‘Messi is liberated’: Jorge Valdano on Argentina, politics and his goal in ‘86
HIS TIME: Argentina's Lionel Messi celebrates.
Jorge Valdano should have been at the Monumental; instead he was standing alone in a bar somewhere. He can still remember its name: Rincón de la Victoria. Just him and a group of Dutch fans looking at the screen, wondering what might have been. Mention Argentina and the Netherlands, who face each other on Friday night, and that’s the moment that comes to his mind. The 1978 final. Ticker tape, Mario Kempes and, clearest of all, Rob Rensenbrink hitting the post. “I watched with ‘long teeth’, envy,” he admits.
He was missing out on Argentina winning their first World Cup; he couldn’t know it then, but he wouldn’t miss out on the second. Thirty-six years on from Mexico 86, Valdano would love a third, a spectator again but in the stadium, not some bar. “I asked [the coach César Luis] Menotti. He said if the World Cup started that day, I’d be in the squad. ‘What I can’t promise,’ he said, ‘is that I’ll be coach tomorrow, given this chaos.’ “There was a strike on. We were in the hotel together but he wasn’t allowed to coach us. He would sit in the car, watching from a distance. A bit of crossing and heading, then a kickabout. It was like being back in the potrero. He did continue but I didn’t play in the first division [until 1979]. Menotti only took one ‘foreign’ player: Mario Kempes. The rest were playing in Argentina. There was a guy called Maradona who was also left out.”
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