In Colombia, a major revolution started brewing, one that put an end to Bilardo’s iron rule and began to show how tough the team was. Because, until then, if Bilardo said, “We have to go to Timbuktu,” we—or the rest of the guys, really—would all get up and go to Timbuktu, no questions asked. He would say, “We have to play that game, not this one,” and we would play that game and not this one, like during that weird tour he put together with games in Bogotá and in Barranquilla, even though we had already been at the training camp at Club América in Mexico for over ten days by then (early May ’86).
And—no way, man—that’s not how it should go down.
In the end, we only played one match in that tour. Just one on the field. We fought some battles off the field, though. And those turned out to be much more important.
And that was thanks, in large part, to us, the players, and to a meeting we had in this enormous suite in La Fontana hotel in Bogotá the very night we flew in from Mexico; we had another meeting in Barranquilla after a zero to zero tie against Junior.
The first meeting was on a Tuesday, the thirteenth, which they say is bad luck in Argentina, but it was not at all unlucky for us. We got together as soon as we landed in Colombia, and it was on that night in May, when the opening of the World Cup was still three weeks away, that a champion team began coming together, one that was not going to be pressured by anybody. A team that would make itself heard by anyone and everyone: reporters, chronically bitter fans, politicians, officials, naysayers (who were everywhere), and even the coaching staff. In a word, a team with balls.
We had been in Mexico for a week and were leaving for Colombia that morning. Everything went wrong. We were supposed to take off at eight thirty—which was already a pain in the ass—but the flight didn’t get off the ground until noon because of a bomb threat or something. So we were pissed by the time we did take off, which just heated things up even more at the meeting that night.
It was just us, the twenty-two players. That’s it. Nobody else.
We talked about money, about the bonus we would get if we won the cup . . . That’s right, because we believed we were going to win it all, and we knew we wouldn’t make jack even if we ran the victory lap. Do you know how much we got for being world champions thirty years ago, which was the last time the Argentine team won the World Cup? Thirty-three thousand dollars. That’s right! That’s just travel expenses for a player today. And do you know what we got for travel expenses? That’s right! Twenty-five dollars! Just twenty-five bucks! I still can’t believe it.
We talked about that at the meeting, but the truth is that we didn’t give a shit about the cash. We were there for much more than that. It was rough, because some of us were already earning good money for playing in Europe, but not all of us. Some of the guys didn’t even have decent cleats; no one sponsored them the way they do now. What I wanted was for them to understand that the Argentine jersey was worth far more than that, and that the Argentine jersey would be on our backs—it would be us, not the usual suit-wearing backstabbers or naysayers, who would be wearing the jersey. Just us.
We talked about the training sessions, about what we needed, about giving it our all and then some, giving everything!
I remember it like it was yesterday. I stood up in the middle of the room and started talking. I looked all the guys in the eye and felt like my blood was boiling and the vein on the back of my neck was about to explode. I ground my teeth so hard I thought they were going to crack. My fist was clenched as I spoke, like I was going to punch someone. That’s what I felt like doing. But the blows—aimed straight at the heart—were words.
“What we have to do now is forget about everything. And I mean everything. Our clubs, our families, money, our troubles. The only thing we have to think about is us. Nobody else. Just us! And it doesn’t matter who’s a starter and who’s a sub—don’t bother me with that crap. We have to work together like hand and glove, be willing to sell our souls to help a teammate. And that goes for every one of us, and I mean every last one! If one of us wins, we all win—got it? Because a lot of folks are expecting us—and I mean every last one of us—to lose. And they think that when we lose, we will be torn apart more than they have already torn us apart. And, you know what? We are not going to give them that pleasure. No way!”
That was my oath.
And if we had gone out on the field right then, we would have scored five goals no matter who we were up against. It was us against everyone else, against the whole world. Some of the guys were just kids. But everyone spoke up. Each of us, in his own way, spoke his mind. What that group needed was to come together, to talk, to be able to talk. Even Bochini talked that day—we had barely heard his voice. So did Enrique, who had joined the team just a month before. Zelada talked, and he didn’t become part of the team until we got to Mexico; Almirón, who wouldn’t see even a minute of play, spoke, and of course Valdano said his bit—sometimes we had to tell him to keep quiet. “Enough!” we would shout at him. Passarella spoke up too that time, but not after that—you’ll know why soon enough.
