Revenge
July 1st, 14 years ago; Copa America semi-final in Ecuador.
Argentina national team led by Alfio Basile faced one of our most regular opponents - Columbia.
With names like Valderrama, Rincón and Asprilla, the Columbian team was not to be taken lightly, especially since we had only managed to draw them during group stage.
After 120 minutes of hard fought battle, score remained 0-0. Then Argentina prevailed in PSO by a narrow margin of 1 goal, and we all felt very lucky.
Little did we know, that was prelude to the darkest era of Argentine football.
2 month later, Argentina hosted its last regional qualification match for World Cup 1994, against again, Columbia. Our foes who Basile is still calling "Barbarians" came that day, and hammered us into a 5-0 defeat. Forced the Albicelestes to a playoff against Australia...
Then desperate Basile called up Diego, and we all know what happened after that...
Albicelestes had not won any senior level trophy since the 93' Copa.
14 years later. Today, our fate once again lay in the hands of Alfio Basile, and his NT is again facing Columbia.
On July 2nd when we meet Columbia, we need to crush them not just to gain entry to 2nd round of Copa. We are seeking revenge for the painful 5-0 that had haunted us for 14 years!
Argentina is going to have NO MERCY!
Columbia plays possession football, offensive football. In their previous match against Paraguay, they started a 4-3-1-2 which was later modified into 4-2-2-2 (Boca's Torres for Dominguez), then finally into 3-5-2 (Independiente's Marin for Racing fullback Arizala). They had good possession through out the match, but the Paraguayan 8 men defense (3 backline defenders, 2 wingbacks, 3 holding midfielders) proved to be just too difficult to penetrate.
Then each time Paraguay counter attacked, Columbian defender would have a brain fart and allow Santa Cruz through... The Barbarians got burnt 5 times by counter attacks, showing very poor discipline in the backfield.
However Argentina cannot play like the Paraguayans. Or our boys will be criticized even if they win 5-0. We must play possessional football, and play better possessional football than the Columbians. We must fight them in the middle and down in their home turf! We must pound the ball in and destroy their wills to resist. Columbia desperately needs 3 points. Let's give them none and sent them home.
We have the most amazing set of players in today's international football, offensive possessional football against Columbian Barbarians is the only way for our players to prove they're worthy of the Albiceleste on them.
4-3-1-2 gogo!
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515
That's how much this Argentine national team worth. 515 million US$.
To translate such quantity into quality, that's what Basile is paid to do.
3 comments:
Rio,
How do you arrive at the $ worth for the players ? I have been confused about player salaries in football since I started following football heavily about 3 years ago. For example, "transfer fees", agent commissions, etc. Trying to increase my football knowledge base.:)
By their transfer fee or buyout clause. Transfer fee is paid by the buyer to the seller. For the most part, transfer fees goes to the club.
salary is what the player gets paid for, besides endorsements from commercial agents.
buyout clause is usually a pricetag higher than the player's transfer fee, set forward by its owner club to prevent competitions from buying the player. Players ultimately decide where they go. But in order to leave teams whom they had signed buyout clause with, the buying club has to pay the buyout clause price, or negotiate some kind of deal...
so in a way these figures are overestimations. Very rarely would teams pay the buyout clause in full to get a player. Also some of these players had aged since their last transfer, and their current transfer fee might not worth as much as when they were younger. Heinze for example, KOP wanted to buy him for 5 million GBP, less than what manU paid for him.
btw, If liverpool end up buying mascher, his pricetag goes up to at least 17m GBP.
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