"FOOTBALL WAS ROBBED FROM PEOPLE"

[Blau-Weiß]

Born in Rosario, 1938. "El Flaco" (The Skinny) is one of the greatest oracles in football. Now he talks about the Copa América, the football of his NT, Guardiola's Barcelona and Mourinho's Madrid


Luis Martin. Buenos Aires.
The meeting was in his office, in Buenos Aires downtown. It's cold outside and inside the flat. César Luis Menotti apologize: "This morning the heater broke, I was going to buy a new one, because I'm freezing", he explains. Under the glass of the office furniture, there are pics of his children. On top, a pile of books. At his left, among them, "Mi Ciudad y Mi Gente" by Eladia Blázquez, "La Aznaridad" by Vázquez Moltanbán and "Bajo Estado de Sangre", by Tejada... At his right, a clean ashtray reminds us that, not so long ago, the conversation would have been full of smoke.
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I believe that the figure of the professor is undervalued nowadays...

I don't know in Spain. Here, 50 years ago, the disculturization started. It's worrying. Social exclusion reached the middle-class. There was people who died for an 8 hour-a-day journy and now people work for 14 hours to live and noone complains. Add the fact that a "rich" country produce miserable people in power. And the first thing they've done is to rob people the sense of belonging. Everything is theirs, including football. When the governor makes a street, it looks like he was the one who paid it from his own pocket. We were robbed the music, the parks, the squares and even football. And now they get surprised about people getting tired who ends up camping in the squares.

Do you understand them?

Of course I do, this is shit! I don't want to become a damn skeptic person, but I am a furious pessimist. After all I lived, I feel an hormonal marxist, without further ideological explanation. After 70 years of my life, I tested the disaster that capitalism created in everything that surrounds me. Do you know what a friend of Barcelona told me when he cam to study the fishing of shrims?

No, I don't...

Until Argentina doesn't start its geopolitical revolution, don't believe anyone. In 3000 Kms, we are unable to gather 600,000 people; and in only in the neighborhood of Matanzas, there are 4 million people in a place where only 500,000 could live. There is no way to live in a 14 million people city. It doesn't make any sense. They're just votes to drive the whole country. Misery is profitable for many people. I don't trust them. Don't tell me anymore lies while there still is a homeless kid in the streets.

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In Argentina, isn't there anyone like Guardiola?

No, there's just one Guardiola, but given the case, people wouldn't let him exist. He would get murdered first. Here we just have Mourinhos or people like him, who just think in winning and, when they lose, it's not their fault; we know them since long ago.

What a dude. He has huge contradictions. Not so long ago, a friend went to Spain and assisted to a training session of Mou. He also watched Pep's. He told me that the sessions aren't that different, it's similar what they do, Mou is a good trainer. Conceptually, they're similar. But on the pitch, in the key moment, they have absolutely nothing in common. There are lots of Mourinhos, but there's just one Guardiola...

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http://www.the-playmaker.com/t7427-cesar-luis-menotti-interview