And so, after the game against Junior in Barranquilla, when we were too exhausted to run another step, we started asking ourselves what we were doing there instead of in Mexico. There were only three weeks to go before the World Cup; it didn’t make any sense for us to be running around Colombia, where we would, most likely, have to deal with criticism and even run the risk of being injured by players on the other team who wanted to show how tough they were. The weather conditions were different—it was hot and humid, which meant a whole different set of problems from the altitude we would have to deal with later on. I remember that Goyén, the Uruguayan player, did a really good job as goalie that game, which ended one to one—but we should have won it. But what I remember most is how exhausted we were, that we would just watch the players on the other team run by; I remember Uribe running circles around us. We didn’t play that bad, not as bad as we had been playing. In fact, I think we played pretty good. But we were beat. We couldn’t get it in the net. And for a team that so few believed in, that was awful.
We talked to “El Profe” Echevarría, the team’s trainer—a master, the best guy on the coaching staff. And, very wisely, he understood when we told him we had decided to go back to Mexico. I went to talk to Bilardo myself after putting it to the whole team and making sure they agreed. I went to Bilardo, and he started in saying that the game was all planned and this, that, and the other. But the second game hadn’t been played yet. I still believe he was getting a cut or something, because the exhibition games were organized by Enzo Gennoni, who was a friend of his. Anyway, we had played the first game in Barranquilla, which was at sea level and thus useless to us in terms of getting ready for Mexico. They said the second game would be played in Bogotá, which was higher up at least, but there was no way we were going.
I confronted him. “Listen, Carlos, the team is not going. We can barely stand up from the heat, and we run the risk of being injured by the other team and demoralized by the naysayers. What good is it, at this point, to play a game at sea level? It’s totally pointless, not good for shit. And it’s not like we’re going to play at the same altitude in Bogotá either. We’ll go to Bogotá all right, but just to catch the plane back to Mexico.”
“Come on! There’s an extra ten thousand in it for you,” he tried to convince me.
But it wasn’t about ten thousand for me or for anybody when all we got for an exhibition game was eight hundred dollars—that’s right, just eight hundred bucks! What we had to do was get back to the training camp, rest up, and get used to the climate despite all the criticism that was coming our way, which only made matters that much worse. We needed to train in the city where we were going to play and where you would feel like your lungs were splitting in two after running just a few steps. The altitude in Bogotá wasn’t as low as in Barranquilla, of course, but it wasn’t as high as Mexico City either.
It did the group good to win that battle against Bilardo. It wasn’t easy, but he had to give in. We threatened not to play, and we wouldn’t have, either.
That was the breaking point. I had called the whole group together and now it was stronger. That’s when we decided that it was us against the world, so we had to stick together. And stick together we did!
We were the first team to arrive and we wanted to be the last to leave. I have never liked training camps—I always feel like they cramp my style—but this time it was different, because we had come clean with one another and looked each other in the eye and said what we felt. From then on, everything came together.
After that trip, I spoke with Cóppola, Guillermo Cóppola. “Do you remember in Israel when I told you we might be able to finish third?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, in Barranquilla I had an even stronger feeling. I felt like we were real good, too good. I had the feeling we could be world champions.”
What I didn’t tell him was that I felt that way, not because of what had happened on the field, during the game, but because of everything that had happened off the field. Because of everything we had worked out by saying things straight, the way it should be.
There was a divide between the Bilardo camp, on the one hand, and the Menotti camp, on the other. And now I can say with perfect calm that I am and have always been with Menotti. But I was the captain and had to carry the flag for the group. Cosmic kite or no cosmic kite, my goal was for us to be the world champions, no matter who our coach was.
That’s why I said at a certain point that Passarella didn’t play because he was in the Menotti camp. He wanted to heighten the differences between us, and what we had to do—the one thing we had to do—was stick together. The differences were crystal clear. Menotti could capture a game in two words, whereas Bilardo had to show ten videos to explain a single play. But we were all together for one purpose. We had to stop fucking around.
The declared Menotti supporters were Passarella, “El Bocha” Bochini, and Valdano—there weren’t many of them because, except for a few guys he could not overlook, Bilardo made sure to choose players who did not support Menotti. Ruggeri was one of them. I mean, he couldn’t leave Ruggeri out. He was a soccer giant!
