Those waiting for Diego Maradona to resign or be sacked after yet another dismal Argentina performance in the World Cup qualifiers forget that he is untouchable.

Maradona will press on blindly, brushing off criticism with remarks about having always fought adversity and come out on top.

The team he led to victory in the 1986 World Cup forged their solidarity in the them-and-us syndrome: Them being influential people in Buenos Aires, like then government Sports secretary Rodolfo O’Reilly, trying to get coach Carlos Bilardo ousted weeks before the tournament in Mexico when they looked a poor team.

Victory served to increase Maradona’s self-belief and aura of invincibility.

Maradona recalled on Wednesday night that Argentina were close to elimination in the qualifiers for the 1986 finals and that they had to play Australia in a playoff for the 1994 tournament.

He is the arch-survivor, from the time an uncle plucked him as a little boy out of a cesspit in the shantytown where he grew up to the several occasions when he cheated death by drugs or obesity after retiring as a player.

Whether or not he is a good coach, an astute leader of men, an inspiration to his players doesn’t come into it: Faith is the issue and “The Hand of God” claims to have plenty.

Maradona’s appointment last October appalled a lot of Argentines but just as many had faith that he could inspire the team like no-one else, touch Lionel Messi with his magic wand and transform Argentina.

Good results in friendlies in his early games in charge fuelled the faith and a 4-0 home win over Venezuela in his first qualifier in charge looked good — on paper.

Ultimately it did a lot of damage, because the team tried to play the same game more than 3,500 metres up in the rarefied air of La Paz and got pasted 6-1 by Bolivia.

There has been just one win in the four qualifiers since, 1-0 at home to Colombia who were unlucky not to get at least a draw.

In Maradona’s defence, the team played well away to Ecuador in their next away game at altitude, pacing themselves, but a penalty miss by Carlos Tevez denied them the halftime lead they deserved. They lost their legs in the final quarter of an hour and conceded two late goals to go down 2-0.

The Brazil and Paraguay defeats in the last six days followed, leaving Argentina in the playoff position.

Tevez’s Argentina form is symptomatic of the team’s ills. He is no longer the South American Tevez who inspired Boca Juniors and Corinthians to titles. He has moulded himself into the ultimate idol of the English fans’ and managers’ love of the work ethic. He always gave his all but he seems to have lost his ball touch.

Messi’s performances have merely highlighted the superb job Pep Guardiola does at Barcelona where the Argentine wonder kid responds brilliantly to a tune dictated by Xavi and Iniesta.

Argentines want to see the Barcelona Messi playing for their country but there is no strong team structure for him to shine in and he can’t carry the team like Maradona did at a similar age.

The Argentina team became Maradona’s baby as a captain. It is no different as a coach, only he lacks the ability from the touchline to carry the team to victory that he had as a player.

Critics have said they hope Maradona fails and Argentina don’t go to the finals in South Africa so the team can make a new start. A process that brought Argentina five of their record six World Youth Cups in the last decade and a half and produced a team who were favourites to win the senior title in 2002 and met Brazil in the 2004 and 2007 Copa America finals has hit the buffers.

Maradona believes only he can save them.

PHOTO: Diego Maradona sits on the bench during Argentina’s defeat by Paraguay in Asuncion, Sept. 9, 2009. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

Ten wins in a row and unbeaten for eighteen games. The run includes 2-0 and 3-0 wins over Italy, 4-0 wins in Uruguay and Venezuela, 3-0 in Chile and, of course, Saturday’s 3-1 demolition of Argentina, the first time Brazil’s arch-rivals have lost at home for 16 years. Nothing, it seems, can stand in the way of Dunga’s Brazil and and a sixth world title.

There’s only one small problem: everyone was saying the same about Carlos Alberto Parreira’s team four years ago after they won the Confederations Cup with a 4-1 win over Argentina in the final. Like Dunga’s team, they were Copa America champions at the time and their so-called Magic Quarter of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka and Adriano looked unstoppable.

