You need only to have glanced up at all the Etisalat posters which have peppered the city since February to realise which Argentine footballer the capital is rooting for this month. Lionel Messi, Barcelona’s Fraggle-haired youth with the Maradona skills and a World Player of the Year statuette in his back pocket, is the man that sponsors and fans clamour for. He has those most precious of marketing tools: youth and talent. However, some believe the most important player in the Fifa Club World Cup might not be the mercurial Messi but, rather, another of his countrymen.
In many ways Estudiantes’ Juan Sebastián Verón is the anti-Messi. He is the lumbering dinosaur of Argentinian football, the deep-lying playmaker; the man whose job it is to distribute the ball to the areas of the pitch that can harm the opposition. He is a curious player. Unquestionably he lacks the pace, the dribbling ability and the swashbuckling flair of his younger counterpart, but, due to the way Estudiantes play, his is the most important role on the pitch. Messi has youth but Verón has the vision and the experience.
His skill is to receive the ball and turn defence into attack. It is a talent Manchester United infamously paid GBP28.1million for back in 2001; a move since named by British broadsheet The Times as one of the 50 worst ever transfers in British football. In retrospect, Verón made his name in the slower Italian Serie A, where the responsibility for defence could be passed off to a specialist. In the British Premier League, where midfielders are required to be committed in the tackle and get around the pitch quickly, he looked like a fish out of water, only ever thriving in European competition. Naturally, a sideways move to Chelsea, then new to the Russian roubles of Roman Abramovich, beckoned, only for him to be loaned back to Italy a year later. In the end, it signalled a conclusion to his European adventure.
Bizarrely, a legacy of his European endeavours is that Verón’s cumulative career transfer fees still make him one of the most expensive footballers of all time, lying just behind moody French journeyman Nicholas Anelka and GBP80million-man Cristiano Ronaldo. Having returned to his hometown club of Estudiantes in 2006, Verón follows in the footsteps of his father, Juan Ramon (known as ‘The Witch’, hence Juan Sebastian’s nickname of La Brujita, or ‘Little Witch’), who led the club to three successive Copa Libertadores from 1968 to 1970.
As current South American Footballer of the Year, he is undoubtedly nearing the end of his career, but the 34-year-old still has an important role to play for club and country. Argentina manager Maradona (the, er, ‘old Messi’) handed Verón a central role in the country’s stuttering qualification for the World Cup, despite public outcry.
In South American football, where egos, infighting and politics provide half the entertainment, Verón is a clever player. He bitterly divides an Argentinian public who remember his woeful performance in the 2002 World Cup, yet witness live his commanding club performances on a weekly basis. The slow, methodical playing style of Estudiantes also suits him. It gives him the chance to do what he does best. The team is based around Verón’s ability to spot a pass rather than make a tackle or cover ground quickly. Whereas Messi is the focal point of an attack, Verón is its instigator and, in many ways, that is more important.
The Fifa Club World Cup is traditionally a two-horse race between the European and South American sides. Currently the Latin continent holds the edge. Certainly, Juan Sebastián Verón’s Estudiantes looks to be the biggest threat to Barcelona’s hegemony. For many, it all rests on the shoulders of one Argentinian – just not the one you might expect. The question remains: how much magic is left in the Little Witch?
Estudiantes’ opening game is played on December 15 at Mohammed bin Zayed stadium
