Beware of false idols

Oh dear, oh dear. When Diego Maradona was appointed as manager of Argentina last October, we all knew his team would be in for a bumpy ride at times. Those of a more sensible - I won't say sceptical - bent, guessed from the start that it had the potential to go very badly wrong for Argentina indeed. Few in their darkest dreams could have expected it to be this bad, though.

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The Argentine coach is under pressure.

Brazil confirmed their qualification for South Africa 2010 on Saturday night; Paraguay joined them on Wednesday night. Both did so with victories over their southern neighbours. Once, 'Maradona's Argentina' grabbed headlines around the world. Today it's almost an insulting term.

If Bolivia 6-1 Argentina could be written off to some extent as a high-altitude slump, the failure to take chances in Quito in falling to a 2-0 defeat to Ecuador was a sign of a more serious malaise. And whilst a 1-0 defeat away to Paraguay on Wednesday night might have been forgivable in other circumstances - Asunción is never an easy trip - the match which had preceded it brought only the second home defeat in Argentina's World Cup qualifying history.

Argentina vs Brazil was an odd match. The hosts dominated possession throughout but couldn't get within shooting distance of Brazil's goal as the tall, physically imposing visiting defenders made short work of bouncing the hosts' pocket-sized strikeforce off them. Brazil, meanwhile, created four chances and scored three. The first two were model examples of shambolic defending on Argentina's part, and the third - Luís Fabiano's second - came as the killer blow just moments after Jesús Dátolo, who's just joined Napoli from Boca Juniors, thought he'd given his side a lifeline with a stunning thirty-yard strike.

One Argentine club manager, Huracán's Ángel Cappa, insisted on Sunday that Argentina had simply been unlucky, and that Brazil had 'played like a small team'. Whilst Cappa's commitment to the attacking game is admirable, he missed the point: the fact was that Brazil had at least played like a team. Argentina had never looked like one. They'd had the lion's share of the ball and far more intent to take the game to their opponents, but lacked any coherence at either end, and would have been far from deserving winners of the match.

The only previous World Cup qualifier Argentina had ever lost at home was sixteen years earlier to the very day. In 1993, a Colombia side starring Carlos Valderrama and latter-day Newcastle United striker Faustino Asprilla rolled up to the Estadio Monumental and handed out a 5-0 thrashing to a nation who'd reached three of the preceding four World Cup finals (winning two). 3-1 might have been a more respectable scoreline, but the performance was almost as listless.

Against Paraguay the boss's response was odd. The need for more physical presence in the penalty box was clear, but rather than give Lisandro López or Diego Milito - bizarrely introduced on the right wing in the wake of Brazil's third on Saturday - a start on Wednesday night, Maradona stuck with the little men, Agüero replacing the injured Tevez, and left the other two out of the match squad entirely, for reasons unknown. The only traditional 'number 9' on the bench was Martín Palermo, the subject of the shock call-up I wrote about on ESPNsoccernet last week.

It was a similar story in Asunción to the game in Rosario days earlier: Argentina attacked in the early minutes, fell behind halfway through the first half and thereafter looked completely clueless. The goal from Nélson Haedo Váldez was set up by a moment of skill from Paraguay playmaker Salvador Cabañas which perfectly demonstrated an element distinctly lacking in Argentina's own play.

Cabañas - Seba Verón's forerunner as South American Footballer of The Year - took a high ball down with his instep and rolled his marker before swivelling round two close challenges, playing a one-two and sliding the ball into the left channel, where Haedo Váldez was able to run on to finish. It was the spontaneity and freedom of imagination that, for all their star quality, Argentina haven't encountered under Maradona.

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Dunga and Diego Maradona in their playing days

Lionel Messi, for instance, is a different player for Argentina. Watching him in both matches, the thought occurred that he was trying to do too much. At Barcelona where he's grown up in the club and has a family environment in which to enjoy his football, he's the best player on the planet. For Argentina, the pressures of a nation rest upon his slim (and, lest we forget, 22-year-old) shoulders, and he plays like a man burdened with all the expectations in the world.

Many - myself included - thought Argentina's players would be super-motivated if nothing else under Maradona, but quite the opposite has resulted: rather than being pumped up, they look suffocated by the pressure. The fact that he's useless as a coach doesn't help. Maradona knows about football in the same way as a fan - and thinking like a fan and not a manager means he picks players on personal preference rather than on form, as well as letting his emotions get the better of him when the game is going against his team.

Compare and contrast with Dunga. Still unpopular with Brazil fans, he's earned the right to tell critics where to go by winning matches, qualifying with ease and ensuring his team will be among the favourites in South Africa. Argentina can still qualify, and Maradona isn't going anywhere yet (in spite of some off-the-record comments from AFA directors after the Brazil defeat), but so far he's proved no-one wrong.

Thursday even brought the news that Alejandro Verón (no relation), head of the 'Church of Maradona', had spoken against his hero. 'I look at him badly [as a coach],' Verón told Argentine radio. 'He has no strategic or tactical solutions. He doesn't have a system and the players don't respond to him.'

'God' questioned by his own church? Something has gone disastrously wrong.