That apartment, back in time, but full of magic, had been emptier than ever. 5th A on Paraguay Street, César Luis Menotti‘s bunker has always been there. The noise from downtown filtered through the window, and the always-low blinds gave it an even more taciturn appearance. While Menotti, who died this Sunday at the age of 85, stood, everyone passed by. Almost a liturgy path, a processional appointment. The walls were covered with photos of him with Borges, Cruyff, Pelé, Pedernera, Platini… From a corner he guarded a mural of Che Guevara. The tube television was a relic that got in the way in the middle of old furniture. Above that television, a photo frame: he and Maradona, chatting, each sitting on a ball.
Always with his shirt outside his jeans, he would sprawl out on a rickety armchair and give himself up to chatting. No more cigarettes because he had left them years ago. The Tango ball, half deflated, went from one foot to the other while he caught with his story. One day, Menotti told LA NACION: “When I listen to some coaches I want to start a school…, yes a school. They let themselves be trapped by this cheap modernism that imposes that everything now is better and everything from before was useless…” And he set up a school for coaches, He opened it in April 2018. Together with his son César Mario in the organization, and with teacher Fernando Signorini and Rubén Rossi in the pedagogical fabric, he dedicated a lot of time in his last years to it. He was passionate about transmitting an idea. As he had always done.
He felt comfortable in the past, a bandoneon complaint was the cell phone ringtone. With their 85 years, he renounced discussions about the value of time. “Old? Of course, it also sounds old to talk about Osvaldo Pugliese, Homero Expósito, Yupanqui, Goyeneche…, but I would like you to listen to them…”, he challenged. Memory always accompanied him: he recited formations from memory, proud. He remembered that, in his childhood in Rosario, Knowing about football gave status on the neighborhood corner. “You couldn’t not know a player, you were embarrassed to ask who So-and-So was” he repeated. And he insulted, a lot. And she put an accent on it, so that each word resonated.
But he also smiled. And more than many could imagine. When he remembered how his friends bitched him for not taking Maradona to the ’78 World Cup. When he remembered that ‘Pelado’ Grillo had received him smoking at his first training camp as a player in the national team. When he remembered that Di Stéfano always gave him the same warning: ‘One Argentine saves you, two help you and three get you fired.’ And one name lit up his face: Pep Guardiola. “I always say, ‘this idiot is going to screw up’ when I see him try something different…, and no, every time he ends up being right,” he explained with admiration.
If creating the coaching school mobilized him, In January 2019, another recognition arrived: Claudio Tapia’s AFA hired him as director of national teams. He felt valued, it felt like vindication: he returned to the national team after December 1982, when he had left. But he was not fooled either, he knew that Tapia, who genuinely admired him, was buying back and protection. Shortly before, the AFA had confirmed Lionel Scaloni in the position, and then elected a manager. As strange as it is contradictory. Menotti maintained a cordial relationship with Scaloni and his coaching staff, especially with Pablo César Aimar. Yes, Caesar for Menotti. He supported Scaloni, he defended him. He respected his vitality, his enthusiasm, he agreed after the 2019 Copa América in Brazil to extend his contract until Qatar 2022. He never marked his inexperience as a disadvantage. He even supported him, despite the fact that some of Scaloni’s football preferences were very far from the menottismo: “I don’t want to have the ball in vain, but to attack. The important thing is that the player understands that when he recovers the ball, he recovers it to attack and not for the possession itself,” Scaloni once described, almost as a description of soccer principles.
Between 2017 and 2019, before Covid, he had recovered the scene. He was no longer ‘banned’. Accessed interviews on signals historically enemies (Fox) and even spoke with journalists from the opposite side, like Fernando Niembro. The month after his appointment as director of selections, he was the godfather of an undertaking that once again described his sensibilities: the creation of the Villas Unidas Club, son of a meeting between his coaching school and a group of 17 social organizations that have been working for a long time in towns and popular neighborhoods of the Capital and Greater Buenos Aires. “The ball runs in the neighborhoods as an instrument so that a child can express himself without any other distinction than the joy of playing and, of course, the determination to win,” he said on the Excursionistas field, that February 2019.
