Maradona's Argentina are on their way to the World Cup in a cloud of dust like Bugs Bunny's Tasmanian Devil
By Martin Samuel
Don Corleone would make an offer you couldn't refuse. In the depths of the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo, the Godfather of Argentine football, Diego Maradona, made one it was all too easy to turn down.
'You can all,' he told the assembly of waiting press men, 'suck my ****.'
He extended that invitation several times in the next 15 minutes, collectively and, on one occasion, to a hapless figure reporting live and direct to camera for his television network, individually, too. Maradona did first apologise for his language to the two girls flanking him to promote sponsors Coca-Cola, who incongruously maintained their transfixed smiles throughout, creating a surreal montage of human expression.
There was El Diego, contemptuous, snarling, a gang of minders and pals bristling ominously to his right, and either side two human mannequins, grinning inanely as their commercial masters had ordered, the occasional flicker of their eyes the only indication that this gig was no longer panning out like the brochure. There were several fellatio-related opportunities for journalists after, certainly a licking option was discussed, as well as a call to kiss Maradona somewhere entirely different for those who didn't want to join the queue at the front.
And through it all, the thought of Fabio Capello's stony stare and curt refusal to engage, kept returning. We presume that many teams have qualified for the World Cup in the sanguine manner of England. The odd few, we know, have endured a little local difficulty but all's well that ends well. Yet Argentina, for instance, are approaching the tournament like the swirling cloud of dust that contained the Tasmanian Devil in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
'We will go to South Africa through the front gate,' Maradona cried defiantly, while the mental image of many in the room was of a bus careering out of control, smashing those gates down before speeding over a cliff on the other side.
Argentina did not play well against Uruguay, but did the job with another late win through a substitute, this time Mario Bolatti of Huracan, a club from the Parque Patricios suburb of Buenos Aires.
'There is nothing to celebrate here,' said Juan Sebastian Veron after the game. 'Argentine football is rotten from the president down.'
Maradona took that comment in his stride, joking that maybe Veron wanted to be president himself, and that he was one of the senior players for the country and what he had to say was important. Veron, however, was not among the four that Maradona announced would definitely be going to the World Cup.
These were Javier Mascherano, his captain - 'Argentina is Mascherano and 10 others,' he said - the Newcastle United winger turned right-back Jonas Gutierrez, Bolatti and the hero of the win over Peru, Martin Palermo. Bolatti and Palermo did not even start the match with Uruguay and Gutierrez played only because Pablo Zabaleta of Manchester City was injured against Aston Villa and Maradona refused to select a replacement in a fit of pique.
Yet, this is Argentina's man. He lives in the moment. The four players definitely going to the World Cup are the last four to do him a favour. It would be like Capello naming Peter Crouch but not Wayne Rooney, Wayne Bridge but not Ashley Cole. Much of the past week has been about whether the greatest players will reach the greatest international stage, yet, now many of those issues are resolved, the question becomes whether they will look great when they get there.
Cristiano Ronaldo, so prolific for Real Madrid and Manchester United, did not score a goal in Portugal's progress to the European sector play-offs and now faces a battle to be fit for a tie that will be tough without him.
Lionel Messi, meanwhile, is sure to go with Argentina, but on the Montevideo evidence of his performance against Uruguay - and many others - Maradona has somehow turned him into a little man who does a lot of running. If the greatest footballer in the world was present in Montevideo he was surely in disguise.
Cesar Menotti, coach of Argentina's World Cup winning team of 1978, said that Messi is required to play a different way than is familiar at Barcelona. 'Strategy in Barcelona is in the hands of Andres Iniesta, Xavi and Yaya Toure,' said Menotti.
'Messi is the one who completes the move, yet with Argentina he has to do everything. The team run around a lot because they are playing badly. They do not have a functioning team, They have not had the time to find the unity and collective play.
'This is football, not a marathon. Messi plays for Barcelona but runs for Argentina. The team has not had a coach for a long time because all the best players are in Europe and that makes it hard. It is difficult to play when the musicians are in Rome and the conductor is in Buenos Aires.'
