Wish you were here.....

There might not have been time for postcards just yet, but Diego Maradona's Argentina squad have now arrived in South Africa.

After touching down at Johannesburg's O.R. Tambo International Airport, El Diego was quick to turn on the charm, blowing kisses to reporters before trundling out the day's only soundbite; "Hola, South Africa. I love South Africa."

That was yer lot though, as the squad, flanked by armed guards, was quickly marshalled through to a purpose built World Cup players only facility, with Maradona, Messi and the rest ignoring questions from the assembled hacks. Next stop for La Albiceleste? the High Performance Centre which will be their training base in Pretoria.

Argentina's first match in group B is against Nigeria at Ellis Park on June 12th.

We are Diego's 23 - Defenders

Defenders. Centre backs, full-backs, sweepers, libero's. The hard men at the back. The blokes who do the job of stopping others scoring. Or running in some cases. Don't you just love em? Diego does. So much that he's taking seven of them on his holidays.

Nicolas Burdisso - Roma (Italy) 29, 28 caps, 2 goals

Sub more often than not, but a more than competent performer that many feel should be in the team.

Martin DeMichelis - Bayern Munich (Germany) 29, 25 caps, 1 goal

An excellent season for Bayern Munich and regularly praised for his positioning......but IBWM remains unconvinced and reckon he don’t like it up him. Nice passer of the ball though. Reminds IBWM of post-tetian England centre back Mark Wright in his pomp circa Italia 90. First choice centre back.

Gabriel Heinze - Marseille (France) 32, 63 caps, 2 goals

Still here but far from the player that was at Man Utd a while back. El Diego still likes him though and is very much central in Maradona’s circle of trust’. Will more than likely start at left back or to the left hand side of a back three.

Nicolas Otamendi - Velez Sarsfield (Argentina) 22, 6 caps, 0 goals

Decent defender and this will likely be a busy summer prior to the invariable move to Europe. Velez will no doubt hope a decent showing adds a few roubles to the price tag. Only concern is a lack of experience (and a lack of height, Otamendi is a centre back likely to be dispatched at full back) on the big stage, but of course there’s only one place to get that.

Clemente Rodriguez - Estudiantes (Argentina) 28, 11 caps, 0 goals

Perennial reserve. Steady but unspectacular full back that never cut it in Europe and definitely not as good as……no, I won’t mention him. Spent a number of months plying his trade in Russia after getting on a wrong flight.

Walter Samuel - Internazionale (Italy) 32, 54 caps, 4 goals

Top notch central defender that frightens the bee-jesus out of IBWM every time it looks at him. It’s those eyes. Definite starter and one of the Inter contingent that did make the grade. Nicknamed ‘the wall’ after urban artist Banksy drew a trademark mural on his back during an away match at Udinese.

Ariel Garcé - Colon Sante Fe (Argentina) 30, 4 caps, 0 goals

Birthdays, Christmases, lottery and pools wins and came at once for Ariel in June 2010. Plied his trade as a steady player at Colon for years without ever hinting at anything special and now he finds himself in Argentina’s World Cup squad. Bit of a fairy tale, he probably feels unbeatable. How Robben, Villa, Rooney or Kaka see it is another matter.

Sex, the blue oyster and Viagra salesmen

Crikey. You just look away for one minute and Argentina's World Cup plans have gone all, well, amorous. On the one hand (that's the euphemisms starting already), we have Team Argentina medical man Doctor Donato Villami letting us in on the first wave of sordidness.

Speaking via the wireless on Radio Del Plata, Dr Villami came clean (and again) on the free love available to Diego's 23; "The players will be able to have sex during the World Cup in South Africa" the good doctor began, raising this correspondents concerns regarding any over-exuberant goal scoring celebrations, "but with regular partners and without champagne or other drinks, and always under the watching eye of Maradona".

Ok, I added that last bit in myself. The good doctor went on;"Sex is part of everybody's social life and it's not a problem in itself. Problems arise with the excesses: all the extras, a non-regular partner or in hours reserved for rest.",

Dr Villami. Relaxed

So in a nutshell (sack), Diego's young boys can quite happily go at their good ladies (and we'll assume that it's good ladies, although IBWM has always felt that Juan Sebastien Veron has a touch of the 'blue oyster' about him) hammer and tongs, provided it's not in the immediate vicinity of the game. Not sure how Mr Aguero will view this, bearing in mind he is currently 'wooing' Diego's daughter.

