Nicolás Otamendi, 34, cracks a smile when a TV journalist reminds him, as he leaves the Al Rayyan stadium, that this “could be the year”.
“Hopefully,” he says, before continuing his walk to the bus after beating Australia in the Round of 16.
Seconds later, when a FIFA official almost hugged him to stop in front of print media reporters, he shrugged off the request without ceremony, as if the person in front of him didn’t exist. The employee looked at the advisor of the AFA (Argentine Football Association), who shrugged. He was like saying ‘Otamendi is just like that’.
He is not the first to notice this.
“On the field, he’s an animal. Outside of it, he’s a stuffed animal. It’s a beauty, turn off my iPad, cover me, it’s beautiful to see. Then he takes you on the field and murders you”, he stated, with clear fun, midfielder Rodrigo De Paul, roommate of the defender in the team’s concentration, at the University of Qatar.
Other colleagues of Otamendi, in the past, have said similar things. Uruguayan Darwin Sánchez confessed to hating his new teammate when he arrived at Benfica, from Portugal. In a few months they were best friends.
“He is someone who goes to fight with you at all times, without fear. He is a total warrior”, he said.
In his likely last career World Cup (like Messi), the defender has scores to settle. It’s the tournament where he was once slaughtered, surprisingly forgotten, and part of a historic fiasco. In 2022, in Qatar, he hopes that everything will finally work out.
“We are living a very happy moment, improving more and more, step by step, but it is still nothing. There is much more to fight for”, he said after the result that defined the confrontation against the Netherlands, next Friday (9), through the quarterfinals.
Fighting is a common verb for anyone who practiced boxing as a child, before being discovered by Vélez Sarsfield’s youth team. It was for the team that he was called to the first World Cup, in South Africa, in 2010. He ended up massacred by the press in his country after the 4-0 defeat against Germany, in the quarterfinals.
It doesn’t matter that coach Diego Maradona chose him as a right winger, a position he had never played for the national team.
Guardiola agrees with the view that Otamendi goes to battle every time he steps onto the pitch. He defined him as the greatest competitor he has ever seen in his life. The coach managed him at Manchester City between 2015 and 2020. He says he saw him perform with 20 stitches in his leg, with a busted ankle… He called him a superman.
He was a name considered certain on the list of 23 summoned by Alejandro Sabella for the World Cup in Brazil, in 2014. He was left out, in a surprising decision. He did not participate in the campaign in which the selection reached the final and was defeated again by Germany.
Reinstated in the national squad from 2015, he was a starter in Russia-2018, when the team fell apart during the World Cup, struggled through the group stage and ended up falling against France in the round of 16.
If football gives Lionel Messi a World Cup title, the defender will also be hoping to have a good time on the sport’s biggest stage.
“We’re looking forward to what’s to come, but Argentina is a team that reacts well under pressure. That’s what happened against Mexico”, he observed, about the game in which the victory was essential, after the setback in the debut against Saudi Arabia.
If Argentina wins the world title, it will be easier for him to fulfill his dream of playing for River Plate, his childhood team.
At the moment, the defender, called a traitor by Porto fans, where he played between 2010 and 2014, when he signed with Benfica in 2020, tends to renew his contract with the Lisbon club.
For this to happen, a historic game against Brazil in the semifinals is possible. The last time the two teams met, he showed his non-delicate side to Raphinha, Tite’s starter in the Cup. He landed an elbow on the attacker and did not even receive a yellow card, which generated complaints from Brazilian officials.
“Just ball”, he wrote in a post on Instagram, with irony, about the move.
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