APPOINTED head coach of Argentina in 1974, Cesar Lusi Menotti became known for forging his own unique way in coaching, as well as chain smoking his way through each and every match.
As the manager of La Albiceleste, Menotti took a team that had limped out of the 1974 World Cup in Germany and, through a combination of tactical nous, radical thinking and weight of personality, turned them into world beaters just four years later.
He also enjoyed spells as the coach of Barcelona, Boca Juniors, Independiente, River Plate and Atletico Madrid to name but a few, and took charge of the Mexican national team in the early 1990s, rebuilding the side after their disqualification from the 1990 World Cup…
He was always a bit of a dude, wasn’t he?
You can say that again.
With his slender frame, long hair, open-necked shirt and a cigarette welded to his fingers, he was about as far removed from the ultra-professional coaches of today as was possible.
They called him El Flaco, or The Slim One.
Is still on the tabs?
No. After a recent operation on his lungs, Menotti is committed to turning his back on the fags.
But, as he told El Pais recently, he really, really misses them.
“I miss the cigs in the lonely moments,” he said.
“I appreciate when someone blows the smoke on my face, I look for it in the doors of the restaurants.
“Yesterday, a gentleman took an Habano [cigar] at the door of a bar and said: ‘I’m going’ and I told him: ‘No, come closer!'”
He came from Rosario and had a thirst for knowledge…
When he retied from playing in 1969, having won 11 caps for his country, Menotti travelled to Mexico for the 1970 World Cup where he was transfixed by the football of that brilliant Brazil team.
It was a lightbulb moment for the young coach and the style of football he coached throughout his career would never change.
Indeed, when the Hurcan side he managed strode to the Argentinian title in 1973 they did so with such verve that when they hammered Rosario Central 5-0 even the opposition supporters stood to applaud them.
He liked football to be played properly…
An avid opponent of ultra-defensive football, Menotti has little time for some of the tactics employed some of the more well-known coaches today.
“In football there are risks because the only way you can avoid taking risks in any game is by not playing,” he says.
And yes, he’s talking about you Jose Mourinho.
CESAR LUIS MENOTTI
1970: Newell’s Old Boys
1972-73: Huracan
1974-82: Argentina (won 1978 World Cup)
1983-84: Barcelona (won 1984 Copa del Rey)
1986-87: Boca Juniors
1987-88: Atletico Madrid
1989: River Plate
1990-91: Penarol
1991-92: Mexico
1993-94: Boca Juniors
1996-97: Independiente
1997: Sampdoria
1997-99: Independiente
2002: Rosario Central
2004: Independiente
2006: Puebla
2007: Tecos
He was his own man…
Having given the 16-year-old prodigy Diego Maradona his international debut in the year before the World Cup in Argentina in 1978, Menotti was under huge pressure to make the young star a member of his squad for the tournament.
But he resisted, claiming that Maradona was stlill too young to shoulder the weight of expectation from the home nation.
Turns out he was right too.
But he knew what he had in Maradona…
A year after Argentina’s triumph in the 1978 World Cup, Menotti took the country’s youth side to the World Youth Championship in Japan where Diego Maradona stole the show.
The 18-year-old scored six goals as he steered his side to the title, taking the Golden Ball award for the tournament’s best player and, in doing so, becoming the player that Menotti’s new Argentina side would be built around.
And he did his own thing…
Menotti was a lifelong socialist, a position entirely at odds with the right-wing military dictatorship in control of Argentina in the late 1970s.
It was a political stance that gave rise to one of Menotti’s most famous quotes…
“There’s a right-wing football and a left-wing football,” he once said.
“Right-wing football wants to suggest that life is struggle. It demands sacrifices. We have to become of steel and win by any method… obey and function, that’s what those with power want from the players.
“That’s how they create retards, useful idiots that go with the system.”
Imagine Alan Pardew saying that.
He was one of football’s deep thinkers…
Even when he wasn’t talking about politics, Menotti’s football philosophy drew heavily on, well, philosophy.
His team talks went far beyond a tactics board and a few motivational maxims and he once explained how he perceived the players he worked with.
“I maintain that a team is above all an idea, and more than an idea it is a commitment, and more than a commitment it is the clear convictions that a coach must transmit to his players to defend that idea,” he insisted.
See our earlier comment about Pardiola.
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He’s found a kindred spirit in Pep Guardiola…
Now 79, Menotti has found a kindred spirit in the Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.
The pair meet regularly, most recently in Buenos Aires where they discussed Pep’s plans for City and their shared passion for playing football in the right way.
“I think that Pep is the Che Guevara of football,” maintains Menotti. “I always said that a revolutionary wins or dies in the fight and Pep’s idea remains unwavering. He’s never going to change it: he wants to play well, he wants to own the space and he wants command of the ball.”
And you can’t argue with that.
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