Batista pays for Argentina Copa flop
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail
Shanghai Daily, July 27, 2011
Argentina's failure to win the Copa America as the host and end an 18-year wait for a major title cost coach Sergio Batista his job on Monday.
The Argentine Football Association, facing an identity crisis in the national game, announced Batista had stepped down after his team was knocked out of the tournament in the quarterfinals nine days ago.
"The national teams commission has decided to rescind the contract," AFA spokesman Ernesto Cherquis Bialo told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
"Batista wasn't sacked," Cherquis Bialo said. "(Batista) put his future as the head of the national team up for consideration by the (AFA) executive committee."
Cherquis Bialo also said Argentina's August 10 friendly against Romania in Bucharest had been canceled.
"The coaching staff of Argentina teams at all levels are under evaluation by the national teams commission," he added.
"There are no deadlines, no rush, no urgency (to name a new coach) so there will be a process of consideration and study."
National teams director Carlos Bilardo, who as coach steered Argentina to its second World Cup triumph in Mexico in 1986, has also come under scrutiny and risks losing his job.
There had been mounting media pressure for the AFA to make a decision to rescue Argentina from years of underachievement with Batista in the eye of the storm after AFA board members questioned his capacity for the job.
Batista, 48, had been in charge for a year, initially in an interim capacity after Diego Maradona was refused a new contract following Argentina's quarterfinal ouster at the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.
His contract was to take him to the end of the South American qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil with Batista vowing to build a team around Lionel Messi, the world's best player, to win the title.
Batista, nicknamed Checho, did not promise to deliver the Copa America but said it was Argentina's obligation as the host to win the trophy.
Argentina has gone 18 years without a major title since its last Copa win in 1993 and the youth program led by former coach Nestor Pekerman that reaped five world under-20 titles between 1995 and 2007 was dismantled.
Alejandro Sabella, former coach of Argentine club Estudiantes, and Paraguay coach Gerardo Martino - an Argentine - are seen as the favorites to replace Batista.