Juan Veron. Glenn on Sundays

In another story, that IBWM would like to think is totally unconnected but makes no promises about, El Diego alerted us to his own choice of celebration should Argentina end their 24 year wait for the trophy; "If we win the World Cup, I'll get naked and run around the city's Obelisk.", he said referring to one of Buenos Aires' most famous phallic landmarks. Terrifying. Diego naked, that is. In my neck of the woods that would be the equivalent of showing one's arse in Fenwicks window. Also scary.

Quite where all this unpleasantness stems from is unclear, however IBWM understands that Brazilian footballing legend and Viagra salesman Pelé was spotted talking to Maradona earlier this week...........

Hmmmmm...........

Comments welcome.

Reasons to be beardful

Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle and the lost City of Atlantis;

Arthur C Clarke type mysteries left unanswered.

Diego Maradona's beard; explained.

A few posts back I queried the new found hirsuteness of El Diego's chinnage and I'm indebted to Hasta El Gol Siempre for an explanation. If you didn't see the comment offered earlier by HEGS's Sam Kelly, here's his take:

Apparently... and you're going to love this... the beard has been grown 'on the advice of Diego's doctors' following the stitches he had put in his lip after his dog, erm, bit him on the mouth. So you see, it's a life-giving beard. I'm not kidding. That's a direct quote from Monday's Olé.

The fact that he went into hospital looking like Ron Wood and came out with a face smoother than baby's arse... well it's been noticed, but not by the press. I mean there's no way the dog attack was just an excuse for plastic surgery, right?

Vain? our Diego? surely not. Bless his little cottons. He's timed things just so that he looks his best in time for South Africa.

In fact IBWM was so taken by Diego wanting to look his best that it stumped up £100 of it's own pocket money to get one of those professional artists computer generated impression type things done. The brief, to the bloke that IBWM met in the pub, was 'show us exactly what El Diego will look like when the beard goes'. I wasn't disappointed with the results........

You've still got it Diego, you old rascal!

That's 100 smackers well spent in my book, he's going to look great. They even done him up in a tuxedo. Amazing.

Isn't it great what they can do with computers these days......

What do you think?

We are Diego's 23 - Keepers

Custodians, Goalies, Net minders, and for the benefit of IBWM’s Dutch viewers; Keepersh.

Argentina has them too, and they are taking some to the World Cup. Three of them, as a matter of fact.

So who are these mysterious characters that at some point in their childhood decided “I’m not really one for scoring goals”. Loons.

Sergio Romero. AZ (Holland), 23, 5 caps, 0 goals

More than likely be first choice come June. Might also become first choice at Arsenal too with Arsene Wenger passing coy glances at this swarthy and fairly fiery number one.

Mariano Andujar. Catania (Italy), 27, 4 caps, 0 goals

Second in line having just completed a first season in Europe with Catania. A decent keeper, Andujar managed a record 800 minute stint without conceding in last years Copa Libertadores. Where do these South American referees get those added minutes?

Diego Pozo. Colon Santa Fe (Argentina), 32, 2 caps, 3 goals. No, that’s not true. 0 goals, surprisingly.

The oldest, least capped (not that there is much competition) of the three and very much home based. Lives on the 47^th floor of an apartment block with his 300 canaries.

Defenders next, just to maintain a sense of order. Well, there has to be a first time for everything....

Argentina 5 Canada 0

No disrespect to Canada, but as opponents of choice this close to a World Cup; I’d have to question the opposition for Argentina.

Maybe nobody else would come. Maybe the intention was to leave home with bags packed and a comfortable and straightforward workout behind them. If that was the case then Argentina certainly did that last night.

I’ve seen some media outlets describe La Albiceleste’s performance as ‘impressive’, okay, fair enough, but I’d say you’d have to take the opposition into account. No easy games in international football? Found one.

I’ll give you a bit more on Argentina’s opponents in the group games soon, but it’s very unlikely that Nigeria, South Korea and Greece will roll over and ask for their belly to be tickled in the way Canada did.

Six of the Canadian players never actually stood up......

