close button
Switch to Iranwire Light?
It looks like you’re having trouble loading the content on this page. Switch to Iranwire Light instead.
Society & Culture

Angel Di Maria: Argentina’s Winning Ingredient?

May 27, 2014
Jonathan Wilson
5 min read
Angel Di Maria
Angel Di Maria
Real Madrid
Real Madrid
When Mesut Ozil left Real Madrid, Angel Di Maria had the opportunity to show his real potential.
When Mesut Ozil left Real Madrid, Angel Di Maria had the opportunity to show his real potential.
Argentinian Juan Roman Riquelme is best known for his creative passing.
Argentinian Juan Roman Riquelme is best known for his creative passing.
Di Mario found himself up against Xavier Hernández (Xavi) in March’s Barcelona/Real Madrid match.
Di Mario found himself up against Xavier Hernández (Xavi) in March’s Barcelona/Real Madrid match.
Argentina’s national football team
Argentina’s national football team
Lionel Messi, who plays alongside Di Maria in Argentina’s national team.
Lionel Messi, who plays alongside Di Maria in Argentina’s national team.
Diego Maradona dubbed Angel Di Maria “Argentina's next superstar”
Diego Maradona dubbed Angel Di Maria “Argentina's next superstar”

Angel Di Maria rarely scores spectacular goals. He rarely makes defence-splitting passes. He rarely gets the ball and dribbles past three challenges. He rarely makes memorable tackles. Yet, during Saturday’s Champions League, he proved himself to be Real Madrid’s most important player–and, as they approach the World Cup, he is arguably Argentina’s most important player too. He is a player who only occasionallyas in the Champions Leaguecatches the eye. But he is a coach’s dream: tactically intelligent, precise in his use of the ball, and tireless.


When Real Madrid signed the Argentinian from Benfica in 2010, Di Maria was a relatively orthodox winger, one who dropped deeper than most, perhaps, but still essentially a player who operated high up the pitch on the left, looking to get the ball, beat his man and deliver it into the box. He was not instantly popular. He wasn’t as instantly exciting as, say, Cristiano Ronaldo, who had joined the club the previous summer, and seemed to function in the same position, and there were doubts as to why he had been taken to the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium at all. Even last summer, as Real looked to move on a few players to make way for Gareth Bale, Isco and Asier Illaramendi, it seemed likely that Di Maria might leave. Instead, though, it was Mesut Ozil who departed the forward ranks, while Di Maria stayed to redevelop his game.

He is fortunate that Argentina and Real play, if not quite in the same style, at least in a similar enough shape that his role for both is almost identical. Both operate with a highly mobile and individualistic front three and, as a result, the midfield three in both teams must be more cautious. In part, its job is to ferry possession from front to back, but also to protect that possession, to make sure it isn’t wasted. This means once surrendered, ball possession is extremely difficult to retrieve.

For Real, Xabi Alonso (or, on Saturday, given he was suspended, Sami Khedira) sits deep in the center of the midfield three; for Argentina it is Javier Mascherano. To the right for Real is Luka Modric; for Argentina it isif fit enoughFernando Gago. On the left of both is Di Maria. Mascherano is  clearly a far more destructive presence than Xabi Alonso, more of a pure ball-winner, and he lacks the long passing ability of the Spaniard, while Gago is a more physical and less technical presence than Modric. In both cases, though, the midfield sits deep and there is a danger than space can open up between the front three and the back seven of the side. That’s where Di Maria is so vital.
 

Tactical Intelligence, Energy and Flexibility

Argentinian football has long celebrated the role of the number 10 as the “enganche”–literally, “the hook”–the player who links the attacking part of the team to the rest. The classic player in that mould is Juan Roman Riquelme, somebody who sits behind a front two, moving as little as possible, looking to receive possession, create space with a trick or a drop of the shoulder, and then slide passes through either to one of the front line or somebody advancing from behind him. In a very different way, Di Maria has become the hook for both Real Madrid and Argentina. He is not an engancheand it would be absurd and anachronistic to describe him as such–but his function in the team is similar. He ensures continuity from front to back, not by languidly threading passes through the eye of a needle as a classic enganche would, but more through his energy and awareness. There is arguably nobody in the modern game so adept at deciding the right moment for releasing a pass. Di Maria’s distribution is rarely complicated, but it is almost invariably well-conceived. He carries the ball when necessary; and he releases when necessary. It says much for his tactical intelligence that in the Champions League final, having felt a twinge in his hamstring in extra-time, Di Maria was able to simply switch positions with the left-back Marcelo, adapting immediately to take up the sort of positions expected of a fullback.

An indication both of Di Maria’s importance to Real Madrid and the rich vein of form in which he presently finds himself came in the clasico against Barcelona at the Bernabeu in March. In that game, he found himself up against Xavi, a key defensive position. Not only did he overwhelm the Barca midfield, negating him as an attacking threat and disrupting Barca’s rhythm as a result, but Di Maria was instrumental in the first two Real Madrid goals that night.

And while he may not quite have the close technical ability of his Argentina teammates Sergio Aguero or Lionel Messi, Di Maria can take players on. Real’s second goal against Atletico on the Champions League final came as the result of him performing a classic gambeta, the slaloming dribble so fetishized in Argentina.

Like Messi, Di Maria was born in Rosario, around 300 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, although his first club was Central, the rivals to Newell’s Old Boys, where Messi first trained. Di Maria made his debut at 17, in 2005, and, after rejecting the chance to move to Russia with Rubin Kazan, was highly impressive at the 2007 World Youth Cup, where he linked up well with Aguero. That drew the attention of scouts from western Europe, and he moved to Benfica in 2007.

Diego Maradona hailed him as Argentina’s “next big star” and he seemed to bear that out in the 2008 Olympic Games, scoring the extra-time winner against the Netherlands in the quarter final, before chipping the only goal of the final, against Nigeria. Argentina retained the gold medals they’d won in Athens four years earlier.

At club level in Europe, it was in his third season in Lisbon (2009-10), that Di Maria really blossomed, scoring five goals and registering 12 assists as Benfica completed the Portuguese league and cup double. That was what earned him his move to Madrid. His adaptation there took time, but after last Saturday, few could deny his importance to the side.

He is just as significant a figure for his country.

comments

Speaking of Iran

White House should Seek Congressional Endorsement for any Iran Deal

May 27, 2014
Speaking of Iran
White House should Seek Congressional Endorsement for any Iran Deal