Menotti remained close in the dialogue with Scaloni – he greatly respected Ayala and Samuel’s careers as footballers -, he passed by the Ezeiza property a few times and never traveled with the national team. He was close to joining in the middle of the 2019 Copa América in Brazil, but checkups or intestinal setbacks prevented him from joining the delegation. He proposed not to invade functions, but sometimes he spoke with his own names, without trying to influence anyone. Before the end of 2019, in a private sphere, of course, he let it slip that I sniffed that Messi would extend his career a lot. And with the bar so high, the path to the sunset would still be bright.
This time, unlike what had happened in the 70s, there was no revolution or paradigm shift. Despite himself, Menotti became convinced that the national team was not a priority for Argentine clubs. And that the AFA would not rebel enough either. Earlier than desired, he abandoned his idea of having all the presidents sign, at a meeting of the Executive Committee, a commitment document to give up the footballers when the national team summoned them. It was impracticable. But not only because of the tight schedules, but also because of the managerial pettiness, the internal struggles, between hypocrisies and betrayals. He also retreated from his old desire to form a local team. He perceived that the leaders only ran after portions of power.
If the environment was so hostile, why had Menotti decided to stay? He knew that he was facing the last sporting challenge of his life and he was motivated by a last wish, almost an obsession: recovering the closeness between the team and the public. Renew the sense of belonging, popular adhesion. True to his words in the presentation: “I continue dreaming about a selection of people. For a long time, and for different reasons, that relationship weakened. There was no space to fortify that idea,” he noted on January 25, 2019, on the Ezeiza property. That challenge captured him. And he was happy, very happy, for the Qatar title, of course. But much more for the largest popular celebration in memory. The national team and the street, the everyman, had finally met again.
Always on fire, he unleashed some controversies through his column in the Catalan newspaper Sport. Sometimes, with somewhat inappropriate descriptions in his position as sports director of national teams. He wrote until August 2020. He had his position on some issues very defined. The VAR? This is how he explained it to LA NACION: “The technology used in football is useless. Because there is a judge, and if he screws up, let him screw up. How many goals in the history of football are disputed if the ball hit behind the line? Three five? And how many goals became history? Seventy-seven million goals!! Well, crazy, if it’s your turn in a World Cup it’s screwed…, but it’s screwed if there are five minutes left, otherwise I have the whole game to show you that I’m better. Don’t screw around anymore! It’s crazy how long it takes them to review plays. It was goal and goal, period. Like Diego’s goal against the English: What do they want? Say it was by hand? Go wash your ass, this is a game and it’s mischief…”
He did not fall into the journalistic trap of talking about Bilardo. He was careful not to even name it. But he recognized that ’86 had been a good team, and sometimes he repeated a little-known fact: they had taken the coaching course together. Given Bilardo’s illness, at the end of 2018 he distanced himself from the historical differences: “My deep desire is for him to move forward. He is a football man, I have been at his house and I want him to be well,” he said.
Menotti had been suffering from cancer for years and the coronavirus pandemic confined him. A lot, then it was difficult for him to get out. Between kinesiology sessions, care for several urinary infections and some home accidents, he practically stopped seeing him. He only heard it on some radio output. He reappeared briefly with the death of Diego Maradona: “I can’t believe it, it’s terrible. I have no explanation, a lot of pain. There is no opinion that is useful in this regard, I have no head. “I’m destroyed,” said the man who, in 1977, made the Ten debut in the national team. And Menotti returned to silence. The famous Wednesday dinners, a gathering of friends created by Menotti himself 40 years ago, had also lost their dynamic. There were almost no early mornings. ‘Cito’, the nickname of that kid from Fisherton, had started the trip. He had never cared about the weather. His was eternity..