Starting with more of a back three in Otamendi, Heinze and Burdisso; El Diego gave a (proper, sort of) debut to Palermo’s Javier Pastore and to be fair the lad certainly looked the part with some decent prompting from midfield.

Leo Messi was rested (enter relevant conspiracy theory here), but not missed as Benfica’s Angel Di Maria and Man City’s Carlos Tevez frightened the life out of the Canadian defence.

Two early goals were nicely slotted home by Liverpool’s Maxi Rodriguez, with Di Maria claiming a tidy third before half time. A far more leisurely second half saw further goals as Canada continued to look like rabbits caught in the glare of a Ford Transit’s headlights. Gonzalo Higuain, who had ran around a lot, a heck of a lot in fact, but to little effect, set up Tevez for a fourth, with substitute Sergio Aguero claiming a fifth not long after coming on and showing how dangerous he is coming in from the left. Or off the subs bench for that matter.

Javier Pastore; on the way up, this lad

I’m not really sure you can analyse too much in the game as it was men against boys to be honest, but I’d guess it sets things up in a positive way. Everyone played well and Pastore, who could well be a major world star, has probably played himself into some sort of contention. Still just 20 though. As if that mattered.

El Deigo said:

''The guys understood we have no friendlies but international matches. We made our fans happy.

''We wanted to prove the players can do this and more. The Argentinean fans can be calm because we have good players.''

Very true. Let’s see how things go next time out.

Promised myself I’d write this without mentioning lumberjacks or Mounties.

Bugger.

IBWM needs you!!

Lord knows we are still more than two weeks away but IBWM has to think ahead......

Sooner or later, Argentina are going to get themsleves knocked out of the World Cup.

At the very best, they could win the thing, but what happens to IBWM after that?..........

Well, who knows. I'd like to open World Football up to all, not just the anoraks. But it has to be funny and it has to be half decent, no ranting message boards or tons of ads and pop ups will ever appear at IBWM........and if you want live scores and magically updating league tables, you'll be best off elsewhere.

If you fancy writing for IBWM, we'd love to hear from you.

Whether you want to give the lowdown on Hungary's latest wonderkid, or the top 3 full backs ever to pull on a New Zealand shirt, this is your platform.

You can e-mail IBWM at inbedwithmaradona@gmail.com

Pampers

News reaches IBWM this evening of El Diego’s choice of water closet.

That’s the shitehouse to you and me.

According to the South African Sunday Times, the man himself has no interest in dropping his kex for the sort of crapper that has been deemed good enough for Fabio Capello et al, oh no. Diego has, via the Argentine FA, ordered an ‘E-Bidet’ for this summer.

The story goes thus;

The E-Bidet features a heated seat, a warm air blow-dryer and front and rear bidet wands. It sells for 450 dollars (358 euros) at online retailer sandman.com, which bills it as "the world's best toilet seat".

The head of the University of Pretoria's High Performance Centre, Argentina's base camp for the June 11 to July 11 tournament, said staff had received a special request from the Argentine national association to remodel the football legend's bathrooms.

"They felt that the basins and toilet bowls were not up to Maradona's standards,"

Now in this modern world of i-phone and e-mail etc, I have no idea of what gives a bog such space age gadgetry to ensure it receives an e- as a prefix. What do you need to do that?

Perhaps Diego likes of have the choice of Fleetwood Mac’s back catalogue when going for a dump, or maybe he likes to call on a wide range of reading material that several roiled up newspapers just can’t provide. Maybe he just goes there to do his e-business and then tweets out a message saying ‘i-pood’………

The E-Bidet. KK tries out a prototype in 1996

Either way it’s all in place for June, so if El Diego decides to jack things in from the toilet, a la Kevin Keegan with England, the pampered and delicate Maradona backside will not be doing so from less than gentrified surroundings.

Utter madness.............

The gambler

The Champions League Final last night, won by Inter, illustrated some of the positives and negatives facing Argentina at this summer's World Cup.

On the one hand, there was a man of the match performance from Diego Milito, who not only scored twice (he's now put the finishing touch to three straight trophy winning games for Inter), but showed what an intelligent player he is. Operating, in effect, on his own, Milito provided something of a masterclass in how to play the 'lone striker' role. He challenged, he harried, he made runs and he held the ball up for Wesley Sneijder and Samuel Eto'o. He bagged a brace too, as mentioned above.

