Diego Maradona match career reports (1976-1997)

Discussion in 'The Beautiful Game' started by Vegan10, May 1, 2020.

  1. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    #26 Vegan10, May 17, 2020
    Last edited: May 17, 2020
    Sorry, this was at All Boys, not Newell’s; two totally different sides.
     
  2. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    These photos of the squad are at around that time period, with Maradona already a starter.

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  3. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Nacional Championship 1976

    Round 17

    08/12/1976 Talleres (Córdoba) 5-0 Argentinos Juniors

    Stadium: Talleres, Córdoba

    For the first and last time Maradona wore the number 9 jersey in this match.

    Talleres, the strongest side in the group, destroyed lowly Argentinos, but despite the defeat, Maradona had a good individual game, as he had in his debut vs the same team. El Gráfico awarded him a 7.

    Clarín stated the vast superiority of the home team and the “solitary work” of Maradona on the offensive end, but Argentinos were simply no match against one of the contenders for the championship.

    0B58FCB2-F1DD-479B-B36A-CED4A9445A4C.jpeg 5D365B6D-DA34-407A-B132-7D01FCBD7A03.jpeg 1E793855-4466-40CF-8034-405D766E93D7.jpeg
     
  4. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Nacional Championship 1976

    Round 18

    12/12/1976 Argentinos Juniors 1-2 Newell’s Old Boys

    Stadium: La Paternal, Argentinos Juniors

    This would be the last round of the National tournament and the last game of Maradona before the 1977 season kicked off. Argentinos would not qualify to the knockout stages in 1976 and finished 4th in their group, but well behind the top 3.

    Newell’s, the second best team in the group, deservedly won because they were superior. It was a good spectacle played at an “intense” level. Maradona played well, according to El Gráfico, who graded him for his final league game of the year with a 7.

    Clarín briefly said this about Diego: “Good with the gambeta (dribble) but without progress in the attack.”

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    C7DD60C2-2748-4558-874A-685F7C7E009D.jpeg

    A final brief review coming up.
     
  5. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Overall summary of Diego Maradona matches in 1976

    National Championship 1976

    20/10/1976 Argentinos Juniors 0-1 Talleres de Córdoba
    24/10/1976 Newell’s Old Boys 4-2 Argentinos Juniors
    31/10/1976 Ferro Carril Oeste 3-0 Argentinos Juniors
    07/11/1976 Argentinos Juniors 2-0 Huracán (Comodoro Rivadavia)
    14/11/1976 San Lorenzo (Mar del Plata) 2-5 Argentinos Juniors 2 goals, 1 assist
    21/11/1976 Argentinos Juniors 3-0 Central Norte (Salta)
    24/11/1976 All Boys 4-1 Argentinos Juniors 1 assist
    01/12/1976 Colón (Santa Fe) Argentinos Juniors
    05/12/1976 Argentinos Juniors 1-1 San Lorenzo (Almagro)
    08/12/1976 Talleres (Córdoba) 5-0 Argentinos Juniors
    12/12/1976 Argentinos Juniors 1-2 Newell’s Old Boys

    Total: 11 games 2 goals + 2 assists (confirmed)

    (the assist information is not the final word due to insufficient information in some matches that didn’t get into details about every goal).

    El Gráfico graded him the following way:
    1 excellent game with a 9
    4 good games with a 7
    3 correct games with a 6
    1 poor game with a 5
    2 very poor games with a 4

    His highlight of the campaign was against the bottom table team (San Lorenzo of Mar del Plata) with 2 goals + 1 assist, but he also played well in both encounters vs the top team (Talleres of Córdoba) in the group and eventual semifinalists in the tournament.
     
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  6. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Coming up Maradona’s first full season as a starter. Stay tuned...
     
  7. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    LOL, yeah. Different teams, different cities, different provinces. All Boys is Argentinos Juniors' traditional neighborhood rival, so this game would be significant for the players and the fans, which makes it a very bad loss.
     
