Well…apparently Grondona never thought of Bianchi. After all…Bianchi already said “NO” to the chance of becoming our national team manager and Grondona didn’t want him to say “NO” a fourth time.

What is wrong with Grondona… he always say “Todo Pasa” (everything moves on) but obviously he is not very much on moving on from his own choices from the past!!! I’m trully disapointed!!!

But as somebody else said before… I can’t chose nationality and I will always support Argentina… doesn’t matter what or who!!!

I have said this many times. I think Maradona harmed him more than anyone else with his drug-taking and off-the-pitch antics. And he paid for it. He suffered a big deal because of it.

Now it seems that he is back from hell and I think he deserves a shot at glory from whichever position he is taking.

The Bilardo name really scares me as well. He has a lot of support from a lot of people that only care about results and the way of getting them is not relevant. Even if it involves bending the rules or playing on the edge of them.

But I’m confident he didn’t lie tonight when he spoke on the television and said he will not take any part in the team selection and tactics. He said he won’t be sitting on the bench and that he wants to the players to have Diego as the one and only reference and commanding figure.

Diego said the same. He said he will be the one in charge of tactics, formations and lineups and I have to believe him.

All I’m sure of is that whoever pulls on the Albiceleste from now on, will jump to the field and will be 100% committed and fired up, completely aware of the meaning of playing for Argentina.

I honestly believe with the sort of players we’ve got, the most important aspect to work with is the psychological one. As long as they are in the right state of mind, the beautiful football and the goals will come a plenty. And the wins will too.

If the coaching staff is driven by Batista and Troglio, with Maradona in charge of selecting the players and motivating them, then it could work. But the very name Bilardo just conjures up the horrible images of that final in Italia 90, and I feel a Bilardo influenced Maradona would bring tactics and formations that are twenty years out of date.

I suppose the ideal arrangement could be Batista as coach and Maradona as his assistant, but the two are contemporaries, and DM was always regarded as the leader of that 80s team, so that would be hugely difficult for Batista.

I just hope Diego Maradona doesn’t turn out to be the Argentine Kevin Keegan – there are too many parallels, (not that I’m comparing the two as players!).

What is beyond doubt is that it will be wonderful for national pride, and Argentines will back their side with even more vigour than usual. Good luck, and I hope to see some more beautiful football.

I think one thing that non Argentines and Argentines have to understand is each other’s view of the man. Too many English people underestimate Argentina’s love for him… some English people wonder why Argentines are not *embarrassed* by him and his activities. But Argentines love him unconditionally, he gave wonderful things to a country that had gone through a terrible time in the preceding years. Unless someone had lived through 1980s Argentina, it would be difficult for any of us to see him in quite the same way.

Likewise, I think Argentines are confused and possibly offended that the outside world doesn’t see him in quite the same way. Yes, he was the most talented player of his and possibly any other generation. Football lovers can see past ‘the Hand of God’ and appreciate the beauty he brought to the game. But his subsequent decline attracted little sympathy in Europe. I think the attitude was ‘he took drugs’ (both performance enhancing and recreational), so he brought everything on himself. The only thing most Europeans saw of him for many years were those pictures of him bloated and huge like a sumo wrestler, and sadly, for many, he became a figure of fun. He has a lot of work to do if he wants to repair his image in the outside world. But maybe he doesn’t want to. Maybe he cares only about what his fellow countrymen think of him… and there’s nothing wrong with that.

So if people outside of Argentina – who none the less enjoy the beautiful style of play your country has come to symbolise in recent years – are disappointed with this appointment, then we are not looking at it with quite the same eyes as you…

But at the end of the day, it’s not really our place to be disappointed. We can be Racing fans, River fans, whatever – we *chose* our club side, but you can’t choose your nationality, so if the appointment makes Argentines happy, then that’s the most important thing.

I think Diego deserves a chance and after hearing him in several interviews lately, I think he’s reach a point in his life when everything is in order.

Having a responsibility such as managing Argentina will give him a reason to stay fresh, to wake up every morning, to feel better in every aspect.

On footballing terms…he’ll be surrounded by Batista and Brown (probably Troglio will join the staff as well) and Bilardo will be overviewing everything from the back seat.

Bilardo himself has said he won’t be on the bench and that Diego will be the absolute number 1 and the reference in front of the players. Diego will pick the team and will be in charge of tactics and formations.

If (and this could be a big IF) Bilardo don’t interfere with players call-ups and tactics and all that, then I’m confident Argentina will play beautifully and one thing is for sure: the players attitude will be impossible to match by other nations’ players.

Having their childhood hero giving them instructions and motivating them and passing them his experience will be the biggest asset Diego will bring along.

I’m 100% behind Diego in this.

But it’s really impossible for non-Argentines looking from outside, to feel quite the same way as Argentines. There will be an upswell of national pride. But in football terms, a disastrous decision, Grondona surely has lost it.

Words escape me, but I assume they’re celebrating…in Sao Paulo.

Gabriel, I gave Maradona as much coverage as I think he merits. Even considering his status in Argentine football, I can’t see him being offered the job unless the senior figures at the AFA have been ingesting some very powerful intoxicants indeed in the last couple of weeks. He’s told us Mascherano is the selección’s most important player – well, any idiot can see Masche is one of the best players on the team – and that Lionel Messi and Sergio Agüero are rather good. But aside from an initial injection of inspiration, I can’t see how he’d be anything but an unmitigated disaster. At least when Brazil appointed Dunga, he hadn’t got a previous track record to go on – Maradona does have a managerial CV, and it’s a terrible one.

I’m inclined to agree with Seba. Batista would be the best option with regards the style he plays. But as you can see this is a very long article (1,800 words in fact) and through the course of writing at last night I realised it really would be a bit of a shame in some ways if Bianchi never even got a shot at the national job.

Still, we’ll see. Grondona, unsurprisingly, has stated today that he won’t be making the announcement for a while yet. And Simeone is, predictably, out of the running.