Pressure Is on Argentina as It Hosts the Copa América

In any normal cycle, this would be the time when soccer comes home to South Americans, who for 60 years have suffered the drain of their finest players to the rich clubs of Europe.
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Lionel Messi excels as a finisher for his club, Barcelona; with Argentina, he is expected to be both a finisher and a creator.
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But this is no normal season.

The talent drain intensifies. What began with Omar Sivori and Alfredo di Stéfano leaving the Buenos Aires team River Plate to play for Juventus and Real Madrid more than half a century ago continues today with former River Plate youngsters Gonzalo Higuaín, Javier Mascherano, Pablo Aimar, et al.

Yet River dances with bankruptcy, despair and self-destruction. The club — once envied as Los Millonarios, the millionaires of Argentine sport — was relegated Sunday for the first time in its 110-year history.

River’s “barrabrava” fanatics fought tooth and nail against riot police officers, who used water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. They tore apart sections of the Monumental stadium. They flattened parts of the elegant Avenida del Libertador.

And even as the hospitals tended to the 89 wounded, Argentina moves forward to the opening game Friday of the Copa América 2011.

This is the monthlong tournament held once every four years to decide the champion of the 10 competing nations from South America, plus the invited guests this year, Mexico and Costa Rica.

It could be the best of times, and the worst of times, for Argentina to hold such a tournament.

Officials in Buenos Aires are investigating allegations of what one prosecutor said was the criminal selling of far too many tickets for Monumental, pushing it beyond capacity. But that same stadium is scheduled for the Copa final on July 24.

If that final lives up to its billing, it will be Argentina, with Lionel Messi, Carlos Tévez and others back on home soil, against Brazil. And if that happens, the long, long wait for Argentines to win their first trophy since the 1993 Copa will raise the roof on expectations — and the responsibility to police it.

It is winter in South America, but Argentina swelters with hope and excitement. Its national squad has a monstrous imbalance of skills. Messi, Tévez, Higuaín, Sergio Agüero and the young Javier Pastore represent attacking qualities that nations drool for.

“Argentina has not won anything for far too long,” Higuaín said on the Buenos Aires station Radio La Red. “Now, we have the team to do it. No doubt, this is our time. We have Messi, and if we surround him in the best possible way, he will make the entire team play.”

The Messi of Barcelona might. But the Messi of Argentina has an altogether different task. César Menotti, who built the Argentina team that won the World Cup in 1978, has said that Messi is blessed with finishing off the work of fine colleagues at Barcelona, but he is expected to be both a creator and a finisher for his country.

At the World Cup a year ago, Messi was sometimes phenomenal. But he lost anyway because Argentina’s defense was nowhere near capable of securing the team against attacks.

Home-field advantage, starting down in La Plata on Friday when Argentina plays Bolivia, could galvanize the team. Or it could, as River Plate has just demonstrated, add to the pressure and end up in a sorry combustion.

This whole tournament could transcend a World Cup in terms of the beauty of creative play, or it could disintegrate into violence that gives soccer a bad name.

Brazil’s latest wonder boy, the Santos teenager Neymar, was also recently involved in a mass brawl, this time among players on the field. As long as he plays as well as he can, and taunts defenders as he habitually does, he is bound to be kicked.

Neymar is on a stage, and going through a transient stage. His agent pumps up the volume, suggesting that his client is the Messi of tomorrow and worth $66 million to any of the big European teams vying to buy him. The agent thinks Chelsea could afford to take him to London, alongside the two Brazilians, David Luiz and Ramires, already there.

Pelé, the former Santos great, thinks Barcelona would be a better home for Neymar’s budding talents. And, of course, every fine prospect at this tournament wishes Barça would call his number, and pay money that Barcelona possibly doesn’t have in comparison with Chelsea, Manchester City or Real Madrid.

Alexis Sánchez of Chile, for example, is caught in this dilemma. His country probably will not win the Copa, but with every performance that Sánchez excels in, his admirers will be asked by his current team, Udinese in Italy, to find a few more million euros to buy him.

Sánchez, too, says he would love to play for Barcelona. But Barcelona’s summer spending is set at $64 million, about half of which has been earmarked to buy Arsenal’s midfielder, Cesc Fàbregas.

All these themes intermingle at the Copa: The individuals in the shop window, the national pride at stake, the brief glimpse that fans get of home-bred but long-gone stars, and the undercurrent of exasperation that fuels violence.

And as ever, FIFA’s hand is upon it. Julio Grondona, now 79, is FIFA’s senior vice president and at the same time the president of the Argentine Football Association.

Grondona has overseen FIFA’s gargantuan fortune. He is chairman of the finance committee that sits on reserves of over a billion dollars. Yet under Grondona, the Argentine soccer structure disintegrates toward insolvency.

The league needed a government bailout to save many of its teams last year. The cash for players transferred to Europe gets siphoned off into agencies that exploit rather than support the clubs. And Grondona appears to be yet another FIFA executive clinging to office while the house destabilizes around him.