  8. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    jijii...The confusing part was that All Boys was not in this group, only Newell’s Old Boys and in my haste I initially assumed it had to be Old Boys from Rosario and I didn’t realize that what had occurred is that All Boys (another team) was invited to play from group C a match against Argentinos Juniors that was in Group D. Inclusively in the link below in that round (14) that match doesn’t exist, only in the newspaper tabloids I found it.

    http://www.rsssf.com/tablesa/arg76.html
     
  9. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    #34 argentine soccer fan, May 18, 2020
    Last edited: May 18, 2020
    Right. There were two tournaments back then. The Metropolitano, with teams from Buenos Aires (and its suburbs), La Plata, Rosario and Santa Fe, and the Nacional (the national tournament) with teams from all over the country, which qualified regionally.

    The national tournament in the late 60s and 70s was set up in groups, and the teams only played those in their group, but the format would not allow for teams to play their derby, which teams considered the most important game of their season, so to remedy this, AFA added an extra game, which was outside their group but counted in the group standings.

    This way, Boca got to play River, Racing got to play Independiente etc, and that's why Argentinos got to play their rivals All Boys.
     
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  10. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Mate, what’s your take on the Nacional and Metro tournaments in terms of value?

    The Metro was the regular 30 + league season that usually lasted from the beginning of the year until October-November. The Nacional a shorter tournament that usually consisted of 14-18 rounds with playoffs for a spot at the Libertadores in the last few months of the year.

    I always viewed the Nacional as a money spinner, that could have just been scrapped as eventually would be the case.
     
  11. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    #36 argentine soccer fan, May 18, 2020
    Last edited: May 18, 2020
    Of course as a kid I just enjoyed the tournament, and it was fun to get exposed to exotic teams from all the remote areas of Argentina, although some of them were not very competitive.

    Looking back, I think it was a good idea to make the national tournament as a transition for the provincial teams to join the league, and it ultimately worked in incorporating some of the top teams from other provinces into what became a true national tournament, while helping expose players from all over the nation to the highest level, although to this day with few exceptions the teams from the old Metropolitano are still dominant. Cordoba has had competitive teams, and to a lesser extent at times Mendoza, San Juan, Tucuman, Salta, Jujuy, Corrientes and Mar del Plata. But mostly "teams from the interior" end up at the B division level or lower, while the top category is still dominated primarily by the old guard.

    While I do think that the idea was great, the execution was poor (not surprising, being Argentina), because the structure of the tournament was constantly tinkered with unnecessarily, as a byproduct of political power struggles.
     
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  12. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    For the 1977 season I found an overview of an Argentinian magazine from the conclusion of the 1977 campaign, which said this on the front cover about Maradona:

    “Player of exceptional qualities, it should be noted that Maradona is the most extraordinary revelation of a long period of Argentinian football”

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  13. msioux75

    msioux75 Member+

    Jan 8, 2006
    Lima, Peru
    Sorry, for the parentheses.

    I see that Nacional finalists were chosed as Argentina's teams qualified for Copa Libertadores and not the Metropolitano finalists.

    That means AFA valued Nacional tournament highly than Metro?
     
  14. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    #39 argentine soccer fan, May 19, 2020
    Last edited: May 19, 2020
    If I recall correctly, this happened only at the beginning. In 69 only Estudiantes alone qualified from Argentina because they were the defending champion. From 70 to 73 I think the two finalists of the Nacional qualified in addition to the defending champion (if it was an Argentine team). After 73 the champion of the Metropolitano and the champion of the Nacional qualified. In the years in which a team won both, the second place teams from both tournaments played a match to determine who would accompany the bicampeón in Libertadores. But the format was always changing, so maybe I'm missing something.

    I think both tournaments were valued the same, but who knows? Maybe in the early years AFA wanted to get teams to take the tournament seriously, so they used it for Copa Libertadores. The AFA was committed to incorporating the teams from the different provinces into the AFA tournament structure.

