Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Hasta la vista, BATISTA?

Well...here comes the first obstacle in the MARADONA era.

Sergio BATISTA has said that he won't be joining Diego's coaching staff as he has other priorities and he wants to respect his own staff (the team he worked with in Beijing with José Luis BROWN as assistant coach).

BATISTA said: "Don't get me wrong. I'm happy for Diego and I love him as a friend, but I have my own staff and I want to respect them. I'm very happy working with Argentina's youth teams and you have to understand that I have other priorities. I don't want this to sound like I have problems with Diego or with Carlos BILARDO."

"I'm going to meet with Julio GRONDONA and see what is his proposal".

Meetings and phone calls and conversations will continue to take place before AFA announces officially the appointment of Diego MARADONA as Argentina coach. That appointment is believed to be scheduled for next Tuesday but it could come as early as on Thursday, 30 October (MARADONA's birthday).

Other names that sound for Diego's coaching staff?

Pedro TROGLIO (played in Italy 90 with MARADONA and is now the manager of Cerro Porteño of Paraguay); Fernando GAMBOA (current Newell's Old Boys manager and Diego's team-mate in Showbol), Héctor ENRIQUE (the player that passed the ball to MARADONA before he scored the best goal in the history of the World Cup against England in Mexico 1986) and Nery PUMPIDO (Argentina World Cup winning goalkeeper in Mexico 1986 and first-choice keeper in Italy 90 -before he broke his leg against the USSR-).

Who will join the coaching staff? Not even Diego knows!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was really hoping Batista was joining the squad.

Jack.

johnny said...

I think it would be great if Batista stayed with the youngsters. It seems he has done a very good job. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it !

John said...

You're right Johnny. BATISTA enjoys working with the youngsters. I'm sure after that success in Beijing, his next target is to preserve Argentina's fantastic run in the World Youth Cup. Next year it will be held in Egypt.