Instead, Brazil relaxed. They took the Confederations Cup too seriously, forgetting that the Argentine side they had beaten was a second-string line-up. Their pre-World Cup training camp in the small Swiss village of Weggis had a carnival atmosphere. Five thousand paying spectators packed a specially constructed arena to watch every single training session. A subdued World Cup campaign ended with a 1-0 defeat to France in the quarter-finals. 

This time, the Brazilian confederation has vowed not to repeat the mistakes. Dunga, who shuns celebrity status for both himself and his players, is probably the last coach in the world who would accept such a set-up. But there are other things which could go wrong.

Brazil are heavily dependant on striker Luis Fabiano and goalkeeper Julio Cesar and a loss of form for either player would seriously weaken them.

Luis Fabiano has scored five goals at the Confederations Cup and nine in the World Cup qualifiers despite playing in only nine of their 15 games. They have looked fairly toothless when he has been absent .Julio Cesar has been in inspired form and has often made the difference.

Luck also comes into it and Brazil have been getting all the breaks recently. Their match away to Ecuador in March last June was an extraordinarily one-sided affair in which the hosts should have been several goals to the good by halftime. Instead, Brazil somehow sneaked a 1-1 draw.

Brazil again found themselves under the cosh in Uruguay, yet managed to go in 2-0 ahead at halftime thanks to some more heroics from Julio Cesar and a blunder from his opposite number Sebastian Viera. It was a similar story on Saturday when Argentina did all the attacking but Brazil led 2-0 at halftime. And we must not forget the farcical penalty which gave them a 4-3 win over Egypt at the Confederations Cup.

Brazil’s World Cup opponents are less likely to play into their hands than their South American neighbours.

Dunga has turned Brazil into a counter-attacking outfit who are at their most comfortable away from home against teams who come out and take the initiative.

Argentina, who have descended into chaos under the leadership of Diego Maradona, played straight into Dunga’s hands as they poured forward in Rosario and left gaping holes at the back.

World Cup opponents are likely to be play more like Colombia and Bolivia, who both held on for goalless draws in Rio de Janeiro as they exposed Brazil’s lack of ideas when faced with packed defences.

PHOTO: Brazil players salute their supporters at the end of the World Cup qualifying win over Argentina in Rosario, September 5, 2009 REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian

So often ahead of a great sporting event, there is little evidence of a city’s awareness that it is hosting something special, like last year’s Euro2008 in Austria and Switzerland. Not so Argentina’s big match with arch football enemies Brazil in this riverside city 300 km north of Buenos Aires, home to a bitter rivalry of its own between Rosario Central and Newell’s Old Boys.

Saturday’s World Cup qualifier is the talk of the town which was surprisingly offered the match in June after national team coach Diego Maradona criticized River Plate’s Monumental stadium in Buenos Aires.

Fans of Rosario’s two big clubs, kept apart to avoid potential fights, have been queuing for tickets since Monday outside their respective stadiums, braving the rain and cold of an Argentine winter in real or makeshift tents.

There is a new breed of profiteers called queuers, people who stand in line for a fee and buy your tickets for you, a local journalist said.

With so much at stake for Argentina, who need to pick up points to keep their World Cup qualifying hopes alive, there are fears of violence after the match if Maradona’s team lose.

Far fewer people will be able to go to the match at Central’s ground, commonly know as the Giant of Arroyito, which holds 41,000, than would have got into River Plate, with a capacity for 65,000.

But the move has been a boon for Rosario’s hotels and restaurants, which usually have a quiet time in the winter, and street vendors of football paraphernalia.

Light blue and white striped Argentina shirts with Messi and the number 10 on the back are among the biggest selling items.

Lionel Messi, a son of Rosario, has never played an official match in his home town, having been whisked away to Barcelona as a mere 13-year-old, forging a career in Europe that has him on the verge of being named the world’s top player.