Diego Milito, in form

So going into the World Cup, while Milito is clearly in the best form of his life, he is still likely to find that he is playing second fiddle to Gonzalo Higuain. No great issue with that, Higuain is playing well and scoring regularly, but as Diego Maradona has favoured a lone striker, why not give this job to Milito?

In fact why doesn't Maradona just mirror the tactics and formation that Jose Mourinho deploys to such great effect with Inter? Maradona certainly has the players at his disposal, several already well drilled into playing a certain way. Milito operating as a lone striker, with Aguero and Messi adopting free roles just behind, as Eto'o and Sneijder do for the Milan side, could be a winner.

On the other hand though, Jose Mourinho is savvy enough to understand how to make this formation work. He has a very good, if not outstanding, back four, just like Argentina, but utilises a two man defensive screen in front of this, with one player particularly effective in covering the back four. Esteban Cambiasso. Yes, him again.

Maradona will invariably put a huge amount of faith in the defensive work done by Javier Mascherano, and rightly so, he's excellent at this role, but why not consider including Cambiasso in there as well?

Okay, there is always an argument to say that Argentina have such an armoury of attacking options that they should play with five forwards and score ten goals in each game. Go for the gung ho pretty stuff. That might well happen, but you have to be able to defend as well.

Watching Martin DeMichelis for Bayern last night, I saw the same things stand out in his game that I always see. Tackling is a real strength, he's rarely beaten in one on one's, but his positioning is suspect and ask him to deal with a ball bouncing anywhere in front of him and there's trouble.

Martin Demichelis; bounced

Of course Cambiasso won't be there, that's not going to change, so Maradona will have to make the best of what he has selected. Ultimately it's his call and he may well get it right, but I suspect that failure to at least reach the semi finals will see the names of those not at South Africa thrown at Diego.

He's took a big gamble. Comments welcome.

Arseholes and chips, pissed on

If there was any doubt that El Diego would not live up the ‘comedy circus’ billing that I gave him a few short weeks back, they have been well and truly dashed over the last couple of days.

While I was chasing round like a blue-arsed fly (they exist, probably) trying to find a wifi hotspot that actually worked to fill you in on the latest Diegoism's, our hero was commencing the extraction of 30 years worth of revenge on the media. Limb by limb.

Jumping into his Mini (I had him down as driving a roofless military jeep) en route to a press conference earlier this week, the main man, was, as usual, mobbed by the collective, humming (get close enough and you’ll see what I mean) throng that operate under the moniker of ‘paparazzi’. In the melee of flashlights and clicks that followed, one clumsy oaf carelessly left his leg right in the path of a vehicle yielding Maradona.

Before you could say ‘injured in an accident that wasn’t your fault?’ El Diego had mangled a photographers lower leg, rolled down his window and offered a full verbal tirade to the hapless snapper; “What an arsehole you are,” Maradona shouted, “How can you put your leg there where it can get run over, man?”. Arsehole indeed. Why would anyone put their leg in that dangerous region twixt foot, hip and Maradona. Arsehole.

Whilst the cameraman was receiving treatment and, no doubt, entertaining offers of publishing deals and a mini series, Diego was brandishing his next weapon of choice, an axe, delivering notice of exactly where this fell on his original 30 man seleccion for South Africa.

Fabricio Coloccini, José Sosa, Juan Mercier, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Sebastián Blanco, Juan Manuel Insaurralde and Jesús Dátolo all had their collective chips pissed on by Maradona and will need to look elsewere for their kicks (see what I did there) this summer.

So we are now down to 23, and categorically into World Cup mode. I'll cover the lucky lads position by position over the coming days so you know the ins and outs for your fantasy football teams etc

It's three weeks today that the whole carry on gets going. Excited yet?

Form

Last lot of the big European fixtures out of the way and unless there's a couple of hits in the Champions League final, the Copa Del Rey or any warm up games, the mainstay of El Diego's European based forward line finished the season unscathed, and in fine fettle.

Leo Messi ended a fantastic season in style for Barca, by scoring two goals in a 4-0 win over Valladolid, which saw his side crowned champions of La Liga. That's 47 goals in total for little Leo this season, equalling Ronaldo's Barca record from back in the day, when he really was at his peak. And at least 6 stone lighter.

