I've had 24+ hours to digest and I can still only say that this was shameful. It hurts but in the end the better team won. Spain was very, very clearly the better team. The way Argentina played was just shameful. I'm ok with a level of shithousery, but this crossed a line and I feel it will do huge damage to Argentine football for a long time.
What I've been thinking about is, why did that happen?
Most modern Argentine coaches have been measured against either Bilardo (86 winner) or Menotti (78 winner). In retrospect Scaloni sits the in the Bilardo school in more ways than one. The first obvious one is the win at all costs brawler side (albeit I think the current behaviour would have made Bilardo blush). The second one was building a side around the 10, with most players chosen for their desire to run through walls to get the most out of him.
In contrast, I think you could say that a more Menotti approach was Bielsa's Argentina featuring Zanetti, Aimar, Mascherano, Batistuta. Or Pekerman's side with Sorin, Riquelme, Cambiasso, Crespo. Machines merging silk and steel with key players within the system, not dominating it.
That era was expressly built on reaching beyond Buenos Aires and into the provinces for talent, the character of players and the aesthetic of the football. Paradoxically, it won Argentina nothing. We made plenty of late tournament stages but always fell at the final hurdle.
From 2006 onwards we enter a mixed bag, an identity crisis and the Messi blessing/problem. I'll skip over that but the worst of it was under Maradona and Sampaoli. But it appeared in 2020 and then 2022, Scaloni had found the answer. Back to Bilardismo. And with it came a return to the darker arts.
Which brings us to this World Cup final. I think there were some serious game day tactical mistakes and a little bit of misfortune (maybe that's another post). But ultimately, I think hubris and the cult of Messi got a hold of this team and in particular Scaloni. Perhaps even Messi himself as this felt more and more like a vanity project as the tournament progressed. It was not about playing the right way and turning great performances into a shot at the title, it became a mission to get Messi another World Cup. The cost of that was that we saw the worst character of the likes of Perez, Montiel, Paredes and even Messi and we also saw diminished versions of players who should have been key contributors, not supporting actors - Alvarez, Martinez MacAllister. We saw next to nothing of some younger and emerging talent - Nico Paz, Almada and Barco.
We may not have won the final or even made it that far, but I don't believe we would have seen what we saw had the side been coached by someone more like Pekerman, Menotti or a Bielsa in his prime. Their approach embodies something I have always believed - winning has to be underpinned by a higher philosophy. In contrast what we saw from Argentina was pure nihilism. A debasement. Truly beautiful sides of the past, a record of producing near endless world class talent and the genius of Maradona, Riquelme, Messi, Di Maria etc are fading in the international memory, replaced with a near universal contempt for the Albiceleste.
I don't want that analysis to take away from Spain. They won and won well. It was not simply a case of Argentina capitulating.
