The “negro” Enrique and his memory of Mexico 86: he arrived without a coat or boots and was champion

Nothing is missing when hosting the Argentina national team in Qatar. The 26 players and coaching staff, along with the people completing the delegation, are distributed among the 85 rooms within the 25,000 square meters which also contain the dining room, gym and offices. There were no grills and the Argentine Football Federation managed to install them: they are enough to roast all the meat that also traveled from Buenos Aires.

The players led by Lionel Scaloni have no flaws at the Qatar University Complex.

36 years ago, another AFA contingent arrived in Mexico to play a World Cup. The coach was Carlos Bilardo and the end of the story is known. If that team had Diego Maradona, this one has Lionel Messi. As in Doha, the heat in the DF was unbearable. The differences between who lifted the cup and who hasn’t played the first match of the group stage yet They have nothing to do with his footballing qualities; yes with the context and the comforts of the context.

The viralization of packs of weed of different brands and origins packed to fly past campus and the number of prop containers, realize that every detail is subject to planning. impossible to think Reuben Moschellaone of the historic administrators of the AFA, goes out to check the sports shops of Qatar like when in 1986 he traveled the Federal District looking for a set of shirts to face in the semifinals against England. The famous game for which Steve Hodge won nearly nine green sticks in the Maradona 10 auction.

Just look at the photos of the champion soccer players at the Azteca queuing up to talk on the only telephone available at the concentration camp or sitting on a bench along a plank table, eating a barbecue. Nothing was as it seems now. The football elite, at least the Argentines, did not live like kings.

“Enrique hooks up and will play it for Diego, here it is for Maradona”begins the story of Victor Hugo Morales on the best goal in the history of the World Cup, which ends -also- as we all know. Nothing less than Hector Henrythe architect of that magnificent achievement, he said clarion a story that describes exactly what is different about each World Cup scenario.

“We went to the World Cup and there weren’t many dresses like today. I didn’t bring anything, I said: ‘We will play a World Cup, they will give us some clothes’. It was cool at night, I was cold and not hot at all”, Enrique begins to tell a story that today no one could think possible. “I said to Diego: ‘Don’t you have a jacket to lend me?’ And he throws me a brand new one that Puma had just sent him. ‘When the World Cup ends you give it back to me’ “, he says he told him.

The bag that Enrique took was tiny. Not only was he missing his coat, but what was essential for the practice of sport that he had on Aztec soil: his boots. “The evening before the opening match I face him again: ‘Diego, the World Cup starts tomorrow and I don’t have the boots’. It’s just that I played the previous friendlies with the boots that ‘Gringo’ Giusti or Pumpido lent me,” he recalls.

“‘¿‘How come you don’t have boots, asshole'”?, Diego tells me and he also asked me to send him from the brand that sponsored him. So thanks to Diego I didn’t freeze and Puma sent me some boots to play with. When it was all over I went to return the jacket and he said: ‘No Negrito, keep it, I’ll give it to you’”, he still remembers excitedly.

– Do you still have it?

-Nooo, my brother… I had a house in Llavallol and I moved to Lomas. I told my brother to go and live there … One day I go to see him, he had two dogs, and I look at the cucha: the jacket was there. I wanted to kill him, I almost did…

-How do you see the national team today?

-I’ve always said that you have to support Scaloni. He did something very good: a replacement had to be done. We all complete a cycle.

-Do you think that some of those who played in the previous World Cups lacked that self-criticism, that Scaloni’s work was necessary for this?

-Yes, but I can’t even enter other people’s lives.

-Did it take some time to make the replacement?

-Yes, I said it before the last World Cup. Many times coaches don’t notice. I put my case to tell no one. Bilardo was waiting for me in 1990. I had the opportunity to play in that World Cup. But the moment has come, I leave River, I go to Lomas de Zamora where I lived and I called him. I asked him to leave me out of the World Cup. He told me to wait, we would talk about it the next day, but I said no. I know what it’s like to wear the national team shirt, being in a World Cup, it’s not easy, you play against the best and I wasn’t up to it. “Get someone else because I’d rather stay home and not go for pity or advantage,” I told him. I didn’t have that money that I could have earned there. The only thing that mattered to me was that the team did well. I have that so beautiful theme from the World Cup, the best of the World Cups, I can’t listen to it until today (N of the R: an Italian estate). It hurts. I should have gone to that World Cup if I was okay… Later I told the boys why they lost the 1990 final…

-What did you tell him?

-That they lost it because I didn’t go to that World Cup! LOL.

GL