On the morning of June 25, 2018, Lionel Scaloni went down to the reception of the hotel where the Argentine national team was staying in Saint Petersburg. In a few hours, the team would face Nigeria in a decisive match for the World Cup in Russia.
A group of supporters saw him and approached. He was at the time assistant coach Jorge Sampaoli.
“How is the baby?” was the question he heard.
“Fine. Ready for the game,” he replied.
The “baby” was Lionel Messi. The anxiety was because ranking in the group stage depended on the number 10. Argentina won 2-1.
Already at that time, Scaloni, a former winger who had his most memorable spells at La Coruña (ESP) and Lazio (ITA), was the most accessible member of a coaching staff split because of a fight between Sampaoli and his assistant Sebastián Beccacece.
After the 2018 disappointment, he was chosen to take the top job. He looked weird. It was an award for someone who had never managed any club, let alone a national team. It seemed to be merely an interim, a stopgap before the arrival of a more weighty name.
“There are other great teams at the World Cup, but we managed to make Lionel Messi and his teammates feel comfortable on the field,” he said this Monday (12), the day before the most important match of his life.
This Tuesday (13), at 4 pm (Brasília time), Argentina faces Croatia at the Lusail stadium for the semifinal of the World Cup in Qatar.
Seen with distrust by the press and fans in the past, he would later become the creator of “Scaloneta” (nickname by which his team would be known), the calm leadership that managed to end the lack of titles in the Alviceleste and made Messi happy. And if Messi is happy, Argentina is happy.
“What can I say? He’s the best of all time”, opined Scaloni after the victory in the quarterfinals against the Netherlands, when the number 10 gave Molina a magical pass to open the scoring and scored the second goal, from the penalty spot.
In his praise for his captain, he imitates his predecessor. At times during the World Cup in Russia, it looked like Messi was the coach. In the final minutes of the victory over Nigeria, Sampaoli even warned, in a consulting tone, that he would put Kun Aguero on the field.
Scaloni does not have the explosive and difficult way of the current Sevilla (ESP) coach. The day before facing the Netherlands, he remembered the two-year anniversary of the death of Alejandro Sabella, another of his influences.
The two share a thoughtful manner in front of journalists and calmness in difficult situations. Minutes after losing the 2014 World Cup final to Germany at the Maracanã, Sabella was confronted by a provocative question from a Brazilian comedy program, now defunct.
Instead of getting angry or provoking controversy, he responded calmly and without changing his tone of voice.
Scaloni has already stated, during Qatar, that football cannot be experienced as something more than a game. And he’s been doing everything he can to take the lingering tension out of the Netherlands clash.
Messi taunted coach Louis van Gaal, goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez called Spanish referee Mateu Lahoz “useless”. There were repeated exchanges of insults and pushes between athletes from both teams.
It is not the profile of the current Argentine coach, as it was not Sabella, to inflame tensions.
“This match was played as it should have been played. That’s football. There are times when the game can get difficult, with arguments. There is a referee to administer justice. We know how to lose and win. We lost the first match against Saudi Arabia and we went quietly to the hotel. We won the Copa América in Brazil and the most beautiful image of sportsmanship that one can see was given. I don’t buy this story that we don’t know how to win. We must put an end to it because we are proud”, he stated in this Monday.
Because of the image captured at the end of the penalty shootout, in which South American players celebrate looking at the Dutch, part of the European press accused them of being arrogant and not knowing how to win.
After the selection’s title at the 2021 Copa America, a photograph shows Neymar next to Messi in the Maracanã locker room. The two laugh and talk.
Scaloni has as one of his gurus and advisers Cesar Luis Menotti, coach world champion in 1978 and director of selections of the AFA (Argentine Football Association). It was he who, at the height of criticism in 2019, when the team started the Copa América playing poorly and losing to Colombia, ensured the rookie’s permanence.
The basis of World Cup semi-finalist Argentina was built by Scaloni. He is responsible for the presence of Dibu Martínez in goal, Cuti Romero in the back, Rodrigo De Paul as a tireless name in midfield, the emergence of Enzo Fernández and Julián Álvarez, the selection of Alexis MacAllister when it was complained that the coach called a athlete from small Brighton, England.
But no one is as strong a guarantor of his work as Lionel Messi. The coach even shrugged off his merits in turning his captain who, by intimidating opponents and complaining about referees, into a closer version of Maradona.
“That’s not surprising because I know him. It’s always been like that. It’s not the merit of this technical commission. He’s always been the same, a winner. And he has a pride and a desire to continue playing that attracts envy”, he concluded.
He’s known since 2018, when he heard questions about how the “baby” was doing.
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