Cesar Menotti hospitalized

This weekend Atletico Madrid forward Kun Aguero took time out of his busy schedule to send a twitter message of all things. "Fuerza César! Mis deseos de recuperación para el Flaco Menotti." Strength to you Cesar, wishes for your recovery, for el Flaco (The Thin Man) Menotti. It was a strange interaction until you realize that the young striker, son-in-law to Diego Armando Maradona played for the legendary coach in 2005 while at Independiente de Avellaneda.

Menotti had gone into the hospital on Friday complaining of respiratory problems and was admitted in grave-condition, immediately taken to surgery, and operated on with an undisclosed respiratory ailment. The latest results are that he is out of intensive care and resting in a common room, but that a nodule was biopsied from his right lung for further tests.

The 72 year old chain-smoking Menotti is best known for leading Argentina to the 1978 World Cup, but his legacy is mixed both on-and-off the field. He played for Boca Juniors and with his friend Pele at Santos of Brasil. He coached Barcelona with Diego Maradona and Atletico de Madrid with Hugo Sanchez, but he never became the sort of coach that such an early promise foretold. He muddled through years in his native Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Uruguay, and even Italy. He won his share of domestic silverware, but it seems he carried the 1978 World Cup around his neck like an albatross and there are some who feel that he could have done more, symbol of the leftist intelligentsia that he was, to resist the military junta as thousands of his fellow countrymen disappeared.

And yet, he has still left a legacy far greater than his own. He believed in attacking football first and foremost and that there was a higher purpose to a footballer's life. "Our football belongs to the working class and has the size, nobility and generosity to allow everyone to enjoy it as a spectacle. " If he sounds like Jorge Valdano, it's because Valdano is one of his most devoted pupils. "To be a footballer", Menotti once said, " means being a privileged interpreter of the feelings and dreams of thousands of people."

In the Machiavellian world that we live in, that cares more for the result and the silverware, over style and panache, there are sadly few coaches that bear the banner of Menotti. Talented footballers spend so much of their time keeping other footballers from playing the game, denying their attacking instincts, denying their affinity with the ball even, that in comparison, Menotti's football seems quaint or naive, from another time.

It might well be, but I'm old too, and I get nostalgic for the world I grew up in and the football I remember. I was 12 years old when Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 and the thin gentleman with the long hair and the cigarette in his mouth was imminently cool. Their football was electric. The mustaches, the mullets, and the short-shorts, there are somethings that were better in my time, even if the cigarettes weren't.

All the best to one of my footballing heroes: "Fuerza César! Mis deseos de recuperación para el Flaco Menotti."