The crossroads of Tata: the unloved Argentine in Mexico who can leave Messi without a World Cup

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«

(Rosario, Argentina, 1962) is a good person.

A type of codes.

Honorable.

He never has a bad deed with anyone.

One day he was with a prop man.

A president came to him because he wanted to talk to him.

Well, he made him wait.

On another occasion, one of the most important journalists in Argentina asked for an interview, and he had to wait four or five days.

He said that he was number one and that he should be ahead of the others. What did Tata do?

He replied that they were all the same.

And that journalist became enemy number one.

Tata is a man of codes, of values.

He is the closest thing to human perfection.

But, you see, they punish him».

Elvio Paolorosso

, after the defense made, takes a breath from the other side of the phone.

He was Gerardo Martino's physical trainer during his spells at Newell's Old Boys, Barcelona and the Argentina national team.

Now, while he continues to convey his particular vitality at Olimpia de Asunción, he observes with some concern how things have not changed for his former foreman.

Because Tata, now the Mexican coach, despite qualifying the Aztecs for the World Cup, despite having a unique opportunity to expel the team of the country where he was born from the World Cup, he continues to feel misunderstood.

Mexico and Argentina meet this Saturday in Lusail in the second day.

And after the bump from

against Saudi Arabia (1-2), another defeat against Mexico, which drew against Poland (0-0), would leave Leo Messi eliminated and without the World Cup.

Little seems to matter to Mexicans, whose disaffection with Tata is reminiscent of the one suffered in his day at Barcelona, ​​where he left like he came.

With exquisite treatment with everyone he came across.

But with the gesture of not having understood anything of what was happening around him

"Disappointed and Bitter"

"If in Barcelona the treatment was bad, in Mexico it is being much worse," continues Paolorosso, who chooses to look back to that season in Barcelona (2013-14) in which Barcelona lost the League with Atlético in the Camp Nou.

"There are things that many people don't know.

The managers proposed to Martino to renew his contract for two more years.

But he was so disappointed, so bitter... They even questioned the color of the

he was wearing (the legendary pistachio polo shirt).

Or when we beat Rayo (0-4).

We lost possession and they killed him.

Tata came from burying his father.

Nobody cared".

After that, Tata and his assistants embarked on another adventure directing Messi, this time with the Argentine team.

It didn't end well either.

They lost two Copa América finals against Chile and the coaching staff was disbanded as Martino sought new challenges in Major League Soccer.

Since 2018 he has led the Mexican team.

«Martino, at first, was not hated in Mexico.

When it was named, people were excited.

He was the one who had directed Messi.

A figure," explains

, a Mexican journalist for

.

"But after winning the first title, the 2019 Gold Cup, came the loss that changed everything.

Against Argentina.

A 4-0 in a friendly in September 2019. And there people already said that it could not be.

That he, precisely because he was Argentine, had to know how to play them.

When Mexico, at least in the World Cups, never beat Argentina (3-0 in Uruguay 1930, 2-1 in the round of 16 in Germany 2006, and 3-1 in the same round in South Africa 2010).

Seefoo offers a sociological point of view with the position as a Mexican selector of an Argentine.

«Historically, Mexicans have always felt inferior to Argentina.

And Argentina also sees us as inferior.

That hurts a Mexican a lot.

They are homeland complexes.

Argentines are charismatic, loved, handsome, known throughout the world, those who had Maradona, those who have won two World Cups, those who triumphed in Mexico, those who know how to play soccer... Although we are not inferior, we believe it.

"And what would you do?"

Under the shorts, Tata's thick twins appeared this Friday at the Doha Convention Center in the center of a hurricane that he does not feel is his.

An Argentine against Argentina.

What an insult to some.

"If you were in my place, what would you do?" he told a journalist.

“Mexico has to win.

There is no other answer.

I already know where I was born.

I could tell you the name of the hospital.

But I have to do the impossible for Mexico to win.

I can not to do other thing".

"We already did it with Paraguay in the World Cup qualifiers in South Africa," emphasizes Paolorosso, who seeks answers to extreme criticism in the Aztec team: "Tata's objective was to qualify Mexico.

And he did.

He had problems with the press, which punished him.

But this was not born only from journalists.

He intuited that his way of exercising discipline and order had to do with it.

Or that some players who wanted to be with the national team and were not called up pulled strings to complicate his life.

I insist.

In Mexico he is being much worse than in Barcelona ».

As if that were not enough, Tata Martino can go down in history as the Argentine who gave the last shovelful to Leo Messi's World Cup dream.

There is nothing as absurd as football.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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