I was another guy he couldn’t leave out. He had chosen me, and the only thing I cared about was the final goal. It still hurt that I had not been on the ’78 team and that we didn’t make it in ’82. The only thing I cared about was the Argentine team becoming the world champions. Everything else was, for me, secondary, a waste of time. But all this—and some other things as well—was already in the air before the meetings started.
It was us, the players, who won the meeting in Bogotá, and the meeting in Barranquilla too. From then on, there was no Menotti camp or Bilardo camp. We were tired and all we wanted to do was get back to Mexico. We were up until like four in the morning changing our tickets, and “El Profe” Echevarría was right there with us; he understood us better than anyone.
Those weren’t the only meetings, as I said. We had a bunch of them. To talk about how the team was doing, to make sure we were feeling all right, to see if we had any unmet needs or if we wanted to train more, to assess if El Profe had to work with a player on his game or on overall conditioning . . . We would have those meetings every so often; the group—we players—organized them, and they were important to making us stronger. No one else was allowed in, not the coaching staff, not anyone.
But the “Passarella meeting”—that was what we all called it—happened after those meetings in Colombia; it took place in Mexico, at the training camp, as soon as we got back from the tour. It was at that meeting that things really came together.
I told the story in my book, Yo soy el Diego de la gente (I Am Diego of the People), but I am going to tell it again—and in more detail—to set the record straight. Because every part of my body may have been injured, but not my memory. My memory is in perfect shape.
This is how it went. “The rebels”—that’s what Passarella called Pasculli, Batista, Islas, and me—were fifteen minutes late to I don’t know what. We had gone out because we had some free time. I mean, we were just fifteen minutes late! But that was reason enough to have to get lectured to by the dictator Passarella. It was just like him: “How can the captain, of all people, be late?” and so on and so forth.
I let him finish even though my vein was popping out of my neck I was so angry, but I held it in. “Are you done?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, all snotty. “Okay, now let’s talk about you a little,” I said.
And right there, in front of the whole team, I described just what he was like, everything he had done. I didn’t hold back. I said every last thing I knew about him. I would rather be a junkie, hard though that is, than be an opportunist or a bad friend. And I say “bad friend” because of what he did that ended up pushing me away from him and making him what he was in the eyes of everyone: when he was in Europe, everyone knew that he would take these little getaways to Monaco to see the wife of a teammate, another player on the Argentine team. And he would not only do it but brag about it in the locker room of the Fiorentina club! Pecci told me so. “As if doing it weren’t enough, he also has to go around talking about it, Diego!” The truth is, no one could stand him.
And it was a big—and I mean a big—mess because on the team there were two groups. The ones who backed Passarella, his group—guys like Valdano, Bochini, and others. Passarella had got it in their heads that we were late because we were doing coke and this, that, and the other—but mostly that part about doing coke. And then there was my group.
So I said, “Okay, Passarella, I admit that I use.” A tremendous silence set in. I went on, “But there’s something else going on here. I wasn’t late because I was doing coke. I wasn’t. And besides, you are implicating other people, the guys who were with me, and they don’t have anything to do with it. You got that, you backstabber?”
What was really going on was that Passarella wanted to win the team over like that, by causing trouble and making up stories, by throwing a wrench into things. He had wanted to win them over ever since they hadn’t named him captain and he’d lost his position of leadership; he had been waiting for his chance. It’s true, he was a good captain, and I have always said so. But I outdid him because I was, am, and will always be the one and only true captain.
After that, he tried to get me any way he could. He would go up to Valdano and talk to him for like four hours, not letting the poor guy get a word in edgewise. Valdano is a very smart guy and someone that everyone—myself included—listened to. Anyway, Passarella got it in Valdano’s head that because of me, all the players were using drugs. That’s right, that’s what he said! So I stood there, right in the middle of the meeting, and in the name of my teammates and of myself—of course—I started screaming at him. “Nobody here is using, man. You got that?”
And I swear on my daughters that while we were in Mexico, none of us was using.
When Valdano came to ask me for an explanation and to give me a lecture about what I could and could not do, thinking—because of everything Daniel had said to him—that I was doing drugs, I stopped him in his tracks and said, “Hold on a minute, Jorge, for Christ’s sake. Whose side are you on? Are you saying that anything Passarella tells you is true and anything I tell you isn’t?”
A bit calmer, he said, “Okay, tell me your side.”
“No, wait, we’re going to have another meeting.”
