Argentina‘s long hot summer kicked off in December with the celebrations after Lionel Messi and company had won the World Cup. And it blazed all the way through to the end of March, when the team came home to play two celebratory friendlies.
Temperatures have since fallen, but hearts have been warmed by the news that the country has been chosen as the emergency host of the Under-20 World Cup, which will run from May 20-June 11.
The prestige of that triumph in Qatar was all important to this process. Designated Under-20 host Indonesia was running into organisational problems, and tipping point was reached over a reluctance to accept the Israeli team.
South America acted shrewdly. The draw for the Copa Libertadores was put back a week, so that Argentina’s World Cup winning squad could attend and some prestige for the event. FIFA president Gianni Infantino was there, and Argentina’s FA boss Claudio Tapia pressed this case well. His country was ready to step in. It had stadiums available, the organisational capacity and the political will.
FIFA confirmed the choice earlier this week, ratified by the draw for the tournament on Friday.
And so Argentina now have a chance to win a tournament for which they failed to qualify. Interestingly, the same thing happened with Brazil at Under-17 level four years ago. They fell short of a place for Peru 2019, only to be included when the hosts were stripped of the rights and Brazil stepped in at late notice. Brazil went on to win the competition.
Argentina’s Under-20 coach Javier Mascherano will be hoping for something similar. In his first real test of his young coaching career, Mascherano had a disaster in the South American qualifiers at the start of the year. True, he was not helped by the tricky fact that there is no obligation on clubs to release their players. Plenty of European-based stars were not made available to him. But the same thing happened to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia and Ecuador, and they all managed to book their place.