One of the youngsters queuing for tickets, a fan of Messi’s former club Newell’s Old Boys, said: “It’s worth waiting because don’t often see the ‘seleccion’ and even less Leo (Messi), whom we see on TV playing for Barcelona.”

Fans hope to see Messi tear Brazil apart and ensure he and Argentina go on to play at the World Cup in South Africa next year.

PHOTO: A street vendor sells masks outside Rosario Central stadium ahead of the World Cup qualifier against Brazil, September 4, 2009. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

In Argentina, where footballing great Diego Maradona is worshipped in his own church, everyone is asking the same question: What will it take to get the ball rolling again?

Fans are angst-ridden over the delay of the season as bad management and the global slowdown leave the country’s world-famous clubs unable to pay players and heavily in debt.

“It makes you mad,” said Nicolas Luca, a Boca Juniors fan who toured the club’s stadium last week. “Everyone’s waiting to see if it starts. Soccer is more than a passion here.”

Next to him, Juan Diaz, a 56-year-old Argentine living in Florida, snapped pictures of an empty green pitch. Then, he shoots the yellow and blue seating, trophies, club posters and even the locker room showers as a memento of his favorite club. 

“Not having soccer here is mad,” Diaz said. “There are too many economic interests in this fight and they’re hurting the Argentine people.”

Clubs say fallout from the severe world economic downturn has forced them to sell players to European clubs for a fraction of what they received in years past.

Seven first division clubs have racked up some $184 million in debt, including about $80 million in taxes. Clubs owners and the AFA say the only solution is to more than double what they charge for television rights. On Wednesday, they cancelled the existing TV deal.

But to many fans here it comes down to putting an end to the perceived corruption of soccer bosses.

“There is an embezzlement of funds,” Osvaldo Maciel, a taxi driver and River Plate fan said of his club. “They sold all the players and have had (rock) concerts all year (at the club’s stadium). Where’s the money now?”

The delay to the start of the season has angered fans, some of whom hurled stones and smashed windows at AFA’s offices.

At Boca Juniors’ La Bombanera stadiums, fans and shopkeepers are anxious for an end to the dispute. Businesses selling T-shirts and flags around the stadium are empty  except for an occasional tourist.

“Soccer cannot go untouched by the global crisis,” said restaurant owner Carlos Zinola, 61, a lifetime Boca fan. “They’re killing the game, people suffer all week and on Sunday, soccer gives them a way to escape their problems.”

Picture of empty La Bombonera stadium by REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci.

Diego Maradona is a worried man, with no football in Argentina and less than a month to go before their critical World Cup qualifier against a strong Brazilian side.

A debt crisis has put an indefinite hold on the 2009/10 season which was scheduled to start at the end of next week.

“I’m worried that the football isn’t starting, that people are not reaching agreement, that Julio (Argentine Football Association president Grondona) isn’t achieving his objectives, because I want to see the players on the pitches,” Maradona said.

“This country without football is dramatic.”

Only a quarter of Maradona’s squad play their club football in Argentina but he is constantly on the look out for players to draft in and has lost central defender Martin Demichelis of Bayern Munich to injury.

Juan Sebastian Veron, who does play in Argentina for Estudiantes, is nursing an injury, and so is Manchester City’s Carlos Tevez.

What worries other leaders hoping for a resolution to the debt crisis is that some clubs are nevertheless on an expensive recruitment drive.

The tournament, they have said, will only start when clubs, and in particular seven of the biggest in the country — River Plate, Independiente, Racing Club, San Lorenzo, Huracan, Rosario Central and Newell’s Old Boys — have put their financial house in order.

However, San Lorenzo have offered midfielder Leandro Romagnoli, who left Sporting of Portugal on Wednesday, a two-year deal worth $2 million, according to media reports on Thursday.

Argentina’s professional clubs owe the taxman a combined 300 million Argentine pesos, first and second division sides owe the AFA around 40 million pesos and a large numbers of players are demanding pay owed to them from months back.