Excuses, excuses. This is the complication because, the hated commentators aside, so much criticism of Argentina's poor show in qualifying is tempered because the man in charge is El Diego. There were those who thought Argentina might have benefited more from sitting this one out and a time of reflection.
No chance of that now. Maradona was still coy when asked about his future, saying he would sit down with the president of the Asociacion Argentina de Football, Julio Grondona. Yet, moments later, he was making statements that suggested if this conversation did not go well he would then have to be dragged from office by his earrings (which is probably how it will end at some date anyway).
'For the ones that treated me like s***, that did not believe in us, we are going to the World Cup and we did it like men,' he said. 'My daughters have been telling me who criticised me and who did not, who was a son of a bi*ch and who was not. What I can tell you is that I am the head of this group and we are all going to the World Cup.
'The people can say what they like, I got the substitutions right. They were saying the players make a mountain of money, earn big wages and they are lazy, but we sweated to get to South Africa and everything we planned in the dressing- room they did on the pitch.
'They consecrated me as a coach today, they made me feel like a real coach, because of their endeavours. We qualified on merit. I was treated like dirt, but we qualified with honour.'
And if this is something of a rose-tinted view of a game in which Uruguay played all the football but lacked the world-class cutting edge, then the consolation is that Maradona now has eight months to give Argentina back its mojo in the form of Messi.
If he can do that, they have the technical smarts and the players to be a team worth watching, if only for the spectacle of the inevitable crash as Maradona's bronca (a slang word for anger, an insatiable desire for revenge) takes over again.
Not that Maradona was alone in his journey to the edge. There was tension, even among those managers and teams that had already qualified. Marcello Lippi, coach of Italy, pushed a journalist and a camera crew and rounded on the fans after coming from two down against Cyprus to win 3-2 thanks to a late hat-trick by Alberto Gilardino.
Lippi played his shadow XI but was disgusted when supporters called the names of those left out after the game initially went against them. 'They were calling "go to work", they were calling for the other players as soon as we ran out onto the pitch. Are these people crazy?' asked Lippi. 'It's easy to shout "Italy, Italy" later, but my players deserve respect. We are world champions and we qualified mathematically with a game to spare. It is a shame.'
The only debate in England surrounds whether a player can be man of the match in 32 minutes. Germany, meanwhile, having qualified with an outstanding victory in Russia, were being whistled by their fans for drawing 1-1 with Finland.
The fear was that many of the best players - Messi, Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, Michael Ballack - would not make it to South Africa but, gradually, that is receding.
Germany and Argentina are already there, while FIFA's late decision to seed the European play-off draw was clearly made with a panicked eye on the fortunes of some of the major players.
So, on one side, France, Portugal, Russia and Greece, on the other Slovenia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Ireland. It will still not be easy, particularly if Ukraine decide to take matters to that charming venue in Dnipropetrovsk.
Portugal will be sweating on getting Ronaldo back, too, although the continued emergence of a goalscorer in Liedson - even if he did not find the net in the 4-0 win over Malta - is beginning to relieve the pressure on the coach, Carlos Queiroz. So far, the odd casualties are not major - Czech Republic, Turkey, Croatia - and nine places remain unclaimed.
Uruguay should defeat Costa Rica over two legs, while Bahrain and New Zealand are tied 0-0 with the return in Auckland next month.
There are three African places to be decided: Cameroon must win to stay ahead of Gabon in Group A, Tunisia need a final victory to edge out Nigeria in Group B, while a draw will be enough to give Algeria Group C ahead of Egypt.
It is not known whether any more sons of bitches will be invited to suck it, kiss it, lick it, or take a right-hander from Marcello Lippi, but one thing can be guaranteed: it is a World Cup and Diego Maradona says he is going to be there, so it will not be light on entertainment.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1220735/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Maradonas-Argentina-way-World-Cup-cloud-dust-like-Bugs-Bunnys-Tasmanian-Devil.html
