Weekend Report
By: Jeremy | March 29th, 2009Not much going on down in Argentina, what with the club teams off and all. And while you may not have heard, a squat little fella seems to have had a good first day at the office.
Much to the shame of a certain hypersensitive glory hound, whose very public lover’s spat with the squat man dominated the Argentine news scene for the last few weeks, it seems that the Albiceleste don’t really need him so much after all.
Argentina’s favorite son, who may sooner than thought be minting his own money, went out and led a whiner-less side to a 4-0 trouncing of Venezuela. Yes, I know, it was only Venezuela, and they aren’t exactly what you would call a real South American powerhouse, but given Argentina’s form thus far in 2010 World Cup qualifying this was huge. Huge for the squat man, for Argentina, and for fans of attacking, explosive football the world over. Not so huge if you happen to be Juan Roman Riquelme.
Despite dividing much of Argentina over his decision to retire from the Selection, Riquelme’s absence was probably less than a non-factor. It was more like the classic “addition by subtraction” cliche that gets tossed around so much. With him, Argentina has rarely impressed for more than a few minutes. Without him, they looked unstoppable. With him they were farting along in third place, and no one could say that dropping as far down as fifth and having to play the play-in match against a Concacaf team wasn’t a real possibility. Without him they look like a legitimate challenger to Paraguay for first place.
Barring the wheels coming off later down the road (and they could), Riquelme was just rendered irrelevant. On the other hand, I am sure we are about nine months away from a rash of Diegos being born. Talk about polar opposites.
Category: Uncategorized
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