World Cup

AFTER that shock opening day defeat to Saudi Arabia, Argentina had to take the scenic route on the way to winning the World Cup.And back home to celebrate with their people, they had to take the scenic route over Buenos Aires.
Argentina’s heroes wave from their open top busCredit: AFP
Fans celebrate wildly in Buenos AiresCredit: Reuters
A fan tries to jump on Argentina’s bus during the paradeCredit: Getty
The plan to tour the city in an open top bus had to be abandoned and the world champions ended up flying over millions of their fans in a collection of helicopters.
The clear hint that last Tuesday’s celebrations would prove all too much came when the players arrived back on home soil in the wee small hours of the morning. They emerged around 4am – and a multitude was there to greet them.
Ezeiza airport is a long way out of the city and its public transport links are poor, and even so thousands had made the sacrifice of going out there to greet the returning heroes.
It was an indication that the following day might be too hard to handle. Fans gathered in their millions, with risks of overcrowding and of mass hysteria. The local hospitals were placed on red alert.
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As the bus passed under bridges fans tried to jump on board from overhead. The ranks of people were so deep that the bus was hardly making progress.
The risks were starting to mount, and the decision to call it off and use helicopters was probably a wise one.
It is easy to take this kind of reaction for granted. We shouldn’t. The mobilising power of football is truly extraordinary – both joyously wonderful and occasionally frightening.
It is worth taking time to ponder on why this is happening, to try to explain why being crowned world champions at football is capable of provoking this visceral reaction in the Argentine people.
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The process is probably best expressed in three stages.
Step one is the sport being introduced by the British, and thus arriving full of first world prestige. Argentina was at the time – the late nineteenth century – an informal part of the British empire, which does much to explain how football began to take hold – through British sailors, railway workers, school teachers.
The British held the purse strings – the reason that Diego Maradona’s two goals against England in 1986 are so important. The goals, and the manner of their scoring, were living out a deep Argentine fantasy.
Step two is the way that the game was reinterpreted by the locals. Buenos Aires was growing exponentially at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with immigrants flooding in from Europe, especially Italy, and the Middle East.
It was an environment hungry for novelty. Football was cheap to play, easy to learn and it gave them a common language.  Moreover, it was ideal for the player with the low centre of gravity – think Maradona or Lionel Messi – which was the physical build of many of the locals.
And so they started to play football their way. Instead of hard, straight line running of the English they developed, with a nudge from the Scottish passing game, a style of football that was more balletic and artistic.
Step three is that this process of reinterpretation led to international triumphs and recognition for a part of the world that feels starved of such things.
It happened first with neighbouring Uruguay. Progressive social policies meant that Uruguay was first off the blocks, because it was drawing on talent from the poorer sections of its society before anyone else.
Argentina’s stars are given a hero’s welcome by adoring fansCredit: AFP
Lionel Messi clutches the World Cup during the paradeCredit: AFP
Players were forced to fly over Buenos Aires in helicoptersCredit: Getty
But Argentina were not far behind and, especially in the 1940s, the golden era of the Argentine game – established themselves as top dogs in a continent that had become the vanguard of football.
They had to wait a long time for a World Cup. When they first claimed the title in 1978 Uruguay had won the competition twice and Uruguay three times.
But in South America Argentina were the leading force. Their players and coaches carried the game up the continent from the southern cone.
Their fans set the tone for stadiums as far north as Mexico.  Argentina has become a football republic.
There are many around the world who have no idea that Argentina is the birthplace of tango music, with its rich cultural history.
But almost everyone is aware that the country gave birth to Maradona and Messi. This is powerful stuff. To one side of Argentina is the vast Atlantic Ocean.
To the other, after a thin strip of Chile, is the huge Pacific.
Geography has placed the country a long way from so much of the world – mountain ranges can even make integration with the rest of South America a difficult task.
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Football is in Argentina football fan’s blood – as a mural of the late great Diego Maradona stands tallCredit: AP
Argentina’s World Cup celebrations will live long in the memory of their fansCredit: AFP
Argentina can be easy to overlook – until the conversation turns to football.
