Jonathan Wilson
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There is a prevalent sense that playing the right way is more important than adopting a more 'European' approach
Coming out of El Monumental on Sunday after River Plate's 3-2 win over Independiente, I heard a fan behind me make the most extraordinary comment. "Cappa has the reputation," he said, "but in reality he's too defensive." I wondered if he was being ironic but his friend agreed with him, giving the sort of sigh that acknowledges a self-evident truth.
To a European, this is madness. Angel Cappa does have the reputation of being the most attacking coach in Argentina and, having worked as César Luis Menotti's assistant at Barcelona, is seen as being the torch-bearer for Menottisme (more, even, than Menotti himself, who is back in Argentinian football as technical director of Independiente). Cappa himself often tries to play down the comparisons, but his teams do play tremendously open football.
Two years ago I saw his Huracan side – which would go on to lose the Clausura to Vélez Sársfield on the final day of the season – beat Godoy Cruz 3-2. With Matías Defederico and Javier Pastore operating as dual playmakers, Huracan were superb going forward, and with even a grain of ruthlessness would have won by five or six against limited opponents who had a man sent off just after half-time. They could have been a Chelsea steamrollering West Brom or Wigan, but conjured a thriller from a game that should have been a romp. It was a similar story on Sunday: for 70 minutes or more, River were in the ascendant but it took a brilliant save from Juan Pablo Carrizo, tipping over an Andrés Silvera volley in the final seconds, to secure the win.
They poured forwards in great waves, Diego Buonanotte, playing in the middle in the absence of the suspended Ariel Ortega, linking everything, while the 17-year-old Manuel Lanzini looked highly promising and the right-back Paulo Ferrari overlapped at every opportunity. Their play at times was mesmerising, yet they looked vulnerable to the simplest through-ball. Silvera, who scored an excellent goal to make it 1-1, was dangerous throughout, and if Germán Pacheco had even a half-decent game alongside him Independiente would probably have taken a point. It was hard not to wonder, in fact, what would have happened had Independiente been a bit more direct (and if some sort of manager swap could be arranged between Sam Allardyce and Independiente's José Canseco, that would be magnificent television).
At half-time it was 3-1, which probably left Cappa in a difficult position. Try to tighten up and the danger was he would invite pressure; keep playing as they were, and while River may have won 6-1 there was also a chance of losing 4-3. As it was, River probably were a touch more conservative in the second half and ended up under pressure in the final 10 minutes. It was presumably that that the fans I heard were complaining about.
Still, River have won three out of three and top the Apertura table with Vélez. The threat of relegation (which is calculated over a three-year cycle), real enough at the beginning of the month, already seems a slightly unreal memory. Whether they can sustain their form to mount a title challenge, though, is a different matter. Everything in my Eurocentric brain screams out that you don't win titles defending like that, and that Vélez and Estudiantes, who are two points back, are much more credible contenders. Yet the fans think Cappa is too defensive.
It's dangerous, of course, to read too much into an overheard conversation between fans but they do represent something of the local mentality. A River-supporting Argentinian friend of mine, who became an Everton fan during a long stint in England, despairs of David Moyes, insisting he'd rather Everton played "better" football even if that meant winning fewer games.
Another friend, who is sitting a coaching course run by the Argentinian Football Association, tells of how seminars regularly descend into arguments about whether Argentinian football should stay loyal to its "traditional style" or whether it should adopt a more "European" approach. At youth level, coaches are mandated to play either 4-3-3 or 4-3-1-2 on the grounds those formations should ensure the continued production of attacking midfielders.
At River, Cappa plays 4-2-3-1 but it is 4-2-3-1 with an attacking emphasis. If there is any pressing going on, it's indiscernible to the naked eye. In every game, you see forwards strolling around as though this were 1972 and nobody had invented systematised football. Racing bring back the 6ft 3in Colombian playmaker Giovanni Moreno to defend set-plays, but as Rupert Fryer of the southamericanfootball.co.uk blog points out, his idea of marking seems to involve standing next to a forward and wandering off as soon as the corner or free-kick's been taken.
In a way there's something heroic about Argentina's stubbornness in sticking to a romantic ideal. There's even a television programme on a Tuesday night that compiles a "lyrical ranking" of the best moments of skill from the weekend games, whether or not they led to anything worthwhile; Valeriy Lobanovskyi, let alone an uber-pragmatist like Charles Hughes, would have been gouging his eyes out with his computerised print-outs.
It's a mentality that leads to the production of vast numbers of creators – where else could Sergio Agüero have spent most of the World Cup on the bench and Lisandro López not even been in the squad – and to highly watchable football. Every league game is live on television, the stadiums are crumbling and there is a significant hooligan problem, and yet crowds are enormous.
Maybe the fun element, the sense of playing the right way, is more important than winning. That was certainly how it was during the years of la nuestra, the golden period that followed the establishment of a professional league in 1931 when, hothoused by Peronist isolationism, skill and trickery thrived. The high point came in 1957 when the Angels with Dirty Faces team won the Copa América. But after several of those players were tempted away by big contracts in Europe – and switched national allegiance at the same time – a much-weakened side went to the 1958 World Cup.
There they were hammered 6-1 by Czechoslovakia, and the shock changed the mentality. Through the 60s, Argentinian football became increasingly negative, culminating in Osvaldo Zubeldia's thuggish Estudiantes side, who won three straight Copas Libertadores, and beat Manchester United in a famously brutal Intercontinental Cup final.
I'm not suggesting the 4-0 defeat to Germany in Cape Town is the equivalent of that in Helsingborg 52 years earlier, but the fact remains that the only side Argentina has beaten in a World Cup knockout game without recourse to penalties in the past 20 years is Mexico. What makes it beautiful may be what's holding it back.
Jonathan Wilson
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