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By Rory Smith
Angel Di Maria never came home. The summer of 2007 had been good, he was 19 years old and had spent about a month in Canada representing his country at the Under-20 World Cup, had excelled, scoring 3 goals, as had his team: just as in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2005, Argentina won the tournament.
His star rose so fast that when the aircraft carrying the equipment landed back to Buenos Aires, Di María passed slightly passport control. “When we landed, he was given our aircraft and taken to Europe,” Hugo Tocalli said. , the coach of the team. ” Actually, on that. “
Say Maria to Benfica, the first leg of an adventure that will take you to Real Madrid, Manchester United and now Paris Saint-Germain. He’s not the first member of this young team to cross the ocean. Three of his teammates – adding Sergio Aguero – had already been signed through European clubs. Neither did he last: in one year, nine other tocalli team members had been withdrawn from Argentina.
“It was the same on each and every occasion,” said Tocalli, who was on the training team for Argentina’s five victories in that period. “We went to Qatar and ended up as champions. We went to Malaysia, we finished champions. And after each, the players went to Europe, then went to the top team.
While searching for names, it is not difficult to perceive why: Walter Samuel, Esteban Cambiasso, Pablo Aimar of the 1997 team; In 2001, Nicolás Burdisso, Maxi Rodríguez and Javier Saviola; Fernando Gago, Pablo Zabaleta and, of course, Lionel Messi of the team that won in Holland in 2005. Argentina, those of a few years, seemed to have an inexhaustible source of incredibly gifted teenagers, in a position to conquer the world.
Tocalli still works on the development of young people, as a member of the technical staff of San Lorenzo, and looks at countless perspectives. And he is still convinced that Argentina produces the most productive players. “The skill is still there, ” he said. There are still players here. “
That might not have changed, but everything has changed. Ten years ago, 47 Argentine players were in Italian Serie A; this year, only 24 are registered lately. In 2014, the Premier League hired 23 Argentines; this season, which has been reduced to 11.
And, as Argentine journalist Juan Pablo Varsky has pointed out, a portion of them – including Aguero, Willy Caballero and Sergio Romero – are in the fall of their careers, their heirs have not yet materialized. Europe, not long ago, took the lead, players as fast as Argentina can simply expand them. Now, it seems, the production line has entered.
A few years ago, two watchmen from FCCopenhague, the Danish first team, arrived in Avellaneda, a city south of Buenos Aires, to see Racing Club play a hope. The only challenge they couldn’t figure out how. , exactly, to enter the stadium.
In Europe, there is a short agreement between clubs to make special arrangements for Scouts: complementary tickets that provide an intelligent point of view, regularly among their peers, or in the quieter parts of a stadium, such as the box of managers or press seats. In Argentina, the screening has been a little more complex, finally, the two Danish lookers, with their calls and emails unanswered to the club, still had no selection to buy tickets and sit among the enthusiasts behind the goal. position to compare a possible signature.
The incident led Racing to make life easier for visiting divers, but the club’s visitor coordinator, Diego Huerta, said it can still be “complicated” for European watchers to watch live matches in Argentina. This contrasts only with Europe but also – a lot. better, with Argentina’s wonderful continental rival, Brazil.
Brazil, partly because of its history, partly because of its extent, has long been the leading exporter of football. In May, a report from the CIES Football Observatory showed that 1,535 Brazilians played professional football outside Brazil. Argentina had never been able to fit into such a number, of course, but not long ago they were getting close.
In 2014, Argentina sold more players than Brazil; in the years leading up to this, Brazil remained at the forefront with the smallest of margins; now, however, while Argentina’s production line has collapsed, CIES has found that it exports only 78 players. Brazil has risen again in 2019.
