With the change and advancement of the opening match, As of this Friday, there are only 100 days left before the start of the Qatar 2022 World Cup. FIFA’s decision this Thursday to finally open the tournament with a match for the host team -as is customary- caused the countdown to shorten while waiting for the match between Qatar and Gustavo Alfaro’s Ecuador. next November 20.
And meanwhile, as if to liven up the wait, the director of national teams of the AFA, César Luis Menotti, recalled today how his first meeting with Lionel Scaloni waswhen the champion trainer of America last year did not yet have the position.
“The truth when Claudio Tapia (president of the AFA) told me regarding Lionel Scaloni, I was scared to the meeting, because I didn’t know him. I was scared when I first met and that’s why I came to that meeting worried. As I say this, I also assure you that I did not like it when they offered him a contract of only five months, although later I understood that there was time. The merit of the election belongs to Tapia, not mine,” said el Flaco.
The DT of the National Team at the World Cups in Argentina 1978 and Spain 1982 continued: “In the first meeting I had with Tapia, where we still didn’t have a coach, there were some words that made me think we were on the right track.”
“He told me ‘you have to get people back with the National Team’. That phrase led me to lunch with the current National Team coaching staff and I heard the same thing. That’s when I realized we were on the right track. The objective was that: to recover the people and that we are quite united”, recalled Menotti in an interview with Villa Trinidad radio.
Menotti doesn’t want to play with Brazil either
Facing Qatar, where the Argentina will debut on Tuesday, November 22 (at 7 in the morning) once morest Saudi Arabiael Flaco announced that he will make the “effort” and will not miss the chance to be on the date.
In turn, Menotti asked not to play the pending match with Brazil, as determined by FIFA, because it is an “uncomfortable” rival for this moment. “With Brazil, if you play, you are going to compete and you are not going to rehearse. The truth is that you have to save your energy for the World Cup”he claimed.
“Messi doesn’t know how to play badly”
The former Rosario Central, Racing and Boca midfielder, 82, also praised the team captain, as usual: “Messi, even if he wants to, never plays badly. Even if he wants to play badly, he can’t. It’s the only thing Messi can’t do: play badly. Let’s imagine that he enters the court predisposed to play very badly, but when he enters the court and the ball is at his feet, he cannot give it to the opponents.
“I always expect the best from him. In this National Team commitment is guaranteed for their game. They are not going to leave their football and Messi is very important: he is more mature, he does not feel the weight of the comments. None sell smoke “, he valued.
The difference between Tapia and Grondona
On the other hand, the former DT of Newell’s, Boca, River, Independiente and Huracán -among many others- assured that there is no “common ground” between Tapia and Julio Humberto Grondona, who died in 2014 following 35 years at the head of the AFA , although he later clarified: “The Grondona I knew, who managed Independiente, had the humility of the neighborhood and the other Grondona was devoured by success. After ’90 he felt like the owner of the world. Tapia has everything: it has a neighborhood, it has a street, it has the ability to understand, often hidden, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have character”.