Ronnie, not at best

Second in the Spanish goal scoring charts was Gonzalo Higuain who weighed in with a more than decent 27. Sergio Aguero was absent from an Atletico Madrid side, with on eye on the copa del rey final, humbled 3-0 at home to Getafé. He's still notched 12 times in La Liga this season and continues to menace all and sundry cutting in from the left.

Over in Italia, Diego Milito netted for the 21st time this season in a 1-0 win over Siena to give Inter their fifth successive scudetto. That means champions of Italy, if you didn't get that.

In the same country, Ezequial Lavezzi missed Napoli's 1-0 defeat to Sampdoria, but has still totted up 8 goals from 27 starts. Carlos Tevez ended his first season with Manchester City (it seems like a long time ago now) having bulged the onion bag 23 times in the Premier league.

Lavezzi. Statistically shite

Good nick then, all in all, but can El Diego turn into World Cup success?

Leo Messi. Faster than Spain.

Thought it was taking a little while for the various sportswear folk to get their World Cup ad's out there, but adidas have released theirs.

Their ad features Leo Messi outrunning the Entire Spanish team, before David Villa does the same against La Albiceleste. I did raise a few concerns t'other day about what a bit of pace might do against Heize et al and the German shoemongers have provided video evidence.

Both players are also faster than Zinedine Zidane's car apparently.

Poor old Zizou, he was once the best around, now he clearly fills his evenings driving around secluded car parks in an old Triumph Stag. Seedy.

How we got here (part 4 - sighs of relief)

And so, in some sort of ramshackle order that sums up this site, back to how we got here.

Argentina, at South Africa, that is. You, I presume, are lost (hint-go back to google and type 'facial')

You will recall, dear reader, that in the last instalment, our hero, El Diego, was left in a pilot-less plane, hurtling towards shark infested waters and staring straight down the barrel of an unlikely looking football gun, loaded with bullets saying ‘Amigo, you are not going to the World Cup’ held by cybermen. And he didn’t have a parachute. Or underpants.

Well maybe not quite, but with 3 games to go, La Albiceleste weren’t in the greatest of qualifying nick and things got rapidly worse.

Standing fourth in the qualification table (top four are the automatic slots, fifth is a play off), Argentina faced a particularly difficult tie at just the wrong time; Paraguay, in their own back garden. With their mum watching.

And difficult it was too. A slick Paraguay side made regular inroads into Argentina’s penalty area, with Nelson Haedo and Salvador Cabanas particularly impressive for the hosts. As Cabanas was for most of the campaign prior to an altercation with an revolver. Shame that, good player.

It was 1-0 to the home side after 30 minutes though, following a composed finish from Haedo. Little more than Paraguay deserved having worried the Argentine upright twice already. I’ll avoid saying things went from bad to worse as it sounds clichéd (hey, never stopped me so far), but things went from bad to worse early in the second half as Juan Sebastien Veron was dismissed for a second yellow card.

Juan Sebastien Veron? Is he still playing? He is indeed, quite well in fact, back in his native homeland and viewed by El Diego as the key to getting the best from Leo Messi. A far cry from his abject shiteness in the colours of Man U and Chelsea.

Argentina did little else for the remainder of the game, and that, my friend, was that. Paraguay qualified and Diego was looking at fifth place. Play-off territory, which you’d expect to be routine anyway, what’s the fuss? Based on current form though, you’d have fancied Nicaragua’s grandma to come through against Maradona’s side.

Wait for it.......

Next up was Peru at home and a monsoon to contend with. Okay, that was too dramatic. It rained.

A nervy Argentina took the lead from a debut goal for Gonzalo Higuain, before disaster struck in the 90^th minute with a Peru equalizer. Again, Argentina could have no complaints.

Just as it looked all over, René Ortubé, the only living referee in South America, managed to find enough injury time for former national clown Martin Palermo to redeem those penalty misses and score a winner. 2-1 and back in the last qualifying berth. Cue many sighs of relief. But it wasn’t all over yet. No sir.

Yeessssssss!!!

