When Lionel Scaloni was appointed Argentina’s full-time manager in 2018, one of the fiercest critics of the decision was the late, great Diego Maradona.
“Scaloni is a good lad, but he can’t even direct traffic,” said Maradona. “How can we hand the Argentina national team to Scaloni? Are we all crazy? With all the people who’ve come before him, who’ve been through battles, who’ve had their teeth knocked out and their heads split open… and you appoint Scaloni? And Scaloni says, ‘I’m ready.’ But I’ve never even seen you score a goal for Argentina.”
When Maradona spoke, Argentinians usually listened. It would have been easy for someone like Scaloni to be crushed by such criticism. Instead, he took it in his stride, recognising that he lacked top-level coaching experience and assembling a backroom staff that would help him navigate the challenges ahead.
Two of those he brought in had been his team-mates in Argentina’s Under-20 World Cup-winning side under José Pékerman in Malaysia in 1997. Pablo Aimar was the star of that team alongside Juan Roman Riquelme, while Walter Samuel was already developing into one of the finest defenders of his generation. Scaloni also added Roberto Ayala, the legendary centre-back who earned 116 caps for La Albiceleste across the 1990s and 2000s.
It is this quartet that has taken Argentine football to unprecedented heights. They now stand just 90 minutes away from a remarkable fourth successive major international title.
Scaloni himself played only one World Cup match, against Mexico in the Round of 16 in 2006. It is no surprise that Pékerman was Argentina’s coach at the time. Much of Scaloni’s coaching staff were heavily influenced by Pékerman, whose ability to nurture young talent and build cohesive youth teams left a lasting impression.
The other major influence on Scaloni’s coaching journey was Javier Irureta at Deportivo La Coruña. Scaloni spent more than seven-and-a-half years there and was part of the side that won La Liga for the first time in 1999-2000 before lifting the Copa del Rey two seasons later, beating Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu. Deportivo also reached the UEFA Champions League semi-finals in 2003-04, famously overturning a 4-1 first-leg deficit to eliminate AC Milan 5-4 on aggregate.
Scaloni was not always a first-choice starter, but when he was on the bench he spent long periods in conversation with Irureta. Their discussions were not always about tactics. More often, the young Scaloni wanted to understand how to manage different personalities within a dressing room.
Those lessons have proved invaluable over the last eight years, as Argentine football has gone from strength to strength. From being dismissed as someone who could not even manage traffic, Scaloni has built a record of 76 and only nine losses from 103 matches and overseen a World Cup campaign in which Argentina have scored 19 goals, including 11 after the 75th minute. That resilience is no accident. It is the product of a dressing-room culture that Scaloni has carefully cultivated and the complete faith the players have in their coaching staff.
It is easy to describe this team as “Messi and the rest”, but doing so ignores the evidence, particularly from the shambolic World Cup campaign in Russia in 2018. Without intervention from the likes of Aimar, Messi might well have lost his appetite for international football, and we may never have witnessed the extraordinary performances that followed in Qatar and now in the United States.
If Barcelona showcased the finest version of Messi, the club footballer, it is equally true that only under Scaloni has Messi, the international footballer, truly flourished.
Maradona is no longer here to defend his opinions, nor does he need to. Scaloni, for one, would never have held those comments against him. Even at the time, he acknowledged that he understood where the criticism came from.
What can be said now, however, is that victory on Sunday would place Scaloni on a pedestal of his own, ahead of even the legendary César Luis Menotti and Carlos Bilardo.
As Messi himself said: “We have a very good coaching staff that leaves nothing to chance. This group is very intelligent; they know how to read the moments of each game. Scaloni said it – we know how to suffer when we have to suffer and have the ball when we have to have it.”
Millions of fans will hope that ecstasy rather than suffering is the overriding emotion after Sunday night.
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