By Ian M. Walker

Included in A Football Report’s Best Football Writing of 2014.

To understand the dichotomous schools of thought that have separated Argentine football for decades, and by extension, influenced and shaped years of title races and tactical development across South America and Europe, you must first understand the men for whom the dueling philosophies are named.

Cesar Luis Menotti was born in Rosario - a slim, longhaired, chain-smoking liberal who would wax philosophical about football at the drop of a hat. He was the epitome of 1970’s South American cool; intellectual, bohemian, a cigarette always protruding from his mouth, and not afraid to boast about his very left-wing political views while Argentina was under the brutal suppression of a military junta. He was also the man who brought Argentina their first World Cup title in 1978 by breaking Argentine football loose from the shackles of anti-futbol, which had become dominant during the reign of Osvaldo Zubeldia’s Estudiantes team from the mid ‘60’s to early ‘70’s.

For Menotti, football was meant to be a spectacle of enjoyment, not a Darwinian struggle of brute force. “There is a right-wing football and a left-wing football,” he once said. “Right-wing football wants us to believe that life is struggle. It demands sacrifices. We have to become steel and win by any methods.” Menotti, as you can imagine, was wholly opposed to this anti-intellectual approach. He described the purpose of a footballer as “a privileged interpreter of the dreams and feelings of thousands of people” and wanted to instill into his ‘interpreters’ a left-wing ideological view of football where the focus was bringing joy to the masses by playing attractive, attacking football.

He did this by implementing an aggressive 4-3-3 undoubtedly inspired by the Johan Cruyff led Dutch team that dismantled Argentina’s ultra-pragmatic side from the 1974 World Cup. The three forwards would be supported by the front-running Mario Kempes and technically excellent and inexhaustible Osvaldo Ardiles from the midfield, while Americo Gallago played as a classic Argentine number 5 behind them.

Menotti’s commitment to the spectacle was, at least in theory, so total that he once told his players, “You can lose a game, but what you cannot lose is the dignity earned by playing good football.” Of course, Menotti’s romantic musings and the way his Argentine team played did not always match. Yes, they were attack-minded and could play exhilarating football at their best, but they were also a side laced with pragmatism and gamesmanship.

In the World Cup final against the Netherlands, after the Dutch team bus had been taken on an unnecessary scenic tour of Buenos Aires that exposed the players to rampant abuse and intimidation, Menotti and his men delayed their arrival on the pitch. The Dutch team was forced to stand alone in the center of a seething cauldron of swearing and personal threats while their Argentine counterparts let them soak all of it in, and when they did emerge, complained of a cast being worn on the Dutch right winger Rene van der Kerkhof’s arm – a cast which he had worn throughout the entire tournament.

Menotti also refused to give the 17 year-old Diego Maradona a spot on the World Cup roster despite giving him his international debut a year before, and there are still questions over the honesty of Argentina’s 6-0 win over Peru that allowed them to get to the World Cup final in the first place. There is no hard evidence to judge Argentina or Peru guilty on, but the entire tournament is still looked upon with a bad taste in most people’s mouth for the connection it has to the inhumanly brutal military junta that ruled Argentina at the time.

It is one of the great ironies of football history that Menotti’s left-wing, idealistic attacking philosophy is forever linked to the right-wing military dictatorship of Jorge Rafael Videla, while his philosophical rival Carlos Bilardo and his win-by-any-means approach will forever be linked with the majesty of Maradona. .

Carlos Bilardo was born in Buenos Aires, and was the complete antithesis of Menotti for whom he would take over the Argentine national team from in 1982.

Bilardo played on Zubeldia’s infamous anti-futbol side from the late 1960’s where he developed a reputation for doing whatever it took to win. Unsurprisingly, he approached his job as a manager with the same attitude. While Menotti’s school of thought focused on bringing joy to the people of Argentina through beautiful football, Bilardo was much more straightforward with his way of thinking: “Football is about winning and nothing else.”

