Olympic Games Failure Highlights Argentina’s Disastrous Grass-Roots Game

The Argentine Olympic football dream is no more. A 1-1 draw against Honduras sealed the nation’s fate, leaving them marooned in third place in Group D and heading for an early trip home.

And after years of underachievement in the youth game, this latest failure is hardly surprising. 

There was a time not long ago when the Albiceleste name was synonymous with success at the junior level. Teams coached by Marcelo Bielsa and Sergio Batista took Argentina to back-to-back Olympic successes in 2004 and 2008, respectively, cementing their reputation. 

In the under-20 category there was also glory, with the teams that clinched two World Cup victories in 2005 and 2007 forming the backbone of the current senior squad. Diego Maradona famously led Argentina to victory in the second FIFA World Youth Championship in 1979, and no other country can match the six titles they have won in the competition. 

Those days appear to be over, though. The two most recent triumphs were built on the back of the youth system put into place by Jose Pekerman, the far-seeing coach who saw it was not merely enough to deliver success at the top level, but rather plan for the future with coherent tactics throughout the pyramid. 

Pekerman and his assistant, Hugo Tocalli, revamped the way Argentina’s junior sides approached the game. But since he left, the decline has been inexorable. The under-20 division became a dumping ground for nepotistic appointments and a way to appease former members of the 1986 World Cup-winning side, few of whom had any coaching experience to speak of. 

Batista made a decent fist of the job, despite failing to qualify for the 2009 World Cup. The likes of Walter Perazzo and Marcelo Trobbiani did nothing to impose a coherent style on their team, while rock bottom was reached with the appointment of Humberto Grondona, the son of the late Argentine Football Association (AFA) president, Julio Grondona. 

Humberto was removed from the post in 2015 following an abject World Cup performance, going out at the group stage in the first round without a single win. The Under-17 team suffered a similar fate that year after losing all three games, and with this Olympic Games exit, the nation completes an unenviable …

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