If you thought before that Diego Maradona must be trying to sabotage Argentina’s bid for World Cup glory, then your suspicions have been gloriously confirmed. He threatened promised on Wednesday that, if the selección win the trophy in South Africa, he’ll strip naked in front of Buenos Aires’ famous Obelisco. So kiss goodbye to the idea of highly motivated players, then. To take that horrible image from your eyeballs, Tom Clark is here to give us the final short chapter in the season’s Argentines Abroad tales – the final of the Mexican championship which saw Toluca crowned champions.
The Mexican Clausura ended with the Red Devils of Toluca as deserving campeón after overcoming Santos Laguna in the hard-fought return leg of the gran final, staged on the 23rd May amid a sea of red in the high altitude caldera of Toluca.
Argentine native Vicente Matías El Toro Vuoso kept Santos in the running for the title with a late equalizer in the first leg (which ended 2-2), but became the scapegoat in the vuelta when he mis-kicked a wonderful chance in front of goal and then later compounded his embarrassment by fluffing a penalty after the match had ended scoreless.
Toluca won it 4-3 on penalties, one of the successful kicks coming from Toluca’s Argentine mainstay in midfield, Martin Romagnoli.
Mexican championship final
Ida (Santos Laguna 2 – 2 Toluca)
Vuelta (Toluca 0 – 0 Santos Laguna, Toluca win 4-3 on penalties) – enjoy the Toluca anthem before the match as well!
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Photo by me
Hasta El Gol Siempre 
Random aside…
I was browsing the BBC Sport site and came across this fascinating little video of Argentina’s opening game loss to Cameroon at Italia ’90. Not the Albiceleste’s finest hour, but well worth a look, primarily for the odd Maradona cameo. Pure fantasy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8704477.stm
Hi Sam,
A quick postscript: a few days after I filed my AA Mexico report, the Mexican league draft took place. There were some surprises involving veteran Argentine players.
Vicente Matías Vuoso (Argentine native, “naturalised” Mexicano) returned from Santos Laguna to Club América. This move was all about money; the Aguilas have more of it than anybody. Vuoso, it is hoped, will take the place of Salvador Cabañas, the great Paraguayan delantero who led the front line at América so impressively until felled this past winter by a bullet to the brain. (And Santos quickly replaced Vuoso by re-signing the Ecuadoran striker Christian Benitez, who had spent this season off to Birmingham.)
Federico “El Jefe” Vilar, longtime keeper at Atlante, and along with Chilavert and Ceni one of the legendary goal-scoring goalkeepers of the modern era, moved on to Morelia.
The Monarcas however lost another Argentine veteran, the talented midfielder Gabriel Pereyra, who went to Puebla.
On the final day of the Mexican league draft there was another transfer of an Argentine veteran: Damián Ariel “La Chilendrina” Alvarez moves on from Pachuca to Tigres de Nueva Leon, where he joins Lucas Lobos in midfield under new manager Ricardo “Tuca” Ferreti. Alvarez, a fleet winger who broke in with River and also performed briefly in Serie A with Reggina, excelled for four years with the Monarcas of Morelia before his five great seasons with Pachuca, where he played a major role in the winning of four championships.