Uruguay 3 Paraguay 0
I know, I know. The first coat of dust has already settled on Uruguay’s 2011 Copa America trophy and I’ve still not written about it. But I have an excuse. I’ve been travelling. Up north, way up north in the province of Salta about as close as you can get to the Bolivian border without being spat at by cantankerous llamas.
We stopped in one village, San Juan, several hours walk from the nearest Facebook connection, that didn’t even have electricity. It had goats. And the locals grew several varieties of potato which they compared and swapped with one another by candlelight to pass the time on the long cold nights after the sun went down.
We did get to see most of the final though. The first half in a bar in the tourist town of Tilcara, part of the second half on a very small screen in a market stall selling crappy Andean jumpers and the last five minutes, and Diego Forlan’s second goal, back at our hotel in the neighbouring village of Maimara.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the best team won. But it was the worst possible final for the Argentine organisers. Uruguay has a population of a little over three million and Paraguay doesn’t have many more. No-one really knows since they refuse to stand still for long enough for anyone to count them so any figure will be only an estimate. Then they die and new ones are born and I’m told that Juan Ramirez of Montevideo has been hiding in a cellar for five years so I’m not sure if he figures in any recent censuses, or should that be censi?
Diego Forlan: small country, big player.
So pretty much the entire populations of both Paraguay and Uruguay piled into the Monumental stadium in Buenos Aires for the final and there were still seats to spare.
How embarrassing all this is for South America’s footballing superpowers. Uruguay would fit several hundred times into Brazil, if anyone could be bothered to carry out such an exercise which I don’t really see the point of since you’d only have to put it back where it belonged and would probably lose some of the pieces in the process.
And Argentina, Messi, Tevez, etc, etc. What a washout they turned out to be. I can only blame the manager, Sergio Batista – a man for whom I had high hopes. Alejandro Sabella, once of Leeds and Sheffield United, said to speak Spanish with a Yorkshire accent, has now taken over the reins in time for the beginning of the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign which begins shortly against Chile.
How difficult can it be? Brazil qualifies automatically as hosts. Four others, possibly five, from South America go through. He can’t be as bad as his two predecessors, Batista and Maradona. And he’s got one of the finest selections of players the world has ever seen to choose from.
The most bizarre footballing story circulating in these parts in recent days was that the Argentine Football Association was planning to revamp the league. They were going to merge the first and second divisions to create a thirty-eight team division. There was no information about how this might work. The Godfather of Argentine football, Julio Grondona, tried to push it through with his snout as he has with every other contentious decision over the past thirty or so years. It was reported that he was under pressure from the government. He said no-one tells him what to do. The only reason anyone could think of for such a ridiculous plan was that it meant relegated giants, River Plate, would this way be back in the newly-expanded top flight. Unless of course they get relegated again in which case the first division would have to be expanded by another nineteen teams. And so on and so on.
After much incredulous head shaking, the fans and the club owners spoke up as one and Grondona, for once, was sent slinking back into the hole from which he’d crawled, mumbling and muttering and blaming everyone for the silliness except himself.
Both the Argentine and the English leagues kick-off this weekend. Argentinos Juniors travel to newly promoted Union of Santa Fe on Friday night. While West Ham entertain Cardiff City on Sunday. I’m predicting victories for both teams. But then I predicted Chile would win the Copa America and Andy Murray would win Wimbledon. That’s how much I know.