Yet Independiente are offering San Lorenzo $1 million for striker Andres Silvera and Racing Club $1 million to the same club for goalkeeper Agustin Orion.

“There are teams that go out to buy Ronaldo and don’t know where to find the money,” said Sergio Marchi, head of the players’ union Futbolistas Argentinos Agremiados (FAA).

“Some are dealing with the (debt) issue and others aren’t. Many are behaving almost irresponsibly,” he said.

Defender Sebastian Dominguez of league champions Velez Sarsfield, a well run club, said: “What they (AFA) have to do is prohibit the clubs that owe money from signing players.”

Grondona said recently that “the situation in Argentine football is broken”, while Marchi said “the clubs did not read the credit crunch”.

Grondona sees a way out in greater revenue from television rights, online football pools and the government taking on the costs of policing matches currently funded by the home clubs.

“The closest solution, given the time factor, is an increase in the rights for TV,” Fernando Maron, president of Lanus, with Estudiantes and Velez one of the three best run clubs in Argentina.

“There is a lot of use (they get out) of the football product and this is not being rewarded,” he said.

Marcelo Bombau, chairman of TyC, the company that owns those rights, hit back: “Television is no longer going to be the cow that is milked by the clubs. Television has offered the AFA an advance so the clubs can pay their debts and the championship can start.”

The AFA is optimistic, however, that it will get a revised, improved deal from television this week and can announce at its Tuesday executive committee meeting that the championship will start on the Friday.

“It suits television, the players, the state and the clubs, all the interested parties, for the football to start,” Estudiantes president Ruben Filipas said.

PHOTO: Argentine soccer team coach Diego Maradona reacts after Ecuador’s soccer team scored during their World Cup 2010 qualifying match in Quito June 10, 2009. REUTERS/Kevin Granja

The English hooligan problem was at its worst outside Britain, when fans went to international matches abroad. Violence in Argentine football, by contrast, has reached a point in recent years where it is rarely even a confrontation between the hardcore fans of rival teams.

Now, factions who support the same team fight each other. At stake is control over a number of money-spinning ventures linked to their clubs.

It might appear paradoxical at first that just when Huracan have produced a stylish attacking team which nearly won the Argentine league title, their hardcore fans should to go war with each other.

Two men died and a number of people were injured in recent fighting in the Buenos Aires barrio of Parque de los Patricios just hours after the team’s 3-0 home win over Arsenal had put them a point clear at the top of the standings. (They then unluckily lost the title decider to Velez Sarsfield.)

Fighting between groups from the same set of fans has nothing to do with on-field performance, except that a more succesful team generates higher crowds and therefore more business for the gangs (control of parking in the area, the sale of food, resale of match tickets and even drugs.)

La Zavaleta, a faction that had been marginalised a few years ago and kept quiet while Huracan languished in the National B championship (second tier), wanted a piece of the action but the powerful Jose C Paz and El Pueblito groups were reluctant to let go and violence ensued.

The government and the Argentine Football Association via its president Julio Grondona, tried to argue that the killings had nothing to do with football because they occurred far from the ground and were committed by criminals who don’t care about the game.

They are constantly criticised by the media and by organisations representing victims of football violence for not taking preventative measures.

Thugs seem able to carry all kinds of illegal items into grounds under the very eyes of the police.

Unusally, the Jose C Paz faction posted an apology for the violence on a website although it went on to say La Zavaleta needed to be taught a lesson.

The lesson clubs never seem to learn is that as long as they give favours to hardcore fans and allow them to exercise power in and around the clubs, the violence will not go away.

PHOTO: River Plate fans are arrested by the Argentine police near the Monumental stadium before their Argentine First division soccer match against Velez Sarsfield in Buenos Aires September 9, 2007. They were arrested following a fight between two different River Plate fan factions. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

As Estudiantes bid to give Argentina the South American crown by winning the Libertadores Cup final, the fallout from Sunday’s Clausura title decider continues at an intensity not unlike that which followed Chelsea’s elimination by Barcelona in their Champions League semi-final.