Recruitment of players in Europe characterizes this to two trends. One is the popular education of young people in Brazil, which many now compare to that in Europe. The other is the relative ease of doing business with Brazilian clubs. , show you around the academy, be offering you a coffee, talk to you about the players,” said the recruiter of a gigantic European national team. “They’re more transactional. “
The effect, at the highest level, is clear. Until 2014 there were more Argentines in Serie A than Brazilians, from 2014 to 2018 the same happened with the Premier League, now, even in Spain, where a shared language has facilitated the installation of Argentine players, Brazil is booming. 2018, 39 Argentines played in La Liga and 21 Brazilians. This season, the gap has been considerably reduced: 25 Argentines and 20 Brazilians.
It’s tempting that the explanation is accessibility. Brazil’s most productive groups invite scouts on a tour; Argentina, in some cases, does not even respond to emails. In a fast-converting market, clubs will instinctively favor the player they know best; they can’t make judgments about what they don’t see. Argentina’s fall is a failure, not of organization’s ability yet.
For Huerta, however, there is a flaw in this argument. “This is all true also 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s confusing now, but confusing at the time. And the agreements are still made.
Most of the headquarters of the top-controlled groups have, somewhere in their encrypted recruitment software, a list comparing the relative strengths of dozens of leagues around the world. In the top lists, the Premier League and La Liga compete for supremacy; Germany tends to take third place.
The list works like anything between a nursery sheet and an equation, a way to weigh the merits of players between countries and contexts. If a team looks at two strikers, one in France and one in Portugal, the list allows the team to see what the player’s knowledge profile means in relation to the other.
The 21st Corporate Analytics Club, which provides knowledge and data to various groups in Europe, has its own model. Brazil’s first flight, Serie A, came in sixth place; The Argentine Super League is eighth. “We believe that Argentina’s most productive groups are a little larger than Brazil’s, but there is greater strength in the most sensitive in Brazilian football,” said Omar Chaudhuri, Director of Intelligence at Club 21.
For recruiters, this makes Brazil a market to work on. “High-quality leagues can be harder to detect,” Chaudhuri said. “When you look at Boca Juniors, say, opposed to a weak opponent, it can be tricky to measure how impressive individual functionality is. “
This challenge was exacerbated in 2015, when the Super League expanded to 30 teams. Although this number has now been reduced to 24, it is expected to increase again in reaction to the monetary effect of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s no way the point won’t be transmitted,” Huerta said of a league of this size. “When groups watch matches here, they see 8 or 10 groups to watch, and the point is low. “
This is typical of how the challenge is explained in Argentina, as a factor at least partly attributable to the country. Huerta cites a variety of points, ranging from broader economic challenges that force clubs to cut their progression budgets to the loss of Tocalli and his team. mentor José Pékerman, before him, of the country’s youth system. Tocalli regrets the lack of foresight of Super League teams.
“There are only a few clubs with projects,” he says. For many, the result, even at the youth level, is all that matters, the development of the players. They’re thinking about today, tomorrow. “
Argentina’s disappearance, however, cannot be attributed entirely to self-inflicted damages. The lifestyles of these knowledge-based matrices comparing leagues is evidence of a new market reality: club horizons have expanded far beyond classic markets. be at the forefront – Udinese, Lyon, Porto and everyone else – now consider Argentina, like Brazil, as a high-end market, which is higher priced in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.
And they know how to locate it: sift through the wealth of knowledge provided in those traditionally smaller leagues, and then use it as Wyscout to watch as many matches as they want. This technological substitution has broadened the horizons of football: Nigeria now exports more players Ghana has more expats than Belgium.
At the same time, Europe has industrialized its own development of young people. “In the past, there were no highly technical German players, English players, Spanish players of this level,” Huerta said.
European football used to turn to Argentina – and Brazil – because of the magic it lacked. Now, Huerta said, he has a tendency to place “combative” players in South America. Talent? You can grow it on your own.
He hopes the fall in Argentine exports will be just a dive into the cycle, an herbal hole before players start emerging again. “Here are attractive generations, players of 15, 16 and 17 years. ” Huerta said.
Tocalli is right, in this sense: Argentina has never stopped generating players, it is that, today, Europe does want it so much.
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