So we went to the dining hall, because at the training camp there was nowhere else to get together and talk. And it was there that, right in front of Passarella, I said everything I knew about him. Once again, a thick silence. And he didn’t say a goddamn thing. I mean, what could he say, it was as if he was made of stone. What he didn’t know was that I had gotten my hands on a list of long-distance calls that the team had to pay for, and he was the one who had made all the calls.
“By the way, what about that two-thousand-peso phone bill we all have to pay for because no one has owned up to making the calls. Who made them?”
Nobody said a word. Some guys looked down at the ground. It was dead silent. What Passarella didn’t know was that at that time—in 1986, some thirty years ago—telephone bills in Mexico were itemized. And it was his number, the bastard! He was earning like two million dollars a year and he played dumb about a phone bill for two thousand.
The situation exploded. I mean, I could have covered the bill myself, but so could Passarella, and he was making us all pitch in to pay for his calls. And he thought it would never come to light, that he would get away with it. “Look, Passarella, all these calls are yours. There’s not one call of mine to Naples, not one call of Valdano’s to Madrid, no call anywhere else—just your calls . . . every last one of them.”
And from then on they all stood behind me. I mean, the guy was a monster, the kind of guy who was bringing in millions but wanted to make the rest of us pay. A stubborn piece of shit is what he was. And that was when the divide between the Maradona camp and the Passarella camp came down to twenty-one against one. “Bocha” Bochini talked to him, but just because he was sort of nuts. The rest of the players backed me. Imagine Brown, who didn’t even play for a team! Islas, Pumpido, even Zelada—they all lined up to take a shot at Passarella.
Even Valdano got pissed. “You’re a piece of shit!” he screamed at El Kaiser.
And Passarella fell apart. He got diarrhea—Montezuma’s revenge—but actually we were all pissing out of our assholes. Then he pulled a muscle and couldn’t play in the cup. But the team realized that he didn’t want to play.
Like a bunch of fools, we went to visit him to keep him company. We even played cards with him because he was feeling bad—we all were, actually. I asked Pasculli, “How’s your shit holding up, Pedrito?” And he told me that he was pissing out of his asshole, like all of us. Passarella made a big deal out of it, getting an IV and all. They took him back to Buenos Aires until two days before our first game, which was against South Korea. And then he pulled his calf muscle! “Pulled” his calf muscle.
Come on!
We wanted to go after him in the locker room, to beat him to a pulp. He was a traitor: not only did he want to make the guys pay for his calls, but he didn’t want to play with his teammates who had even gone to visit him at the hospital. And now during a warm-up that my grandson could do, he pulls his calf?
Bullshit!
Then he even went to Acapulco to catch some rays. And some wise guy put a photo of him and his wife up on the board where Bilardo was going to give instructions—you know, with a bunch of useless arrows all over the place—for the game against England. If, today, Daniel had the chance to go up to the guys and ask them one by one, they would all say that he had made a mistake by not playing. And they would also say that that was the moment when the divide between the Menotti and the Bilardo camps broke; that is, the moment when everyone came together. Because those of us who backed Menotti also backed Bilardo. I mean, what was Bilardo going to say to me? “Play the left,” “Play the right,” “Play left fullback,” or “Play wherever you want”? “El Flaco” Menotti would have said the same.
And I say that now. I tell it just like it happened and just like I saw it, knowing that at that time Menotti was not going out on a limb for me in his statements.
And all these years later, I still see it the same. Passarella never accepted that I was the only sure starter and that I was the captain of Bilardo’s team. And so he started turning up the pressure. In an article published in El Gráfico sports magazine in October ’85, he said, “If I’m not a sure starter, I’m not playing.”
By then, I was sick of all the gossip and jealousy, of all the petty bullshit. I went on the warpath. I held a press conference in Naples in which I didn’t hold back. I spoke as captain, though not like the sole owner of the truth, and I didn’t consult Bilardo or Passarella beforehand. I was caught in the middle there. For Bilardo, it seemed, the only sure starter was Maradona. I thought Bilardo had been clear about that from the get-go, but I didn’t know what Daniel thought. The only thing I could say to him as a friend—and I thought I was his friend off the field—as a teammate and as a player, was that it was essential that he respect each player’s track record. Daniel knew that Bilardo had respected us from the time he called us for the qualifiers. I don’t know what promises Bilardo may or may not have made. That was between them, and they had to work it out.
But because of everything I read about it and what my mom told me on the phone from Buenos Aires, I am still convinced that something fishy was going on.
