César Luis Menotti, world champion with the Argentine team in 1978 and former coach of Barcelona among other teams, is hospitalized in Buenos Aires, where studies are being carried out due to severe anemia, although he is “stable.”
Sources from the Argentine Football Association (AFA) confirmed to efe that ‘Flaco’ He is in a common room, accompanied by his children, in a hospital in the Argentine capital where he was hospitalized over the weekend, while he continues to undergo studies to determine the severity of his illness.
According to the Clarín newspaper, Menotti, 85 years old, He received some transfusions during the four days he was admitted.
‘Flaco’, a great supporter – along with the president of the AFA, Claudio Tapia – of Lionel Scaloni As Argentina coach, he suffered a fall at home last August that caused internal bleeding, for which he was also hospitalized.
He couldn’t go to the World Cup in Qatar
Previously, he also had health problems that prevented him from traveling to the World Cup in Qatar, where in December 2022 Argentina won its third star.
Current director of National Teams of the AFA, he made his last intervention in the media weeks ago, when he spoke with Radio Splendid about various issues surrounding legendary football figures, like Edson Arantes do Nascimento ‘Pelé’ or Diego Armando Maradona.
Surrendered to Pelé
“There is one who cannot be compared, it is impossible. There is one who, if he played today, would win the games on his own, which is Pelé. Then we have Diego, (Johan) Cruyff, (Alfredo) Di Stefano and now Messi, but Pelé was another thing,” Menotti declared.
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A former player for Rosario Central, Racing and Boca Juniors, Menotti joined Brazilian team Santos in 1968, where he coincided with ‘O Rei’, with whom he won the Paulista Championship the following year.
“I say this with the certainty of having lived with him for a year, playing as his substitute every day. One day Pelé jumped about two meters and gave a 20-meter pass with his chest that left Toninho and Coutinho – fellow Brazilians – alone. of Menotti at Santos – told me: ‘This ‘filho da puta’ is not a football player,'” he commented.
Menotti reiterated the idea that the footballer who died two years ago was “the greatest thing” he saw in his life.
He achieved the first World Cup for Argentina
Menotti, born in Rosario, had a very successful career on the bench, the peak of which was being able to place the first star on the albiceleste shirt, to which those obtained by his colleagues would later be added. Carlos Salvador Bilardo in 1986 and Scaloni in 2022.
He also won the U-20 World Cup for Argentina in 1979, a tournament whose most outstanding player was Maradona.
Menotti has also managed, among others, Barcelona, where he won the King’s Cup, League Cup and Spanish Super Cup in 1983, and Atlético de Madrid, the Argentine Independiente, Boca Juniors and River Plate, the Italian Sampdoria and the Mexican Puebla .