    As a sidenote, in the early 70s Menotti decided to form an alternative national team with players from the provincial teams that participated in the National tournament. Some of these players were not even professionals. Many laughed at this idea but from that team of the provinces five players later were in the squad of the national team that won the World Cup in 1978: Luis Galván, Osvaldo Ardiles, Julio Villa, Daniel Valencia and Miguel Oviedo. Galvan and Ardiles were starters in the 78 final.
     
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  15. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    I think some people have struggled to understand that the Nacional in Argentina was not like the traditional national European league tournaments. I heard people think that because it says ‘National’ that it was of greater importance, but that wasn’t the case. As you pointed out, various semiprofessional squads were from the interior of the country, with the occasional surprise team that could challenge some of the top Metropolitan teams. Furthermore, it was a short tournament where not every team faced off against every team. The Metropolitano being generally the traditional Serie A type 30 + game season where everyone played against everyone and it lasted like any traditional league tournament around the world.

    Perhaps one can look at the Nacional tournament like a European domestic cup, where many lower division sides could face off against first division top teams and prove their worth against the best clubs from Buenos Aires. At the end I look back and view it as AFA’s money grabber, when they could have just settled for a few worthy teams from the interior to merge into the Metropolitano.
     
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  16. argentine soccer fan

    Staff Member

    Jan 18, 2001
    San Francisco Bay Area
    Club:
    CA Boca Juniors
    Nat'l Team:
    Argentina
    Right. Which is what they eventually did, except that most of the teams from the interior ended up in the Nacional B.

    As far as libertadores, in the early days it wasn’t that big anyway. Some teams didn’t take it seriously, and a few even refused to participate.
     
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  17. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Before the 1977 Metropolitan first division kicked off, Argentinos Juniors played a friendly against first division team of San Lorenzo of Almagro.

    Friendly

    Stadium: San Lorenzo

    10/02/1977

    10 de febrero de 1977
    SAN LORENZO: 0 ARGENTINOS JUNIORS: 3
    SAN LORENZO:
    La Volpe; E.Sanchez y Uzin; Lupo, Palmieri y Sanz; M.Sanchez, Mainonis, Premici, Fischer y A.Rodriguez. DT: Domínguez
    ARGENTINOS JUNIORS: Munutti; Carrizo, Nuñez, Gette, Di Donato, Fren, Agresta, Maradona, López, Álvarez, Acuña. DT: D'Accorso
    Goles: PT: 28m. Álvarez (AJ) ST: 4m. Álvarez (AJ); 30m. Maradona (AJ)
    Juez: Veiro
    Cambios: Grecco por Mainonis; Olivares por Palmieri; Gauna por Premici (SL). Giordano por Acuña (AJ).

    No text of the match, but Maradona scored 1 goal.

    Summary: 1 goal

    http://www.museodesanlorenzo.com.ar/contenido/jugadores/torneos/1971/1977 metro/PARTIDOS AMISTOSOS.htm

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  18. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    El Gráfico did make a brief mention of this match and how Maradona at the age of 16 will become stronger competing against these first division opponents.

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  19. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Meanwhile, as every team in the first division prepared for the start of the new season, each team revamped their rosters, and the telling part (not surprisingly) of the image below shows how Argentinos Juniors, as one of the smaller market teams, were at the bottom half in spending money on players, while Racing, River Plate, Boca Juniors and Independiente as the clubs with the most money.

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  20. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    So the Metropolitan first division of 1977 would consist of 23 teams with 44 rounds. Argentinos Juniors’ aim was to survive the relegation zone and improve from the previous season. They had a new manager and their best aspirations would be to end up at around the middle table.

    For the 1977 season I will use sources from El Gráfico, Goles and La Nación.
     
  21. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Metropolitan Championship 1977

    Round 1

    20 and 22 of February 1977

    Argentinos 1-2 Quilmes

    Stadium: La Paternal, Argentinos Juniors

    This opening game of the season was played on two different days due to an intense storm that had the official suspend the game at halftime, so one half was played on the 20th of February and the other half continued two days later.