It was not a final as such, but Huracan went into their last game of the season a point ahead of Velez Sarsfield who they happened to meet in a title decider at Velez. The home side got the win they needed to overtake Huracan on points with a goal scored by Maxi Moralez six minutes from time.

Referee Gabriel Brazenas apologised on Monday for mistakes he realised he made when he saw TV replays in the comfort of his armchair, saying he missed a penalty he should have awarded Velez and a foul in the build-up to the winning goal which he said should not have stood.

This was of little comfort to Huracan’s Angel Cappa, the normally measured coach who lost his cool in the closing minutes of the match after his side fell behind and said “the referee handed Velez the title on a tray”.

Velez coach Ricardo Gareca has countered that, and said he was surprised by Brazenas’s apology. Moralez shot the loose ball into the net after a collision between Huracan keeper Gustavo Monzon and Velez substitute Joaquin Larrivey, which Gareca argued was 50-50 and the keeper was to blame for misjudging his sortie. (more…)

Is the fact that Brazil are Argentina’s next opponents in the World Cup qualifiers getting to Argentines worried by the precarious position of Diego Maradona’s team in the standings?

While Brazil enjoy more match practice at the Confederations Cup in South Africa, Argentina, their rivals in the 2005 final in Germany, are bickering over the pitch on which to host their arch-rivals in match that will have a major bearing on their World Cup ambitions.

The River Plate pitch was in a disgraceful state, Maradona said before his team, playing poorly, beat Colombia 1-0 in their last qualifier on June 10 just days after fans at a rock concert trampled all over it.

A 2-0 defeat away to Ecuador at altitude in Quito in a match Argentina, playing better than against Colombia, should have sewn up in the first half, had an unhappy Maradona once again harping on about the River Plate pitch where Brazil are due on the first weekend in September.

River Plate then brought their bitter enmity with Boca Juniors, the club Maradona played for and supports, into the issue.

They demanded from the Argentine Football Association (AFA) to see Maradona’s contract and proof that the former national team captain had undergone psychological tests before being appointed to the job last year.

AFA president Julio Grondona apologised to River over the aggressive tone of Maradona’s remarks.

“It’s all about a Boca and River issue in which the River people are complaining about some remarks made by a fervent supporter of Boca,” Grondona told radio La Red.

But he also reminded River that the AFA has first say over how the ground is used and had not been asked if the club could hold a rock concert there so close to a qualifier.

Grondona also admitted, though, that the AFA had been at fault in having only one stadium that fits FIFA specifications for World Cup matches and said it was applying for the ground of Rosario Central, in Argentina’s second city 400 km north of the capital, to be passed as a reserve stadium.

Newspapers then extended the debate to canvassing fans as to whether they thought Argentina might be better off playing Brazil in the more compact Central stadium where the arch-rivals drew 0-0 during the 1978 World Cup.

With four matches to go, Brazil lead the South American qualifying group with 27 points, one more than Chile, three ahead of Paraguay and five in front of Argentina in the four automatic qualifying berths for next year’s finals in South Africa.

Slipping down to fifth would put Argentina in a playoff berth against a team from the CONCACAF region of North and Central America and the Caribbean.

What also might help Argentina improve their position is playing better and for this Grondona believes it might be good to recall Boca playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme, who controversially quit the national team over critical remarks by Maradona in the media in March.

“Also, if possible we’ll make a move to have Riquelme back,” Grondona said. “It’s not a request of Diego’s, I haven’t spoken to him about this. But who wouldn’t want him back. I sent Riquelme a few hints, he’s a good kid,” said Grondona of the player who was the midfield fulcrum of the Argentina side that reached the 2006 World Cup quarter-finals.

