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If you´re a long-term reader here on Forza Futbol you know that of the topics that I return to frequently is the topic of the great Argentine coach Cesar ¨El Flaco¨ Menotti is one of the closest ones I hold to heart. I had heard of football before Menotti, but until I saw his Argentina squad play it just hadn´t registered. I´m Cuban, born in La Habana and I live in the United States. Baseball is in my blood from birth and was fostered in exile. Soccer was just not talked about unless you were recently arrived, but at night we saw news in Spanish on SIN in Los Ángeles and we saw highlights and we saw matches. That´s where, during Argentina 78, I was watching the sight of a tall, lanky, chain-smoking Argentine, in a dapper blue suit with wide lapels and flaired pants. He beat Holland, and while I knew no Argentines at the time, I rooted his team on because of some implied cultural brotherhood. I followed his career. I knew he had coached Maradona at Barcelona and Jorge Valdano with Argentina. I also knew that he had never regained the heights that he had. His career, seen by some as a sort of brilliant failure, his tactics, somewhat quaint and outmoded in this day and age. He´s a footballing romantic left behind in this cynically corporate brand of modern football. Which is why I find him interesting. Recently, Luis Martin, in an excellent article in El Pais, interviewed him from his home in Buenos Aires. Let me give you some highlights.
He lives in the center of Buenos Aires in a cold flat with no heat, and suffering the pangs of a life-time of smoking after his doctors had made him quit. His cigarettes are like a friend who has died. Life cannot ever be normal and so he thinks constantly of football foremost of all the things that have been taken away.
On Football: Football is three things: time, space and deception. But there are times these days where spaces are not searched and I am never deceived. I get bored in such a way that I have this feeling that what they call football today is something else entirely. I say that 99.9% of the coaches live envying the Barcelona game. Everyone would like to be Guardiola. But most do not know how.
On Guardiola: his (success) is the product of training, with clear ideas, to make himself be understood and win his players over. It is clear that Guardiola is more important than his players. He says the opposite, of course what is he going to say! Am I the best? He doesn´t believe it. But let's review, who was Piqué before Guardiola, who was Pedro, who was Busquets? Iniesta was not even starting, his place up for debate. Now they are a phenomenon.
On the players: it is a lie that Guardiola is Guardiola because of the players he has. He has had Eto'o, Henry, Ibra, and now Villa up front and on the left he´s used four or five players. He´s used Mascherano as a central defender. Guardiola is very serious and it gives me a tremendous envy, too.
On Cruyff: I am not in agreement that it was Cruyff who started it all. The first who tried to play like Guardiola´s Barcelona was Menotti. And it killed me. They whistled at us because we made too many passes! I do not know if there was another one before me, but I played with Maradona as a 9, similar to Messi nowadays, Carrasco and Marcos on the wings, Schuster where Xavi plays, and we would go into the locker room in a scoreless draw, and the players would be in such a mood! "We can not play this way," they would say.
On why he left Barcelona: My mom died and democracy returned to Argentina and I felt I should be there. I had lunch with (President) Núñez and he put a blank check and asked me what players I wanted to make me stay. And I told him I did not want any, that what I wanted was to sell the big players and that they were hindering the rise of the youth teamers.
On returning to coaching: I would return, but not here (in Argentina). I see a pitch and I am as a musician who sees a guitar. But not here, not at all. Sometimes I see the Barcelona youth team, I see them on television and I think: "I could assemble a team like that and win here, but the players would last me six months, the president would sell half the team under 16 years of age. It is a shame.
On an Argentine Guardiola: No they wouldn´t let him exist. What we have here are Mourinhos or people like him, those that only think of winning and when they lose it isn´t their fault. Recently a friend went to Spain and attended on of Mou´s trainings. He also went to see Pep. He said they do not train so different, but in the field, in the hour of truth they have nothing to do with each other.
On Messi: I think there were four kings and the fifth has not appeared. Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff and Maradona. We are now awaiting the fifth, which may be Messi, so far he is the closest, but you're not going to give the crown to him after five years.
In the end it is sad. A old man left to count his bitterness. A wounded romantic left to his cynicism. Much of what Menotti says you need to take with a grain of salt, but he is certainly not someone you can ignore. He is probably still too touched by Núñez and Cruyff to admit that he might have been over his head at Barça. He also forgets Rinus Michels and the influence that entire Ajax/Clockwork Orange school of Total Football had on developing the style of football at Barça. But he's right about a lot of things. The key to playing like Pep Guardiola's side isn't just finding the right players. You need the right coach. It takes a certain kind of courage to play on attack and coaches today have lost it. Messi might have bought into it, but it's Checho Batista that needs to internalize it and own it and he hasn't or can't.
Without Menotti, best friend of Pele, World Cup winner and idealogue, you don't have the Barcelona we see today. We might only be stuck listening to people who think that there is only one way, that the ends justify the means, and that winning is everything and while that may be important, it isn't the only thing.
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