Whatever happened to Ricky Villa?

[Snookie]

Guardian Blogs - rarely a source of top class writing - has a wonderful piece by Marcela Mora y Araujo on Ricky Villa and club ownership in Argentinian football. Its beautifully written and its well worth taking the time to read both it and the accompanying comments. Buried in these you'll find a link to the 7-0 win by Liverpool over a Spurs side featuring Ardilles, Villa and Hoddle. I still remember as a kid watching those highlights. If you have never seen the seventh goal before then shame on you. If Liverpool have scored a more perfect team goal, I've not seen it.

 

 

Whatever happened to Ricky Villa?

 

The Argentinian is largely remembered for that dribble and goal in the FA Cup final, but his career has taken an equally mazy path.

 

"Sometimes it feels like I only played one match and only ever scored one goal," Ricky says laughing. The fact that we probably all know which goal he means lends weight to the argument, but the truth is he played many more matches and scored lots more goals.

 

It is a long time since the 1981 FA Cup final, and Ricardo Julio Villa has moved on, up, down and sideways since then. His playing years took him from Spurs to the US and Colombia and eventually back to Argentina, where after hanging up his boots he moved into management. He had bouts in charge of Defensa y Justicia, Quilmes and, more recently, assisted Osvaldo Ardiles with Racing de Avellaneda.

 

At present, he's attempting to disentangle himself from a role he undertook as general football advisor to Talleres de Cordoba. "The idea was to generate a new image, undertaking the financial management of the club with all that this implies," Ricky explained to me. "I feel I've done my bit and that this is a cycle coming to an end".

 

What happened to Talleres de Cordoba is symptomatic of what is happening to club football in Argentina. Talleres are currently a second division club, but being one of the two big clubs in the province of Cordoba, the second most important in the country, it has significant history and tradition.

 

After being declared bankrupt in 2005, the club's administration was taken over by a private company, Atelier S.A. This followed the example of Buenos Aires clubs Quilmes and Racing, both of whom emerged from receivership after coming under the control of plc's. At a time when most clubs are struggling to make ends meet, Argentinian law forbids football clubs from being privately owned. They must be non-profit organisations, owned by members and run by elected boards. Although many would like to see a more modern approach (or the 'privatisation' of football clubs, as it's referred to locally), the paradox is that only clubs that actually file for bankruptcy are eligible to be managed externally by private companies. Atelier (which means talleres - workshop - in French) was formed with 49% local capital and 51% investment from France's St Etienne, in a move which committed to take over the clubs debts in exchange for being allowed to recoup the investment, hopefully through sales of players, amongst other things.

 

At the time, Talleres were within a whisker of promotion. But a last minute turnaround from local rivals Belgrano de Cordoba meant the club remained in Nacional B. In the business of football, just like in the game, it is the result that counts, and Talleres' luck has not improved as much as the financiers had hoped.

 

The club have just re-called Ricardo Gareca as manager, the man who managed them to their only international title in 1994, when they won the Conmebol Cup; they've also brought back former player Diego Garay, who shone with them in 2000/01 season before moving on to a less successful stint in Strasbourg and then Mexico.

 

The return of these heroes may go a little way to placating disenchanted fans, but, like so many of the country's clubs, Talleres are also struggling to halt fierce confrontations between two factions of Barra Bravas - La Fiel and Las Violetas. There is no love lost between these two groups, with one claiming the other has been receiving more perks from the club board - only this week a similar controversy has gripped River Plate, leading to the closure of their stadium.

 

In fact, Boca's stadium is also closed due to violence - for Libertadores matches anyway. This weekend Boca will play their home fixture against Cienciano at San Lorenzo's stadium. San Lorenzo, in turn, played their home fixture last weekend at Boca. Only in Argentina - the land where no one plays their home games at home anymore!

 

Whether or not all this moving about will curb the violence remains to be seen, but the point is that Talleres' predicament is not peculiar to them.

 

They may well remain anchored in the second division but they have a proud tradition of producing quality players. Their finest season was in 1977, when they finished runners-up in the league - Cesar Menotti picked no less than six players from Talleres for his World Cup winning squad of 1978, making it the most represented club in the side. Some rarely left the subs' bench, but all got their hands on the trophy.

 

The manager of that excellent 1977 campaign was Roberto Saporiti, who was also lured back by Atelier S.A, with Villa's blessing. It didn't work out and another hero of yesteryear, Roberto Oste, scorer of the penalty that beat rivals Belgrano in the 1999 final, came in as interim manager.

 

This series of one-goal wonders defined the clubs trials and tribulations but the reality today is that privatisation is not yielding the expected results. Villa says he is now less involved in the active, trying to remain more anonymous in the passive, "which is in some ways much harder".

 

He equates his disillusionment with the world of football business to that of his career in politics. Between 1991 and 1995 he became a local councillor for his home town of Roque Perez. But he soon found that idealism and politics don't mix. "You know what football in this country is like." he says: "You could write a thriller a day, the things that go on." I prefer to think of football as art, I suggest. "There's no question of that," Ricky laughs yet again. "But which art?"

 

Jorge Luis Borges said that what happens to one man happens to all men and Ricardo Julio Villa's trajectory through professional football is neither obscure nor uncommon. He may well laugh at the fact that few remember much else about his contribution apart from that Wembley goal. But what a goal.

 

Source: here.