The outspoken Maradona is paradoxically persona non grata at his beloved Boca because of his perceived role in Riquelme’s decision to quit and hasn’t been to his private box at the club’s Bombonera stadium since.

PHOTO: Argentina’s Diego Maradona reacts after an Ecuador goal during their World Cup 2010 qualifying match in Quito, June 10, 2009. REUTERS/Kevin Granja

Chile ’s 4-0 win over Bolivia in their World Cup qualifier on Wednesday has left them on a brink for only their second World Cup appearance since 1982.

Their progress through the tortuous South American qualifying campaign – which has included a memorable home win over Argentina — has been almost exclusively credited to the work one of the world’s most reclusive and enigmatic coaches Marcelo Bielsa.

While the Chilean media were in a frenzy after Wednesday’s win, Bielsa walked into the media conference with his usual tortured, glazed expression and launched into a style of rhetoric which was a world apart from the usual clichés.

Here are a few highlights:

– “Football is so full of the unexpected that it is never convenient to pre-announce something which has not yet happened.”

– “The reality is that numerically we have not obtained a sufficient number of points to decide our qualification. So, what appears to be just a posture on our part, is simply a case of coming to terms with reality and a reading of what football historically offers in terms of unexpected situations, something which makes one more prudent.”

–”This is a cycle where things have resulted favourably and, around the triumphs, we can consolidate aspects related to collective maturity. It seems that in this sense, the team is progressing.”

–”Happiness related to football is another component, but Chile has other things to feel satisfied about, such as the evolution of the intellectual coefficient of the population in the last 30 years… This, indeed, is a very strong indicator.”

–”(Coaching Chile ) appeared to me to be a valid option and I believe that I have not made a mistake. Not because things are better or worse than the results, but because the conditions which I proposed, which I imagined, and the football reality which I revised before coming there have coincided with the projection which I made at that moment.”

Known as Loco (The Madman), the mysterious and obsessive Bielsa was born into a family of well-known lawyers and his brother Rafael is a former Argentine Foreign Minister.

He refuses to give exclusive interviews — something which infuriated Argentine television networks during six years as coach of his own country’s national team — and never talks about the referee.

He broke the latter taboo only once, after he had been dismissed from the touchline for arguing with the match official.

Bielsa said: “I never, ever comment on the referee but I have to say that on this occasion he was absolutely right to send me off.”

PHOTO: Chile’s Marcelo Bielsa looks at players before their friendly against Belgium in Chiba, east of Tokyo May 29, 2009. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

It is becoming a familiar trend in Argentine domestic football. The home team is winning by a single goal, the clock is ticking….and suddenly all the balls have disappeared and visiting players have to go searching for them.

The latest incident happened on Sunday during River’s match at home to lowly Gimnasia-Jujuy. One of the ball boys took his time in returning the ball to visiting goalkeeper Gaston Pezzutti, who angrily hurled it at the youth and was sent off.

It was a four-edged punishment for Gimnasia, who had to bring on a substitute keeper, reshuffle their team, play with a man down and lose precious seconds.

No action, however, was taken against River apart from the dismissal of the ball boy.

A similar controversy blew up earlier this month in the derby between Gimnasia-La Plata (the first division has two clubs whose full names are Gimnasia y Esgrima, one from La Plata and one from the northern city of Jujuy) and Estudiantes.

With Gimnasia 1-0 ahead in the second half, the balls mysteriously went missing. The referee added on six minutes of injury-time, Estudiantes equalised with the last kick of the game and Gimnasia even had the cheek to protest about the amount of time added on.

Ball boys are currently supplied by the home teams and are often apprentice professionals, as was the case at River on Sunday.

The idea of neutral ball boys has been discussed. Some say the fourth official should make sure there are enough balls and others have suggested that ball boys who are sent off should be suspended from youth level matches.

But, with nearly one coach losing his job a week in the first division alone, the demand for success in Argentina is so high that teams are almost certain to think up even more cunning ways of gaining an advantage if the current practice is stamped out.