Going to Great Depths to Win
HAMBURG, Germany -- There was an interesting comment made the other day by Carlos Tevez, one of the brightest in a constellation of stars on Argentina’s World Cup team.
“I dream, I get up, go to bed, train, thinking it could be my World Cup,” Tevez told Reuters.
“One always wants to play, to be a first choice in the team. You fight for that. But you know that you’re in a squad of 23 players with great footballing quality.”
So great, in fact, that Tevez, a gold-medal winner for Argentina at the Athens Olympics and a player with a multimillion-dollar price tag around his neck, spent Saturday night on the bench.
He was not alone.
Lionel Messi, a world champion at the under-20 level and already a star at FC Barcelona, also was there. So, too, was veteran Pablo Aimar, for all but a few minutes near the end.
Coach Jose Pekerman has so much talent at his disposal that he can afford to turn three of the world’s finest attacking players into spectators and still win.
The 2-1 victory over a game but out-gunned Ivory Coast was certainly deserving of the three points, a fact underlined on the face of former German great Franz Beckenbauer, watching from the expensive seats.
Beckenbauer’s visage seemed to grow longer with each crisp pass, with each flowing move, with each clinical finish that Argentina produced. A World Cup winner as a player and as a coach, and now head of the 2006 World Cup Organizing Committee, Beckenbauer probably realized that Argentina is on a different plane than Germany.
In fact, based on Saturday’s showing, when Juan Riquelme pulled the strings in midfield and Hernan Crespo and Javier Saviola provided the goals from up front, Argentina must now be considered a serious challenger for the title.
Diego Maradona, the unquestioned maestro when Argentina last won the World Cup in 1986, also attended, and he was in a happier mood than Beckenbauer.
Even that was surprising, in a way, considering that en route to Germany Maradona was relieved of two very expensive wristwatches by Italian tax police when he stopped off at his old hunting ground in Naples.
Maradona owes the Italian government millions of dollars in back taxes, and the Italians collect it as they can.
But back to Argentina and its showing.
Crespo gave the South Americans the lead in the 24th minute and Saviola doubled it in the 38th, but it was the orange-clad Elephants who were the fan favorites in the sellout crowd of 49,480 for the spirited way in which they pushed a superior team.
The Ivory Coast’s only rewards were Didier Drogba’s goal in the 82nd minute and the appreciation of the crowd.
“I think maybe we deserve something better than what happened tonight,” Drogba said later, “but Argentina’s players were very good.”
