No hand of God this time: Maradona’s Argentina would be better off without him

Argentina needs a real coach, not Maradona

PARIS — One story about Diego Maradona is that when he was a toddler, squeezed with his large family into a three-room shack in a poor neighborhood of Buenos Aires, he fell one dark night into their cesspit and had to be rescued by his uncle Cirilo.

Maradona’s latest savior is Martin Palermo. His winning injury-time goal last weekend against Peru gave Maradona a lifeline as Argentina’s coach that he surely does not deserve. One can’t help but wish that Palermo hadn’t bothered — because what Argentina’s hugely talented but rudderless players need is a real manager, a leader and tactician with a working plan, not Maradona’s whims and weird impulses.

But, as so often when Maradona is around, at least the match was fabulous footballing theater.

The rain was coming down so hard that pitch-side television cameras were almost completely obscured by mist and giant drops. On the verge of missing out on the World Cup for the first time since 1970 and with just seconds remaining to eke out a vital victory, the two-time world champions crammed eight players into the box.

Substitute Federico Insua fired in a last-gasp cross that bobbled past the goalmouth to the far post, where Palermo got a left foot to the ball and deflected it into the net.

Maradona celebrated like a walrus on Arctic ice, with a sliding bellyflop on the sodden turf. He hitched up his pants when he was done. Dignified, it was not.

Maradona dubbed it “the Miracle of St. Palermo.”

For neutrals, this was bittersweet.

The upside was that it greatly increased the chances that Lionel Messi will be at the World Cup next year. Argentina’s sparky little playmaker is such a dazzling pleasure to watch; soccer’s showcase would be poorer without him. The 2-1 win over Peru, South America’s weakest team, means that a draw with Uruguay in its last qualifying game Wednesday night should book Argentina a place in South Africa.

The downside is that Argentina’s foolish experiment with Maradona in charge will continue, possibly all the way to the World Cup.

As a footballer, Maradona was perhaps the best ever. As Argentina’s coach, he’s a disaster, still the rogue he was as a player but not half as endearing.

He has spurned Juan Roman Riquelme, even though the veteran midfielder was Argentina’s top scorer in qualifying before Maradona took over. Thumbing his nose at common wisdom that players need time to acclimatize, he presided over a historic 6-1 defeat to weakling Bolivia, flying the squad in for the high-altitude match just two hours before kickoff. Because monsieur likes to sleep late, his team generally trains only once every afternoon. And when the going got really tough, Maradona got going — vanishing to a spa in Italy to lose weight and de-stress.

The worst thing about the prospect of Maradona at South Africa in 2010 is that his presence and the media circus that follows him most likely will overshadow his team — as it has done through Argentina’s tortuous qualification campaign. It’s not as if Argentina had no one else it could have called upon. Chile and Paraguay, which have already qualified for the World Cup, both have Argentine managers.

Messi, instead of being inspired by his coach, seems merely to have been intimidated. He has found the net just twice for Argentina since Maradona took over to everyone’s surprise in November. In 17 qualifying games, spanning the reigns of Maradona and his ill-starred predecessor Alfio Basile, the usually prolific Messi has scored at a rate of one goal every 380 minutes.

He is far more effective for his club, Barcelona. Under the wise tutelage of Josep Guardiola, who unlike Maradona has successfully made the transition from winning player to winning coach, Messi on average has scored once every 105 minutes this season and last.

Given how Maradona has unsettled his players by constantly chopping and changing the Argentina squad, Messi can hardly be blamed. As a player, Maradona was so sure of himself, with his surging, muscular sprints toward goal. But as a selector he is as indecisive as Imelda Marcos trying to settle on a favorite pair of shoes. He’s chomped his way through 76 players in 12 games. Maradona has always had a taste for trying new things — as his years as a cocaine addict proved — but this is ridiculous.

Sending in Palermo in the second half against Peru was just one of many bizarre tactical choices that Maradona has made. The 35-year-old striker is way past his prime and all but killed his international career 10 years ago by missing three penalties in a 3-0 defeat to Colombia in the Copa America.

This time, and in spite of Maradona, it worked out for Argentina. But it will need more than miracles to be a genuine contender next year.

John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org