Passarella wanted to be a sure starter. Everyone—I mean, those who had been by his side and seen him fight like a lion for the Argentine jersey—knew that he was a born winner. So what I didn’t understand was why he put us through so much, threatening to quit the team when nobody wanted him to, not even Bilardo?
Every coach has his favorites. Under Menotti, if anyone touched Passarella, they had to call in the national guard. And we all understood that, because he was the captain, everyone’s darling, just as Houseman had been before that, and nobody said anything. I once quit the national team when Menotti was coach because, at that time, I thought we should all be at the same level. But then I went back. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything to Passarella about him leaving; he was an adult and I wasn’t going to go around telling him what to do. The only thing I could ask of him as his captain and as his teammate was that he work things out with Bilardo as best he could. At the training camp, he knew that he was going to be a starter, because he was a leader, with all that meant on the field and off. We needed him—the whole country needed him. And that was all I cared about. But I was the captain.
What I asked Passarella was that he do what was best for him, not for us. I knew him well, and that’s why I think there was something strange behind the whole thing, even though I wasn’t sure what. If I had known, I would have said something, because I’ve always liked things to be out in the open.
I didn’t know—and I didn’t want to know—if this was just a whim of Bilardo’s or what, but we always respected what the coach said. I asked myself why things should be any different. Because he was one of the twenty-two players, and deep down he knew what he gave to the team. Passarella didn’t need Bilardo to say “You’re a starter.” I mean, he had always been a starter. All I know is what Bilardo said to him at that time: “The question of who’s captain is not an issue. I started from scratch as a coach, without taking into account what happened before . . . And I believe that, starting at the qualifiers, Maradona should be the captain. He is the man who best represents Argentina in the world. I don’t understand why Passarella is so upset.”
And Passarella, catty like he is, didn’t help much when he said, “What Bilardo told me—even though I already knew it—is that he believes Maradona should be the captain. I told him that I respected his decision because he is the coach; he has the last word on this.”
All I knew is that we had to be more united than ever. We couldn’t afford to bicker! Passarella was putting on the pressure and I wasn’t going to allow it. We couldn’t go on with the divide between the Menotti supporters and the Bilardo supporters. We were really going after one another, and it wasn’t right. And I knew what I was talking about. I mean, I had been flagrantly left out of the ’78 World Cup—I still believe I should have been on that team. I’m not going to name names, but there are three guys I could have replaced on the team. And in ’82 I resigned as captain of the U-20 national team, a post Menotti had given me in ’79. I mean, “El Flaco” Menotti had the authority to make the decision, and I am eternally grateful for what he did for me.
And in the middle of that big mess, I had had a run-in with Passarella on the field: Napoli against Fiorentina, in Florence, on October 13, 1985. All week the Italian newspapers were going on and on about the great duel, the fight. “Daniel, ricorda che adesso sono tuo capitano” (“Daniel, Remember That I’m Your Captain Now”) read the headline. Powerful shit.
They asked me if I had discussed the captain issue with Passarella. “No, we’re adults. There is no need to talk about it when it makes perfect sense. Daniel is a smart guy. Besides, where is it written that you are captain for life?” I said. I admit that was kind of a sneaky thing to say, but Passarella avoided the whole thing, saying, “Since I am, for the time being, not on the Argentine team, I’d rather not discuss it.”
The game ended in a tie, zero to zero. We shook hands afterward, and I said what I really believed at the time: he was, in my view, an unquestionable starter on the Argentine team. I mean, that should have been enough, right? What else did he want? But the story was far from over.
The truth is, I’ve always respected Passarella a great deal as a player. But when they made me captain, he didn’t even take the trouble to congratulate me. That was the first thing that seemed off. “He must be pissed,” I thought. And that’s when the distance between us started.
It was good to let it out, because later Valdano and I talked about it a lot, and we even got close. And the whole Passarella thing had come to a close—mostly, there were still a few details to lay to rest, but later, once we were in Mexico at the training camp.
By the time El Gráfico put that famous photo with us in the sombreros on the cover, I really felt like the captain, and I thought Passarella was history. That meant that, as captain, I wanted to do the shoot: “You didn’t congratulate me? Okay, now I’m going to rub your face in my captain’s armband. It’s right there, on my left arm.” This, for me, was living it up, because the captain was the one who got to negotiate player bonuses, the guy at the head of the group, the one who told “El Profe” Echevarría what to look into. Who the leader really was had been clear from day one, but now there was no denying it. I admit that I had followed Passarella closely. Of course I had! I mean, he was thirty-three and I was just twenty-five at the time. Of course I respected everything he had done. But if I respect you, I expect you to respect me too, man. Show me some respect! And the truth is he had a hard time doing that.
