Simon Kuper has a provocative take on Argentina’s current football mess in FT.
The key is that there are two views of what a national football team is for. The first is the professional view: the team exists to win matches. To do that, it needs to follow best international practice. However, Argentina chose Maradona because it had embraced the second – nationalist – view: the team must be the nation made flesh. Silly as Argentina now looks, many countries periodically fall into the same trap.
This is true not just of football teams but frequently of countries where they believe that there is some unique way of doing business. Whether it’s the Asian way or the Indian way so even the Scandinavian way. Business, trade and culture could be segregated in past days because it took time for innovations and ideas to spread, but in today’s day and age there is only one way and that is the global way.
