YOU CAN STILL CRY FOR ARGENTINA – BUT...

In case you hadn’t noticed, a beautiful thing happened in Argentina last month. A team you’ve probably never heard of, with a rich history in Argentine and international football, won its first title in 23 years, and in so doing, provided a path to redemption for a few fallen heroes.

With their 2-1 victory, resulting from an 84th minute match-winner against Boca Juniors, Estudiantes de la Plata won the Argentine Apertura as a result of a long run of memorable matches (including a 7-0 drubbing of their their arch-rivals Gimastica de la Plata) culminating in a play-off match against the men from la Bombonera, which cost Ricardo la Volpe his job, and a few Boca players their reputations. With a seemingly insurmountable 4 point lead with just two games remaining, la Volpe insisted (probably without really meaning it) that he would quit if Boca squandered the lead - but squander they did, and the 70's porn-star throwback looking, chain-smoking, trash-talking manager got the hell out of Dodge.

Outside of Argentina, little is known of the club in the sub-urban Buenos Aires province city of la Plata. It’s been said that while Boca are considered the team of the people, and their rivals, River Plate (arrogantly and at once derisively referred to as los Millionarios) are the team of the well-to-do of Buenos Aires. But it poses an interesting challenge for someone outside of Argentina, and probably Buenos Aires, to accurately capture the demographic make-up of the supporters of this club. One thing is certain – this is not one of the big four of Buenos Aires and Argentina (Boca, River, Racing and San Lorenzo), and certainly not one of the most successful Argentine teams of the last 20 years (Boca and River). For their victory over this handicap, we should all be thankful, because it proves that money, although it drives so much in football, can be overcome by heart, grit, determination and loyalty.

For if nothing else, football is a drama of the highest order; a suspenseful interlude of controlled madness where the result isn’t known until the final whistle, and while we may have an idea, based on the quality and pedigree of the teams and players, all too often, in recent times, domestic Argentine football has looked more like a Greek tragedy. Death, violence, riotous fans, match rigging, player strikes and corruption are the stuff of telenovellas (soap opera) and football in Argentina and it’s no wonder that so many of its greatest players ply their trade anywhere other than their home country, returning only to play for the last remaining source of pride: the national team.

When they return to their domestic leagues, great Argentine players have been received like prodigal sons, with rare exceptions for the likes of Juan Sebastien Veron. But there is one more thing we love about football - there is such a thing as redemption. It happens when a disgraced and discarded hero returns to the summit from which he has fallen. And for Juan Sebastien Veron, once the most expensive midfielder in the world, disgraced at the 2002 World Cup, and discarded by the two biggest clubs in English football (Manchester United and Chelsea), closer to the end of his career than most of his teammates, the victory is all the more sweet.

Unfairly singled out by many Argentines for their dismal performance in Japan/Korea 2002, Veron returned to unrelenting jeers and taunts on his travels. But for la brujita (the little witch ), turned big star, returning to "El Leon" where his father, Juan Ramon Veron (la bruja) made his bones as a footballing sorcerer, the jeers turned to tears for all the right reasons when he addressed the supporters on the field after the final as a beloved champion for the first time in a long time. And all the more important of this victory was the fact that domestic football in Argentina has done little to inspire anything other than match disruptions and violence. The fact is, football in this footballing giant of a nation, needed the boost, and Veron and Estudiantes have given it to them.

There are so many reasons for neutrals to applaud the accomplishment of this relatively small club outside the footballing dominance of the aforementioned big four. First, they are one of only two teams outside the biggest city in Argentina to win the title for several years, the other being Velez Sarsfield. Second, their manager, Diego Simeone, a man loved by his teammates and supporters, and probably nobody else in professional football, who is best known for his less than gracious, imaginary card-waving, knife-in-teeth, and incindiary approach to the game (e.g. getting David Beckham sent off in the 1998 World Cup) has won a major title in his first season at the helm of the club. And finally, the prodigal son, Juan Sebastien Veron, who played only one year for his native team before moving (briefly to Boca Juniors and then) to the Serie A.

The Argentine Football Association and press have openly welcomed this diversion from what has become an ugly truth of Argentine football. So poorly managed is the league that its best players will go to Mexico (for god's sake) to make a living, rather than play in their own country, along with any European country where they can tangentially claim citizenship. This after all the hullabaloo surrounding matches that had to be terminated due to fan rioting, and years of mismanagement which has reduced the league to that of a spring board for young talent, and a graveyard for old hands. Ever since Argentine football professionals went on strike in 2001 over unpaid wages, one has had the feeling that the league, while professional, has been run by amateurs, driving more and more talent to ply their trade anywhere in the world that they can make a reliable living. It’s hard to imagine that with all the transfer fees coming from so many players going to Europe, that somehow the clubs could be short of the cash required to pay their players, but that seems to be the norm. And yet, somehow they seem to turn out great player after great player, a never-ending supply of talent that has only a few youth titles to point to, aside from the Olympic Gold in 2004, since their World Cup victory in 1986. If ever there were proof that football fortune is in the soul of a country, Argentina are it.

Spanish speakers will know that the name, Estudiantes, refers to students. This comes from the history of the club’s inception, where medical students, fed up with the way their eventual local rivals, Gimnastica de la Plata, were running their club, decided to start their own, hence the name. To this day, a player or supporter of Estudiantes is called a “pincha” (not to be confused with the Mexican expletive "pinche") or “pincharratta” , which loosely translates to “rat-stabbers” referring to the laboratory rats their students regularly sacrificed in the name of science.

In all likelihood, if you’re not a historian of football, and don’t watch Argentine football on the FSC, you’d never heard of Estudiantes, and you certainly wouldn’t know that they won 3 Copa Libertadores in a row between 1968 and 1970 (a feat bested only by the 4 in a row of the great sides of Independiente from 1972 to 1975.) It’s true that in those days, the champion was not required to work their way through the group stages, as they are today, but the club can also claim some of of the most important figures in Argentine football in their history as well.

Carlos Salvador Bilardo, the World Cup winning manager from 1986, captained Estudiantes during their glory years (one of two physicians in the club, by the way) and returned to manage the club years later to a title in 1982. Jose Luis Brown – a defender, and goal scorer in the World Cup final of 1986 (where he, in fact, dislocated his shoulder and was unable to lift the trophy he had just won) was also an important player of this club. The manager, Diego Simeone, was also a pincha long before he wore a suit on the touchines, and Juans Ramon and Sebastien Verons are probably the second most famous father son combination in football history (after Cesare and Paolo Maldini). There are other names of note on the list of alumni, but most you’ve probably never heard of, and yet Estudiantes truly are a club with great success in their history. It seems they’ve always been a team of men battling against the odds, and there is something mesmerizing about that in football.

If anything is going to save Argentine football, it’s moments like these. True, there will probably be no end to the assembly line production of the great players coming out of this country, and I’d be very surprised if they didn’t win one of the next 3-4 World Cups, but a domestic league, while not the engine of national teams, is still a source of pride for countries, and can be again for Argentina. For that to happen they need a few things:

1. The big teams whose directors regularly pilfer the coffers to their own ends need to lose and lose painfully
2. The revolving door of the same old coaches, kissing the assess of the same old directors needs to be welded shut.
3. The teams that exhibit all the qualities that we love in football, and none of those we hate, need to start winning – preferably as dramatically as Estudiantes.

For now we can take solace in the joy of watching those pincharrattas in their underwear, taking a lap of honor. But if those things can happen, there just might be a reason for these old hands to turn over the reigns to a new generation of leaders who actually give a damn about the game: then and only then will we stop crying for Argentina.