Maradona Hand of God

The countdown is on to Diego Maradona's first competitive game in charge of Argentina.

His team's form in warm-up friendies has been impressive - a 1-0 win away to Scotland and especially a 2-0 win away to France. But that will quickly be forgotten if Maradona is unable to steer his side confidently through World Cup qualification.

On Saturday Argentina are at home to Venezuela. On paper, at least, it looks like a comfortable start.

But then the ante is upped - 3,600 metres above sea level to La Paz, where Argentina travel to take on Bolivia on the following Wednesday. It's a trip that no team likes to take - and after that Argentina's remaining away games take them to Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay, all very difficult venues. With Brazil still to visit Buenos Aires, Argentina's place in South Africa next year is far from guaranteed. There is no doubt about it - in his new post Maradona is putting his prestige on the line.

He is by no means the first to do so with Argentina. Some of the great names of the country's glorious footballing tradition have had a go at coaching the national team, often with disappointing results.

One of the greatest of them all was perhaps the most disappointing. Adolfo Pedernera was one of the outstanding products of the golden age of Argentine football, the 1940s. Known as 'the Napoleon of football' for his strategic brilliance on the field, as a coach he took Colombia to their first World Cup in 1962. But he was unable to repeat the trick with Argentina - he was in charge when they failed to qualify for Mexico '70.

Pedernera's time in charge came when Argentina's national team was going through a confusing phase, which lasted between 1958 and '74. During this period Argentina had an extraordinary 17 different coaches plus one triumvirate. Several, like Pedernera, were veritable legends of the Argentine game. And yet the results rarely met the expectations.



The two poles of this period are highly significant; 1958 was when Argentina had a cruel encounter with reality; 1974 was when they appointed a coach who would find a way to cope with it. That 1940s golden age in Argentina ended with a players strike that forced some of the top stars abroad, especially to Colombia, where, among many others, Pedernera and Di Stefano went to further their careers. This forced the national team into isolation. Argentina refused to enter the World Cups of 1950 or 54, and stayed out of the Copa Americas of 1949 and 53. They were soon back, winning in both 55 and 57, but Italian clubs then swooped on their top players - which at that time meant that they were no longer picked by Argentina. Sivori, Maschio and Angelillo all ended up playing for Italy.

So when they came over to Sweden for the 1958 World Cup they were stepping into the unknown with an understrength team. They had little notion that in the previous decade they had fallen behind, especially in physical terms. Losing 3-1 to West Germany and 6-1 to Czechoslovakia came as a real shock, and brought it home that they were miles off the pace. How to deal with the rise of northern European football and the physical challenge that it represented - this was a question that hung over the Argentina team for years.

The 1974 World Cup showed them no closer to finding an answer. Like neighbours Uruguay and Brazil, they found their game rendered obsolete by the total football of the Dutch, who put so much pressure on the ball that the South Americans found it impossible to play at their normal rhythm. Holland beat Argentina 4-0.

Enter Cesar Luis Menotti, the chain-smoking philosophising coach who changed the national team for ever. For a start, he got it organised, and using the carrot of staging the 1978 World Cup, he worked to make it a priority rather than a battleground for petty disputes between the major clubs.

Secondly, he made it a truly national affair, rather than a team that only represented Buenos Aires. Thirdly, he had a clear idea of how his team should play. Traditional Argentine passing football could beat the Europeans, argued Menotti - but they had to up the rhythm of their play.

This was the importance of Ossie Ardiles. Going into the 1978 World Cup Ardiles was by no means the fans favourite - many would have preferred to see a player from River Plate, rather than Huracan, in the heart of the midfield. But with his fetching and carrying, his give and goes, Ardiles brought tempo to the team - and well before the end of the 1978 World Cup he had won the public over.

Argentina's victory in that tournament is one of the more controversial in Wold Cup history. Two years into Menotti's reign the country suffered a coup and a barbaric military dictatorship took over, supposedly defending 'Christian' values by torturing dissidents and throwing them out of aeroplanes.

A man of the left, Menotti abhorred them, and saw his team as standing for genuine Argentine working class values. Thinking of the explosion of patriotism victory would bring, the dictatorship wanted him to win, and rumours of dirty tricks have hung around the tournament. It may be the case that without home advantage Argentina would not have triumphed in 1978. But whatever the truth about dirty tricks, in purely footballing terms something significant happened there.

That win launched Argentina on to the top table of world footballing nations, where they had not been for some time. And even when they have disappointed, such as in 2002, they have sat there ever since. This is the tradition that Diego Maradona inherits. As a player he is part of the greatness of the Argentina national team, just as Pedernera was in the 40s. Will he have a different fate as coach?