    The game was “intense” with Argentinos Juniors only stamping their authority on the match for the first 15 minutes. That’s when Maradona and his forward line had their best moments which produced the opening goal, thanks to a free kick from Diego that rebounded off the bar into the path of his teammate, Alvarez to score. But from then on Quilmes took over the game and turned it around and deserved to win.

    Quilmes were seen as a solid defensive side that clamped down on their opponents, even if at times by unfair means, and that had more order with clearer ideas.

    La Nación only briefly mentioned the “skilled Maradona” but this game was all about the superiority of Quilmes over Argentinos Juniors and how balanced Quilmes were as a team over their rivals.

    El Gráfico awarded Maradona an acceptable grade of a 6.


    Illustration of goal of Argentinos Juniors:
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    El Gráfico
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    La Nación DE53147A-EF64-4678-AA9D-C7DAF485CB6C.jpeg AD1FB03B-F895-4E48-9AC1-DA49374AD424.jpeg
     
  22. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Coming up, Maradona would make his NT debut for the senior side...
     
  23. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    The senior NT debut at the age of 16 years old.

    27/02/1977 Argentina 5-1 Hungary

    Stadium: La Bombonera, Boca — Buenos Aires

    Diego came on as a substitute in the 65th minute and El Gráfico wrote: “Daring, mischievous, willing to attack (to face the Hungarian defense). Very good debut”

    He had 8 good balls played but lost possession of 7 and drew 1 foul.

    La Nación said: “In every touch Maradona justified his inclusion in the National team. Despite his youth, he touched the ball wisely and placed with good criteria passes with depth.”

    El Gráfico graded him with a good performance of a 7.

    The Argentinian team as a whole played strong and mostly everyone was graded well, while Hungary disappointed despite being ranked #14 in the world, according to the Elo rankings. Argentina were ranked 11.

    El Gráfico
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    La Nación
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  24. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Metropolitan Championship 1977

    Round 2

    06/03/1977 Platense 3-3 Argentinos Juniors

    Stadium: San Lorenzo, Almagro (Platense were local)

    This was the confrontation of two relegation calibre sides, two minnows in Argentinian football. It was considered a good game, with 5 “golazos” from free kicks. All 3 goals from Argentinos Juniors were from set pieces. It was a frictional match, with lots of fouls that produced 2 sending offs, one from each team.

    La Nación wrote, “Many eyes were on Maradona, who returned the curiosity with an acceptable performance. He gave lots of work to his markers, Pérez and Gómez. He beat them on more than one occasion with his elusive, subtle and precise ball control. But he was more right footed in the second half when he operated more on the right wing. He did well and scored a goal — the third of his team — full of mischief and potency. Apart from him, the game did not have any other stars of merit.”

    Maradona scored 1 goal from the free kick, his first ever in a first division.

    El Gráfico awarded him a good grade of a 7.

    Summary: 1 goal (free kick)
    https://www.besoccer.com/match/platense/argentinos-juniors/1977

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  25. Vegan10

    Vegan10 Member+

    Aug 4, 2011
    Metropolitan Championship 1977

    Round 3

    13/03/1977 Argentinos Juniors 2-1 Chacarita

    Stadium: La Paternal, Argentinos Juniors

    La Nación headlined: “Argentinos made scarce merits for the win”

    Chacarita, another minnow, fought well and deserved to not lose for the work they put into the second half.

    La Nación: “In that lapse Argentinos taken by the hand of the skilled Maradona, their best star, well accompanied by Alvarez, put forth danger to the goal of Chacarita”

    El Gráfico wrote, “Argentinos produced a better function thanks to the work of Maradona who gave in the midfield the pause and security and acceleration in the attack.”

    Both sources of El Gráfico and Goles awarded Maradona man of the match with a good grade of a 7.

    https://www.besoccer.com/match/argentinos-juniors/chacarita-juniors/1977

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