It was an approach that many in Argentina became weary of when he was appointed Menotti’s successor, as they had grown to love the attacking style of their bohemian, chain-smoking philosopher.

Carlos Bilardo (l) and Diego Maradona ® during the 1986 World Cup.

It also did not help that Argentina’s performances under Bilardo leading up to the 1986 World Cup ranged mostly from inconsistent to disappointingly average. He won only 3 of his first 15 games in charge, a run that included a very quick and humbling exit from the 1983 Copa America. By the time the ’86 World Cup rolled around, Maradona said the people of Argentina watched the first match “with their eyes half-closed,” afraid of what the tournament could hold in store.

Starting the tournament with a 4-4-2, Bilardo switched his team to a 3-5-1-1 with Maradona as the free-roaming second-striker behind Jorge Valdano. The switch was made to give Maradona as much space as possible to work with, as the three-man midfield behind him would offer the defensive base for him to roam and attack at will.

The change worked, and the system allowed Maradona to dominate and almost singlehandedly lead Argentina to their second World Cup title. Bilardo would lead Argentina to the next World Cup final in 1990 against West Germany, where he and Beckenbauer would oversee one of the most defensive, boring, and overall worst World Cup final in living memory.

That did not change the fact that Bilardo had created the most admired team in Argentina’s history, however. A fact that must still make Menotti’s skin crawl. Ever since the triumph of ’86, Argentina has been divided between the Menottismo and Bilardismo schools of thought. Essentially, are you a pragmatist, or an idealist?

Of course, dividing managers into such black-and-white terms can be an oversimplification and create an almost movie-like ‘good vs. evil’ confrontation between the two, but that is the reality of how many in Argentina, and indeed around the world, perceive this clash of ideas.

Every Argentine manager that has stepped into the technical area since the days of Menotti and Bilardo have likely been asked where their allegiances lie one time or another, whether it be by journalists or fans. The politically correct would say they take inspiration from both, while others cannot help but align themselves starkly in the decades-long ideological between the two.

Although the two men are no longer involved in the game in a coaching capacity, their influence continues to shape narratives from Santiago to Madrid through the coaches they have inspired since their respective World Cup titles.

If you want to see how the legacy of Bilardo is still very much alive and kicking (literally), you need only to look towards Madrid. It is there where you will find Diego Simeone and Atletico Madrid – the reigning Spanish league champions and the Robin Hood of football or ruthless, cynical bullies, depending on whom you ask.

Simeone was a short-tempered, physically intense defensive midfielder from Buenos Aires in his playing days and like Bilardo, brought his win-at-any-cost mentality to the teams he managed. As fate would have it, Simeone would coach Bilardo’s old team, Estudiantes de la Plata, and lead them to their first league title in 23 years in 2006 and be named the best manager in Argentina.

It is at Atletico Madrid where he has truly made his mark on the game, however. It is here that Simeone has crafted an almost anti-hero caricature of himself; the slicked-back jet-black hair, the Johnny Cash-esque all black suit, shirt, tie and shoes that he wears every match, and the pragmatic and physical style with which his team has broken the duopoly of Real Madrid and Barcelona paints the picture of a begrudging hero to those bored of the ultra wealthy domination of the sport can idolize.

The extent of Simeone’s accomplishments with Atleti cannot be overstated, but his ethos is not about building an endearing or loveable team. No, his Atleti teams are relentless, physically intimidating, short-tempered, tactically disciplined bullies. They’ll knock you down and then stand over you, wait for you to start to stand back up, and knock you right back down again. If your favorite club plays against them, you’ll likely end up hating them by the time the game’s over. They don’t care, because they’ll more than likely be walking away with the win.

This is not to say Simeone’s teams are incapable of playing football; if they didn’t possess exceptional technical skill and the flair to create in attack, they wouldn’t be where they are. Under Simeone, they have become one of the best teams in the world through their unyielding commitment to the collective, where every player is willing to sacrifice himself for the overall good of the team. It is in this characteristic that Atleti become a team to admire – not for their cynicism or pragmatism, but for their uncommon commitment to one another and an unyielding work-rate.

