Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2022

73 72 If we speak of your longevity in the game, we talk about your first World Cup in France 1998, to your last World Cup in South Africa 2010. Did your recovery strategies differ from the start to the end of your career? What processes did you go through as you recovered from injury from the start to the end of your career? Working overall with great professionals was what helped with recovery and to stick to certain levels and parameters. At all moments, we look for the highest level and the professional who can help you to reach it, both in those years as a player, and now also as a president. 1998, 2002, 2010. Your three World Cups, what about 2006? If I may ask, what, what it was like when you were not selected to play at the World Cup in Germany? They are decisions from the coaches, and decisions from a process that I had started but I did not finish it. That year was one of my best years in Italian football, but the coaches in this regard have the last word, and even sometimes as the group is taking its shape, it is better not to break the harmony, by trying to keep its base. Away from Argentina, 10 years in Europe. You rejected a lot of big offers from European clubs, and you went back to Argentina for Estudiantes? Why did you do that? I thought it was the moment, although I was 31 years old, I felt the necessity to go back to the club that had trained me. It was not only about the football aspect but the spiritual one, to give my experience to a club which needed to take one more step to be able to grow. Although it is not a matter of only one person, we need a team for that, going together towards the same ideas that you want to develop, both on and off the football pitch. I felt I had the energy and desire to do it. I felt the need of coming back, which goes beyond any economical aspect, but more about personal satisfaction to give something back to a club that gave me everything. Football players when they retire, you hear often of player-coach, but not player-president. What was that like? It was not a democratic decision at all, the democracy did not exist by that moment in Estudiantes. I was the president, and I was a player at the same time. I afforded to do it. It was something related with the building of the new stadium. It was only a moment, only for two or three matches. What were your desires and challenges when you joined Estudiantes again? What did you want to accomplish? The challenge of growing, the challenge for the club to be able to develop itself as an institution. It is totally different to what happens in a club in Europe, it is very complex. Although the growth obviously goes together with what happens in football, it goes as well together with an institutional development. It is not only football, but there are also twenty-five more disciplines within a club, which is huge. As a club president, what do you feel are that the key points on developing a relationship with the board, the players, and the coaching staff? To have clear, common objectives for the club and all its parts; boards, players and coaches. That is difficult sometimes. The footballer has its complexity, and we must lead him towards the common goal. He has to feel he is part of that, to have that sense of belonging, to love the place we are in, to make it our own space. Once that happens, it is much easier to make things grow together. How does Estudiantes manage the performance data of the players? That is a part which has been implemented late in Argentina. In our case, it is only one year ago that we started working with the data and its analysis, and even now it is not something included in the Argentinian football agenda. It is not about the capacity of the club and its staff, but it is about the lack of investment capacity to be able to work with that. Does that change from youth right through to senior football? It changed very much. Before it was a small notebook plus a pen, nowadays it has changed a lot. There is more data, they analyze more the player, the physical component has changed, as well as technically and tactically. I do not know if it is better or worse, but what I do think is that it has taken the improvisation out from the player, seeing different players, such as Messi, Neymar, those that break the mold. We should let the player develop himself in this area. In terms of data, from when you started playing football. The evolution of performance data has changed considerably, hasn’t it? It has obviously changed a lot, and it is clear the evolution in football. I think it helps to reduce the error margin in football in general, and in the players, it is useful for many things. It is not useful for some others like the improvisation the player needs in some moments in the game. It means that the player’s action is reduced to what the player does in the training or what the coach is requesting. For me, there has to be an extent of improvisation, and the player who has that intelligence to decide on his own, is the player everybody wants or needs for a match to be changed. When you were a player, you were highly competitive, you lived to win and were so dominant in the midfield. Now, being a club President, how do you live the competition on the outside? It is much more difficult. For us who lived football and now we watch it from outside, we see that is very clear. From inside there are just seconds in which you have to make a decision in advance according to the next play you will do, because making a decision right there when in the play, you can lose that second which is crucial to solve it. From outside, we can see that. It is much easier, but and the same time, much more difficult to me than when I played. I get angry about the decision made by the player or because the direction the game is taking is a different one than I think it should. It is sometime an ambiguous sensation between getting angry or happy. There is not long to go now until the start of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. What are your thoughts on the World Cup coming up? The first ever in the Middle East. I have followed the evolution of Qatar as a country, its stadiums, and its facilities. It is clear it is going to be a completely different world cup, regarding what we are used to seeing, or regarding what I had the chance to play in. Being able to discover the passion in another place, in other stadiums. We are used to moving from one city to another, and we are basically in the same city. What is not going to change is the temperature, the altitude is the same, where everybody will play under the same conditions. Something that possibly would have changed in another place. I do not have doubts it is going to be at the same level of the best World Cups. As I mentioned at the top, you have played in three FIFA world Cups. Qatar will be the most compact world Cup. You can go two, three, maybe if you are quick, four games a day. That’s another thing for this World Cup, the fact that it is compact, that everything is so close that you can enjoy the spectacle. For the federations, not to move and being in the same place is a benefit. Just for this is going to be different, it is going to be a great World Cup. How do you think Argentina will fare in this World Cup? You are one of the top favorites, alongside the likes of Brazil. We had the 2014 World Cup where we reached the final, we witnessed a good team, today the sensation is different. Overall, because of the use of the social media, we can see how the team lives the moment, how they are, their relationships as a group, and we can see a compact group, with a similar age in most of them, and obviously with a great build up so far. The message is very good, and hopefully for the Argentinian football and for the kids, who have not seen an Argentina world champion, hopefully we can do it. The World Cup is seven matches, it is not easy at all because the other National Teams come with the same desires of being the winners. As Argentinian, I hope and wish we can be the world champions.