Cesar Luis Menotti was a teacher who pursued his dreams until the last day. Even in these times when this Don Quixote of the field did not even have any windmills left to fight against, because Argentine soccer lost the cult of style that characterized it for a long time. What he did not lose is the cultural thickness, as demonstrated by the Argentine National Team champion in Qatar, the last joy that will have made Menotti rightly proud.
Like so many relevant figures in Argentine soccer, Menotti was born in Rosario, where the game always had respect for an elegant way of doing things. It is no coincidence that Messi from the action and the Black Fontanarrosa from fiction, they will draw great football from their native Rosario. That is the setting in which Menotti grew up, in a wealthy neighborhood of the city.
Menotti defined, defended and spread “La Nuestra”, a style that expressed us from an elegant football aesthetic and a proud street culture. He defended the different player, taught the trade and even a moral vision of the thing. I like to think that Menotti dignified with his ideas what Maradona defended with his left leg.
In accordance with your condition of scoundrel, it was in Rosario Central where he began to play professionally and, from the first hour, to think and defend the refined football that he was passionate about. He was a midfielder and played with a long stride, slow pace and a very powerful shot as a salient characteristic. He came to deserve the National Team shirt in a few games. He didn’t believe much in sacrifice. They say that when he arrived at Boca, the team was dominated by Rattín, a midfielder with an imposing presence and a reputation as a leader. In a home game that he was losing, the “Rat” (that’s what they called Rattín) yelled at him: “Run Flaco, they’re going to kill us,” to which Menotti replied: “yes, the only thing missing is that “To play football I have to run.”
He closed his football career in Brazil, where he further polished his artistic sensitivity during the two years he spent at Pelé’s Santos.
The personality between bohemian and intellectual that accompanied him was always built by a great love of popular music, an aesthetic sensitivity towards everything and a strong commitment to left-wing politics. His talks had an intellectual air that elevated him above his field and mixed with street turns that brought him back to the football community. He never knew which of the two characteristics contributed more to his seductive quality. But due to the strength of his charisma, the clarity of his speech and the conviction with which he defended his ideas, it caused a miracle of communication: listening to him made me want to play soccer.
He adhered to attacking football with the defense very advanced, the famous and controversial “shrinking of spaces”, he defended good taste even in the small things and, due to his power of observation, he was brilliant in analysis and in the transmission of concepts. He trained at a very high pace and, contrary to what the commonplace says, his good taste in choosing players did not exempt anyone from a high degree of demand.
His corrections were funny and easy to remember because he had the gift of making them graphic:
– Have you ever killed an archer?
– As?
– What if he ever murdered an archer?
– Not because?
– Because when he shoots the goal it seems like he wants to kill it instead of choosing a corner. Why doesn’t he think before he shoots?
Thinking must have been very important to him. On one occasion Pacho Maturana worriedly told him that Valderrama sometimes stopped in the middle of the game, to which Flaco replied:
– He’ll be thinking.
As a coach, he made a modest team champion, Huracán, with dazzling football that is still remembered. That achievement put him at the head of the Argentine National Team starting in 1974. With rigorous work, players with good technique who respected our traditional style and a high pace of play that made the team competitive at the highest level, they won the 78 World Cup. With the bloodiest military in Argentine history in power, that triumph still remains under suspicion by the dictatorship. A major absurdity: they played very well, they won fairly and put Argentine football in another dimension. The following should have recognition as great as the title: he dignified the National Team like no one else and forever. Since ’78, the Argentine National Team jersey reached a sacred dimension and weighs twice as much.
That triumph turned Menotti into a stellar figure in all areas: speaking of football he was a guru, but he also chatted with Borges, who challenged the military regime with statements in favor of exiled artists. Whoever has ideas has enemies and if those ideas have social and political relevance, the enemies become larger and more numerous. Many of them expected their defeat, which came in the ’82 World Cup. There ideas began to have sides, and football discussions led to battles between two poles that responded to the name of menottismo and bilardismo, two opposing football, aesthetic and ethical worlds.
Since then he directed various projects such as Maradona’s Barça, where he spent a year and which he left voluntarily. I once heard him say that it was the mistake of his life. He also coached the Mexican National Team, where it is enough to talk to players like Campos or Hermosillo to see that he strengthened everyone’s competitive confidence. In a good number of experiences in different teams in Argentina and Uruguay, he started with a winning energy, which gradually weakened. As with all creative geniuses, he lost motivation along the way and needed to escape in search of new stimuli. However, he did not need to win for him to be considered the best, as all surveys among Argentine players say for forty years.
I met him when I was 17, when he called me up to participate with the Argentine National Team in the Youth World Cup in Toulon, France. The 74 World Cup in Germany had just finished where Holland had beaten Argentina. We had a complex about European players because they seemed strong, fast and big to us. When we arrived in Toulon, Menotti took us to see a German National Team match that confirmed our complexes. When Germany scored the fifth goal, a teammate, dark-haired and skinny as a stick, couldn’t take it anymore and said: “Cesar, the Germans are very strong.” Menotti, with unforgettable reflexes, turned around and finished: “Are the Germans very strong? Strong are you who grew up among bacteria and viruses and play football better than all of these combined. “If we take one of these Germans home, they take him out on a stretcher two days later.” There was the leader coming out with a brilliant idea because he knew that you can’t compete with fear.
But much more, there was the guy who believed in the uniqueness of the player from the River Plate. In his technique, his personality, his imagination… The football that he incorporated into his life since childhood in Rosario and that over the years did nothing but illuminate. Since that Youth World Cup, which we won, until today, I have considered Menotti as a great teacher. He authorized me to take my childhood dreams to professionalism, he gave me advice that was an antidote to my defects and he taught me to love football and defend it with pride as part of our cultural heritage. I can only say, with emotion, the best thing that can be said about a teacher: if Menotti had not crossed my life, I would not be the person I am.
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