Of course, their style is not for everyone. In an interview with El Grafico, Menotti said, “I struggle very much to watch Simeone’s Atletico Madrid. I appreciate what he does, although I share nothing with him.” The criticism likely fell on deaf ears. Simeone, as you have likely deduced, is a Bilardista, as he himself admits in his book, Partido a Partido: Si se cree, se puede. When talking about Carlos Bilardo, Simeone notes, “I learned competitive know-how from him. He is one of the managers who left his mark on me the most.”

But just as Simeone is carrying on the tradition of Bilardismo by cracking heads in Europe, Jorge Sampaoli has been carrying on the school of Menottismo back in South America.

Sampaoli was born 30 minutes outside of Menotti’s home of Rosario (Rosario is a place that likes its football with a flourish, so it is not exactly coincidence that Menotti and Sampaoli both come from there) but a serious knee injury when he was young stopped his playing career before it even began.

Sampaoli focused all of his efforts into coaching, and would bounce around South America before he would become internationally known during his dominating run as manager of Universidad de Chile.

Sampaoli’s La U side became known as the “Barcelona of South America” for their attacking style of dominating the ball and keeping their opponents pinned inside their own half with a combination of wonderful passing and a highly-intense press. La U could play everything from a 4-3-3 to 3-4-3 to 4-3-1-2 and 3-3-1-3, but the formations were merely vessels for Sampaoli to impose his footballing philosophy upon the world.

Sampaoli is a devoted disciple of the eccentric and influential Marcelo Bielsa, and a spiritual successor to Menotti’s attacking and spectacle-driven idea of how the game should be played. This made him a natural fit for the managerial position of the Chilean national team manager once occupied by Bielsa, and it is here that Sampaoli brought his ultra-attacking brand of football to the rest of the world.

Sampaoli is so completely devoted to attacking football that he once said, “You pick players to attack, and shape them to defend.” He is the opposite of Menotti in that he is a short and stocky figure with a shaved head and prize-fighter intensity on the touchline, but he is someone Menotti is most fond of. Before the World Cup in Brazil, he stated, “I have watched a lot of Chile and can say they are an excellent team, to me they will be one of the protagonists in Brazil and have the ability to pleasantly amaze.”

Chile were excruciatingly close to knocking Brazil out of the World Cup in the round of 16, and their performance won Sampaoli so many fans that there were many in Argentina who called for him to be made the new coach of the national team. His Chile side plays with an endearing naivety of attack-mindedness to the point that in the World Cup they started games with a three-man backline composed of defensive midfielders instead of center-backs. They played beautifully and failed heroically, which is so often the case with men that choose to follow Menottismo.

Simeone and Sampaoli are just two of the many men who have helped to form the Menotti vs. Bilardo narrative throughout the years. The debate is not simply a matter of how the game should be played; it is a discussion on worldviews and society as a whole.

Read the following quote, and try to decide whom it belongs to:

“I believe that the only way to succeed is by uniting players with a love of playing. You try to inspire in them a love of the shirt derived of enjoyment, not obligation. When you succeed in this individualistic society, it is by committing to something intangible, with humility. That allows everybody to come together; the social or cultural background of the people involved doesn’t matter.”

It reads like the left-wing musings of Menotti, but it is out of the mouth of Sampaoli. The same happens when you read a quote from Simeone: “I don’t believe much in luck. I believe in work, in convincing, in stubbornness and in capacity.” If you didn’t know any better, you would swear it was the work of Bilardo.

The philosophies of Menotti and Bilardo are not only shaping tactical development and title races around the world through their countrymen – they are providing a context for people to express their beliefs and concerns over how the world should work and how society can improve. It is why, despite the black and white simplistic approach to subjects that are anything but, Menottismo and Bilardismo will continue to dominate the discourse about football and society in Argentina.

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