So things went down at the photo shoot. I asked what he had said when they invited me to be in the shoot. And I know that he asked what I had said. So there we were, both right on time for it, at the training field.
As soon as they brought in the bags with the hats, I grabbed one with a dark-yellow band on it, like the stripe on the Boca club jersey. I left him a deep-red one: “That one has the River color. Put it on,” I said. I tried to ease the tension a bit, but you could tell he was nervous. He was not at all pleased that we were getting the same treatment. I mean, let’s make it perfectly clear: the journalists were asking him why he was not assured a starter position and I was. Take a look at the archive and you’ll see it. I mean, he was a hard hitter by then, and they were still a bit wary of me.
We did the picture and, as always, the guy who kept us laughing was “El Profe” Echevarría, who couldn’t believe his eyes. His laughter was infectious and pretty soon we were all cracking up. Passarella said that he didn’t want to open his mouth much because his bottom teeth were all crooked—which was about as genuine as a blue dollar bill. I felt on top of the situation, which is why, I think, he didn’t want to hang around and talk after the photo shoot. He said that the training session started at six and he wanted to be on time. But it wasn’t six yet. We had time to hang out. I hung around.
In an interview I said that I would love to be the best player in the ’86 World Cup and that I was at the top of my game, ready to make that happen. But, right away, I clarified, “Provided that Argentina also has a great cup.” I mean, the two went hand in hand: great players are backed by great teams.
And a journalist said that I thought I was the God of soccer. Sometimes I had to put up with such bullshit! Where did he get that idea? There were no kings or gods. All the team wanted was to do justice to the history of Argentine soccer. The Europeans were saying we would finish in the top five, and in Argentina some people were saying we would be home after the first round. And that hurt, because we needed their support.
It would have helped us to have that support, but since we didn’t, the group found other ways to grow stronger. Like those meetings. We would get together whenever we had the chance, to talk things through. And though it was rough, that first meeting in Colombia had been positive.
It was different back then, and some things seem so stupid from today’s perspective. Those of us who were playing for European clubs, for example, knew that we had to get an injection each morning to strengthen our livers.
But the guys who played in Argentina weren’t used to that. Sometimes one of the guys would get annoyed and ask what good it really did, and we had to explain it to him. There was debate about things that should have been completely routine, but that’s what the group was like. I’m not saying that we would argue over an injection, but the idea was to get tighter and tighter as a team.
And for me that was what mattered most: to be of one mind. There might have been guys who thought I didn’t know what I was doing, but that’s not how it was, not at all. I thought everything over. I wanted a really tight team because I knew what we would be up against would be rough, real rough. We were forging a group, the group.
That’s why I gave an ear to everyone who came to see me, even when they came to tell me what they wanted in a captain. Valdano, for example. What Jorge didn’t know was that I had been preparing for this since the time I was a kid playing for the Cebollitas.
Many thought I wasn’t the right choice for captain because I was always taking so much shit; they would just come after me and sock it to me. But I didn’t react to any of that stuff! And anyone who still had the image of the guy I was in Spain in ’82, when I kicked that Brazilian player Batista in the balls, was clueless. Four years had gone by! Did they think I hadn’t learned anything? I was the captain of Napoli. And of the Argentine national team. I wasn’t the sort of guy who lost his head all the time over nothing. I could take it and keep going; I had learned how to talk to the referee.
And, you know what? The captain’s armband wasn’t a burden or a responsibility for me. Just the opposite! It was no burden: it gave me strength. I had talked about this in Italy with Enrique “El Cabezón” Sívori, and I had seen it in Passarella. But I believed in myself and in my approach to being captain. Talking everything through, for instance. Being captain meant not putting the blame on anyone, not going behind anyone’s back. If there is something to say, say it straight to their face. That was my style. And it was the style I wanted for the team. That is why I called that meeting. Say it to my face, man.
The opening of the cup was less than a month away. The only thing left to do was train hard to start out at the top of our game. We knew just what we wanted. But we also knew where we were coming from. And nothing had come easy, nothing at all.