Ironically, the last game became effectively a play off in itself, with fourth placed Argentina travelling to 5^th placed Uruguay in a winner takes all affair. A niggly game ensued, as if it could have been anything else. With Uruguay pressing for a very necessary late winner, up popped Huracan midfielder Mario Bolatti to score for Argentina and send then on their way, and a nation into raptures. Latching onto a long range Veron shot (approx 3 miles) which Uruguay failed to clear, Bolatti, winning only his third cap, did for Uruguay.

Yeessssssss!!!

And that was that…………Uruguay did end up winning their play off, and will be at the party too so all’s well and all that.

Yeessssssss!!!

There you go. And here we are. Comments welcome.

Slow, slow, quick

30 it was then. It took a while for El Diego to finally give us his 30 for South Africa, but he got there in the end. Eventually.

So what do we have then? Well, one thing that jumps out straight away are the absentees, but I'll come back to that. The other is, well, it's the forwards. Messi, Tevez, Higuain, Milito, Aguero, Lavezzi......blinking flip, that's an embarrassment of riches however you look at it. Like a roll call of the world's finest attackers. Oh, and Martin Palermo's in there too.

Predictable picture of 'the not-going'

I'll cover each of the players and the positions in a little more detail in due course, but, hey, you'd have to be going some to not win the World Cup with that lot......wouldn't you?

That's just the thing. It's an unbelievable selection of attacking players, but what about the rest of the squad? Well......erm.....there's Benfica's Angel Di Maria and Liverpool's Javier Mascherano. But it's the defence and the midfield.....it's just...it's hard to put your finger on........it just doesn't look right.

Maybe I'm a little too critical, or cynical, or maybe just downright negative depending on your point of view. Argentina under Maradona have certainly looked to tighten up considerably at the back. Diego will not want his side to be caught with their pants down (Leo Messi excepted) by the better set-piece exponents this summer. The likely starters at the back by the time El Diego's side line up against Nigeria will be Otamendi, Heinze, DeMichelis and Walter Samuel. A strong and experienced back four, without doubt, but a back four comprising players that you would expect to challenge as centre backs, rather than covering all four defensive positions.

I'm always dubious of playing anyone out of position at full back. Granted the ultra defensive Otamendi, and Gabriel Heinze know the right back and left back roles well, but if you are a David Silva, or even a Theo Walcott, you'll fancy your chances of leaving these two on their well padded arse. The same could be said about any of the back four, to be honest.

There is good ariel ability there and should Argentina come up against a robust, workmanlike attack like, say, Greece or Denmark possess, then Diego's boys will more than handle the threat. Add in Argentina's front line, or even reserve front line, and there should be no problems. Ask a few questions of the defence though, get them turning or isolated, and I'm not so sure.

I suspect Diego puts a lot of faith in the excellent Javier Mascherano, currently the worlds most effective defensive screen. He'll be joined in central midfield by Juan Sebastien Veron, given a remit to make those killer passes and find the more destructive players ahead of him, or Leo Messi, to give him his full title. Di Maria, and the rangy Jonas Guttierez will add width, with Gonzalo Higuain taking the baton from Batistuta and Crespo. The bench will be tasty too.

All in all, there is an amazing side in there but I can't help thinking that Diego has put his own stubbornness ahead of fielding the strongest side possible. While he got some stick from the English press, I think Fabio Capello's recall for Jamie Carragher, and potential recall for Paul Scholes, was good management. Don Fabio clearly felt that, regardless of what had gone before, these were the best available players to him for the roles he wanted to fill right now. Something I think El Diego should have considered with Javier Zanetti, Esteban Cambiasso, Lucho Gonzales, Ever Banega or Lissandro Lopez and perhaps several others who may just have slipped out of 'the circle of trust'.

"Do you know what this means, Sergio?"

The more I look at the shape of Maradona's squad, the more I come to the same conclusion that, I'm sure, more competent opponents will reach. Stop Messi and you stop Argentina. No mean feat admittedly, but something that Inter Milan managed to do in the Champions League semi-final, both legs as well. Ironically, Zanetti and Cambiasso being the most effective in executing this task.

For Maradona's Argentina, there's clearly a plan A, but a plan B doesn't look as obvious.

Maybe I'm just missing something.

Either way, there is an array of talents at his disposal, whether El Diego can shape a tournament winning side from them is open to conjecture but it will certainly be interesting.

What do you think, dear reader?