Diego Maradona’s coaching credentials will be put to a stern test when his team face Germany at Cape Town. The biggest name in modern football hasn’t felt the heat at the dugout so far in the tournament but Saturday will be a different day.
Germany are the real deal and Maradona has to make the right decisions at the right time to prevent Argentina from crashing out at the quarterfinal stage in successive World Cups.
Maradona isn’t a thinking coach. He lives by his instincts. Maradona takes pride that he is not dictated by the cold calculations of a trained coach.
His managerial methods ever since he took over the reins of Argentina midway through the qualification campaign haven’t been convincing. Maradona didn’t seem to have a defined coaching philosophy. He called up more than 100 players during the qualifiers.
His preference for Sebastian Veron over Juan Riquelme in midfield confounded critics. Maradona did appear to be perilously close to cracking when Argentina faced the threat of not qualifying for the event in South Africa. But, the worst fears of Argentinian fans didn’t come true as the Albiceleste managed to sneak in. And Maradona survived to fight another day.
Maradona’s magnetism has reduced his team’s performance to a sideshow in South Africa. Every word and every gesture of the architect of Argentina’s World Cup triumph in 1986 is news here.
Maradona has transformed dreary press conferences into thrill-a-minute dramas. When asked about his public show of affection to his players after the South Korea match, he paused for seconds and replied, “I still prefer women.”
Maradona may have stopped kicking a ball around 15 years ago but his popularity hasn’t waned a bit. It takes something to outshine Lionel Messi these days.