Tata Martino and her two returns from the dead

CINCINNATI – Gerardo Martino has launched himself into two dark tunnels, in search of a little light.

The ‘Tata’ has been submerged in the womb of two tragedies. The Nations League Final (USA 3-2) and the Gold Cup Final (USA 1-0).

Martino has reviewed the videos. You have taken notes. He has figured out strategies. He has designed stratagems. It has calculated heroism, but also tragedies. He has punched the table, because yes, why not. Why yes, why not?

Look for answers. Search solutions. Look for hope. Look for heroes. Especially when it matters, like this Friday night. Especially where it matters: the Concacaf Final Octagonal.

And especially, he seeks the panacea before who matters: the United States, because at that limit of diplomacy and mockery, his counterpart Gregg Berhalter said that “if with those two victories (Nations League and Gold Cup), it is not enough to Earn the respect (of Mexico), we must win this Friday ”.

Yes, Gerardo Martino has put on his own Divine Comedy. He visited the Hell of two failures, locked himself in tormented Purgatory, and seeks his redemption this Friday. When it matters, where it matters and to whom it matters.

At the Press Conference on Thursday, the ‘Tata’ lowered his gaze, like this, as if the fault were all his: “The set pieces” was his diagnosis. There, thus, the United States declared the Final of the League of Nations.

But, Martino’s notebook has much more than that, it has fewer pages than notes. In Juan Carlos Osorio’s terms, the red pen has emptied, and the blue one is overflowing with ink.

Certainly, before Gregg Berhalter’s Captain America, El Tata contemplates his Chapulín Colorado with his Chillón Chipote. That can be reciprocal perhaps. The selected Mexicans turn to the bench and discover “El Chanfle”.

1.- THE WALL …

It is not a finding that of Martino when speaking of the fragility of Mexico in set pieces. It is a genetic drama. It is his DNA of tragedy, with others. Like the very spot of penalty.

Manolo Lapuente once explained them. “We work, if you fail at something, you work. And in training we work on standing balls. When the day of the game arrives, the story is different ”.

And it happens to Martino, because it continues to happen to Mexico. Organize frontons. Balls to the area; centers to the first post, to the second, to the one who anticipates, to the one who arrives by surprise. Until in real life, McKennie or Acosta or Zardes or Brooks or Yedlin or Pepi or Adams burst in, and Guillermo Ochoa at the door of his bow, snorts.

“A lot of concentration, a lot of decision, a lot of attention and a lot of güevos, and a little bit of skill.” The recipe comes from one of the best Mexican defenses in the air game: Claudio Suárez, a specialist in canceling out colossi bigger than him.

2. COLD BLOOD …

That scale of disaster, Mexico maintains in balance, with its imbalances. Rusty, rusty on the bottom, when it comes to the opponent’s air attack, your own artillery has the trigger locked, rusty. And sometimes, instead of howitzers, he fires pellets.

They miss their forwards and miss their second line of attack. And he errs even in the stain, as happened to Andrés Guarded at minute 124, with 3-3 served on the penalty tray in the Nations League Final.

After that shipwreck in the mountains of Denver, Gerardo Martino found hope through bureaucratic coyotaje; Rogelio Funes Mori was already Mexican. But, the bayonet broke in the middle of the Gold Cup. In the Final, the Twin had two that with a blow he would have entered … and he missed.

Raúl Jiménez, the ruthless jaw of the Hampton Wolves, is still locked when he wears green. It seems that leadership is a girdle that suffocates his chest, since before his tremendous injury. Tecatito Corona? He has been expendable for Porto, after two prodigious years. Chucky Lozano erupts and then lays in his own ashes.

The ‘Tata’ does not discover anything new. They are old habits, old ailments, but with new surnames. Errors in set pieces and those shudders at the goal are the same scarecrows, but they have a new identity card.

Success among Mexicans lies in the supernatural rather than in their own nature. The rooster world champion, Raúl Ratón Macías, shouted it to humanity, raising his belt: “I owe everything to the Virgin of Guadalupe.” Crossing himself before shooting will perhaps be the solution for Raúl, el Mellizo, Henry Martín and company.

3. COMMITMENT …

Gerardo Martino was asked about three disgraced promises: Luis Romo, Sebastián Córdova and Tecatito.

He exonerated the first one, although Cruz Azul misses his best version. With the other two, he says, he has approached this week, he has stretched them out on the couch, looking for answers. “We are always close to footballers, especially those who for one reason or another, do not have a good passage in their teams,” he said.

In that painful excursion through those two lost finals against the United States, El Tata must have discovered that the same shirt can have two almost antagonistic versions. The commitment is not included with the dress. That is exuded by the wearer, the footballer.

The League of Nations Final was a great game. Absolute intensity. Devotion, passion and commitment. Absolute obsession for victory. Ironic that with 3-2, and from the spot, at minute 124, the only leader available in El Tri, failed. But, Andrés Guardado is the last bastion of strength in the El Tata team.

Speaking of models, the team that collapsed on the scoreboard, in Denver, despite everything, is the version that can jump with category this Friday night, and recklessly launch into the icy ambush of Cincinnati.

The Tri of the League of Nations with Raúl Jiménez at the epicenter of the attack, can devastate and destroy the brand new trench that the United States intends to build in the TQL Stadium, after the bitter conquest and

devastation of Columbus.

The Mexico of Denver, always superior to the United States, but with serious errors in the background, and indecisions in the front, can leave Cincinnati alive, because now it also has the jaw exercised to crush

bones and defenses, by Lobo Mayor Jiménez.

The truth, the only irrefutable, the only irrefutable, is that the epic of this Friday night, with the rostrum painted in red, blue and white, and some noisy polka dots in green, will be so intense, squeezing, seductive, ecstatic, like Denver. Amen.

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Tata Martino and her two returns from the dead