Will Sabella Lead Argentina to World Cup Victory?

It is possible to have too much of a good thing. When a coach is faced with choosing a forward line from a list that includes Lionel Messi, Carlos Tevez, Sergio Aguero, Gonzalo Higuain, Javier Pastore, Angel Di Maria, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Rodrigo Palacio, there are going to be some big names and some very talented players missing out. The Argentinian football team is blessed with strong attackers. But this can also be a curse. And knowing this– and how to deal with it– is the challenge Argentina’s manager, Alejandro Sabella, faces. 

In their stints as Argentina managers, both Diego Maradona and Sergio Batista found themselves seduced by the seemingly limitless possibilities of those forwards, trying to squeeze too many of them into one team and leaving it imbalanced. The result was that Argentina lurched through the last World Cup before being dispatched by Germany, 4-0, in the quarter final. They were then were then desperately disappointing on home soil in the Copa America in 2011; they scratched through the group stage before being eliminated on penalties by a well-organised Uruguay who had played with 10 men for the final 82 minutes of the game after Diego Perez was sent off.

Sabella, though, has done what Maradona and Batista were unable or unwilling to do. He has faced the difficult decision and made it. Tevez seems to have been expelled entirely: because he had a period of not playing because of a dispute with the then-Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini, Sabella had an excuse not to select him. Other omissions have been vindicated because of the way Argentina qualified for the World Cup. It may not have been absolutely convincing, but they finished top of the Conmebol (South American Football Confederation), which was a significant relief given how close Argentina had come to missing out on the 2010 World Cup under Maradona.

The 59-year-old Sabella has never been somebody to take the easy option. He was part of the wave of Argentinian players who arrived in England after the 1978 World Cup–a phenomenon that seemed strange at the time and, with the Falklands War just around the corner, would soon seem utterly bizarre. When Antonio Rattin, the former Argentina captain who was sent off for dissent against England in the 1966 World Cup quarter final and whose behavior was seen as the embodiment of brooding South American ill manners, agreed a deal worth $400 a month with Harry Haslam, the manager of Sheffield United, to act as an agent for him in Argentina.

Haslam flew to Buenos Aires with the Tottenham manager Keith Burkinshaw, who promptly picked up Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricardo Villa, both of whom had been part of Argentina’s World Cup-winning squad a few weeks earlier. Haslam liked the look of Diego Maradona, then a 17-year-old wonder kid at Argentinos Juniors, and would have signed him if the asking price of £1m hadn’t been roughly double his budget. Haslam did, though, sign Sabella, a back-up midfielder at River Plate, for £160,000.

He was nicknamed ‘Pachorra’–Slowcoach–and was languidly gifted. He arrived at Bramall Lane to a rapturous reception, did his best to impress by telling assembled journalists that he liked toast and marmalade for breakfast and settled in to become a hugely popular curiosity. “You couldn’t fail to like him,” said Gary Hamson, who shared a room with him on away trips, “but his work ethic was poor.” Over two seasons, he played 76 times for the club, moving to Leeds after Sheffield United were relegated to the Third Division. He never really settled at Elland Road, though, and returned to Argentina in 1982, playing under Carlos Bilardo at Estudiantes and helping them to back-to-back Nacional titles.

“If you want to be a coach,” the great Ukrainian Valeriy Lobaonvskyi once said, “you must forget the player you were.” Sabella has done that. He may have been lazy but gifted, but he demands intense effort from his players, and the influence of Bilardo is clear. Estudiantes have never been a team afraid of winning ugly and when he became their manager in 2009–having served an apprenticeship under Daniel Passarella, Argentina’s 1978 World Cup-winning captain, at River Plate–the philosophy he implemented was functional. It was, though, successful, winning the Copa Libertadores in 2009 and the Apertura tournament the following season.

With the Argentina national team he has proved himself flexible tactically, at time using a back three, then switching to a 4-4-1-1 before finishing the qualifying campaign with a 4-3-3. The basic premise is simple: the shape is all about providing a solid platform for Messi. In that sense, his approach is similar to that employed by Bilardo at the 1986 World Cup when everything was about keeping things tight and giving the ball to Maradona. 

It’s said that Sabella himself favoured the 4-4-1-1, with Messi operating behind Higuain. It was cautious and, while his critics argued it didn’t play to Argentina’s strengths, his argument was that it helped protect their weaknesses, which lie at the back. It’s claimed it was Messi who prompted the change to 4-3-3 because he was keen to add a creative presence, with Aguero, with whom he has enjoyed playing since the two were part of the side that won the Under-20 World Cup in 2005, coming on the left.

What Sabella has maintained is a sense of balance to the team: Messi from the right and Aguero from the left buzz off Higuain. Javier Mascherano sits in front of the back four with Di Maria to his left, shuttling forward to link with the front three and– if he recovers from a knee injury– Fernando Gago, another of that 2005 squad, to the right, performing a vital role as a more defensive version of Di Maria, prepared to tuck in when Pablo Zabaleta, by far the more attacking of the full-backs, pushes forward.

The names may not be as starry as at the World Cup four years ago and people may not go to watch Argentina with quite the same sense of expectation for a a fiesta of attacking, but the evidence suggests that Sabella’s pragmatism has created a sleeker, better balanced and more coherent Argentina, one that could win the World Cup.

Read "Edin Dzeko: The Heart of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Team" by Jonathan Wilson.