They are proud kings of the global game, out in the streets in their millions to wring every last bit of emotion from the euphoria of a glorious moment. More

THE heartbreaking memories of team-mate Roberto Baggio will have come flooding back for Antonio Conte when watching Harry Kane balloon his World Cup penalty.Kane, usually so deadly from 12 yards, looked shellshocked after smashing a spot-kick into Row Z during England’s 2-1 quarter-final defeat to France 16 days ago.
Harry Kane missed a second penalty as England crashed out of the World Cup vs France but Tottenham boss Antonio Conte is backing him to bounce backCredit: PA
Antonio Conte saw a haunting similarity between Harry Kane’s miss and then-Italy team-mate Roberto Baggio’s infamous 1994 attemptCredit: AFP
Antonio Conte is adamant Harry Kane will bounce back like Roberto BaggioCredit: Reuters
Watching on from his home in Italy, it must have felt hauntingly familiar to Conte, who was part of the Azzurri squad that lost to Brazil on a shootout in the 1994 World Cup final.
That day it was his Juventus team-mate Baggio who was the poor soul to whack it over from 12 yards in one of the most iconic tournament moments of all time.
It was so cruel on the pony-tailed playmaker but Baggio responded with back-to-back Serie A titles in the next two years at Juve and AC Milan.
Now it is Kane’s turn to prove his mental toughness by responding for Spurs — and Conte has no doubt his star striker can do it.
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Recalling his old mucker Baggio, the Tottenham boss, 53, said: “He was my team-mate. For sure, I remember very well the way he lived that moment.
“I watched a documentary recently and he spoke about this penalty.
“It was incredible for him to put the ball outside the goal. We are talking about a real penalty specialist.
“But this is another example that the best players take the responsibility and when you take responsibility, you can miss penalties.
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“I didn’t miss the penalty against Brazil because I didn’t play! But I have seen important players like Baggio, Alessandro Del Piero and now Harry miss important penalties.
“This is normal. It’s unpredictable because usually when players like Harry, Baggio and other important players, they go to the penalty, probably they are going to score and there is not one per cent chance to miss but less.
“But it happened. You have to put it outside of your mind and restart.”
Watching Kane’s misery was a “really strange” experience for Conte because it saw two of his most senior players go head to head — twice.
Spurs skipper Hugo Lloris was in goal for the French and got nowhere near Kane’s first spot-kick, which levelled the scores at 1-1 in the second half.
But Les Bleus’ record appearance-maker did not have to get close to the second effort as it cleared the crossbar by some distance.
Lloris and Kane saw each other for the first time since then yesterday as the stopper returned to training.
The defeated finalist will be on the bench today at Brentford, with back-up keeper Fraser Forster getting the nod in between the sticks.
Yet Conte is certain there will be no tension between Lloris, 35, and Kane.
He declared: “Impossible. I have a group of really good guys.
“I am sure Hugo on one side was really happy but on the other side was really sorry.
“When you play at this level you have to be a strong person. Harry is a strong person.”Antonio Conte
“I am sure about this because we’re talking about two really good, sensible players.
“Your keeper and your striker, one against the other, twice, was really strange.
“But then I said, ‘OK, what happened, happened’. I enjoyed the game. It was one of the best games of the World Cup.”
It would be understandable if Kane were even a little traumatised by his miss.
It is all ifs, buts and maybes but had he converted it and had England found a winner, then many felt this really could be their year, which would have finally ended Kane’s trophy hoodoo.
But Conte felt there was no need to have a consoling chat with the 29-year-old due to Kane’s strength of character.
The Italian explained: “When I was a player, negative situations happened.
“It’s not so important to find people to tell you, ‘Oh, don’t worry’.
“When you play at this level you have to be a strong person.
“Harry is a strong person. I was a strong person when I was a player.
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“For me, it’s better not to speak, not to try to justify. We are talking about an important player and they know the way to respond.”
For strong players, actions clearly speak louder than words.And with Kane netting in Spurs’ last SIX Boxing Day clashes, expect him to take action again today. More