Tata Martino was pure lucidity in the face of the uncomfortable question of a Mexican journalist: “What would you do in my place?”

Sensitivity and feelings, are those who Gerard Martino Try to reconcile ahead of the strangest match of his career. directs to Mexico and faces a Argentina in an emergency. Each answer has the right tone.

“What happens inside you before such a special match, being you Argentinian?”, they ask him to break the ice at the press conference.

-I put everything that happens in the context of football, I am aware of the importance of the match, both for Mexico and Argentina, because the future of both teams probably depends on what happens tomorrow. Even when the match schedule was done and we played Argentina in the same group, we never imagined a scenario like the one that will take place tomorrow, but in the end We work for Mexico and we want the best for Mexico.

Tata led the Argentina national team for 29 games between 2014 and 2016, he resigned because the management did not give up their players for the Olympics. At that moment he had under his command Messi, Di María, Otamendi, Correa and Dybala, of those who are in the current squad.

On the match he imagines, he explained: “I don’t think the needs are so different, for us it also represents a fundamental match, even if we have one more point in the standings. We will try to make the game by playing it mainly with our idea, but facing such a powerful rival, we also have to prepare or think about moments when the game does not play out the way we expect.

How can you stop it Messi?, They asked. “Those who have faced him say the same thing, that stopping him happens much more because he has a bad afternoon than because of what we can do. Yes, we have to prepare the game thinking that Messi will have the best version, we can never assume that he will not have it because many times it has happened that without having full ninety minutes in five minutes you solve a gameso you must pay close attention to him.”

To Messi, who also directed the Barcelonadefined him with one sentence: “The best footballer of at least the last 15 years, there’s not much more to say”.

The highlight of the conference was when a Mexican journalist asked him: “Are you aware that tomorrow it’s up to you and your team to leave Messi without a chance to win the World Cup, something not only Argentina but many fans in around the world you want?”

Tata’s response was flawless: “Okay, but I would ask you, what would you do if you were in my place (laughs). Mexico must win, we will try for Mexico to win, there is no other answer. I already know where I was born, I can tell you the name of the sanatorium, what year I was born, the characteristics of my city in Argentina… but I have to do the impossible for Mexico to win. I can not do anything else”.

The Mexicans have insisted that this is a historic opportunity to end Argentina’s “fatherhood” at the World Cup.

Martino did not enter into the subject: “We are preparing with the hope of going as far as possible in the World Cup, regardless of what is happening with the opponents who are touching us and their situation. It is clear that the landscape, especially after Argentina’s defeat against Saudi Arabia, has changed. And perhaps what would not have been a key and transcendental match, with the results we would have expected from one team or the other, ends up being one and we have to face it like this, thinking that it conditions us greatly not to have a favorable result and at the same time time to think that a favorable result almost puts us in a position to qualify for the round of 16″.

Tata handled the situation with aplomb and once again drew laughter in the auditorium when reminded who had played alongside a 16-year-old Scaloni.

“If I tell you that I remember something from when I played with Scaloni… I could tell such a big lie that I prefer to tell you that I don’t remember anything. So I can’t know what he thought, apart from a 16-year-old boy, what he can say in that moment in which he has his whole career ahead of his future when he leaves football…”, he acknowledged.

As for the evolution of the current Argentina coach, he appreciated: “Evolution is what shows the Argentina national team, how it managed a project, how the players lined up behind that project and the way in which the National team has changed in its form to play to end with the expression especially in the last year, year and a half, which is very different from the initial one.It has transformed Argentina into what we all said before this World Cup, we are talking about one of the candidates to win the World Cup, and this doesn’t change given the result against Arabia”.

Towards the end he left a concept that, while not referring to the Argentine national team, does include it.

“The same thing always happens at the World Cup: the surprises come in the group stage, where the strong can make mistakes at least once and then from the eighths onwards they are no longer wrong. So I estimate those that usually arrive will eventually arrive.