believe that there is a silver lining in every bad decision like the one that involves trying to extend Maradonna’s contract, I cannot take full credit for having pointed it out. That honor belongs to none other than a fellow blogger on The Offside Trap who coined the sentence that should shake a nation. “If Maradonna is re-appointed, it will only serve to prove once and for all that the Argentinian Football Association is a worse run organization than the Pakistani Cricket Board (PCB). Wait, your not one of those idiots that thinks Football is immune to Murphy’s Law, are you?”

Words that will live, in infamy.

This post features on The Offside Trap.