At last, the game Argentina has been waiting for...

...and the fans hope that Diego Maradona’s magic leads them to the promised land.

The language that Diego Maradona, the self-absorbed coach of the Argentinian team, used in a press conference in October after Argentina qualified for this World Cup is not fit for print. Its message was one of vindication, after the media had harangued Maradona about his erratic coaching. He invited the journalists in the room to perform some kind of service on a part of his anatomy, but at least Maradona had the courtesy to preface his remarks by apologising to the women in the audience.

And yet, though Argentina has now reached the World Cup’s quarterfinals, celebration of its achievements, indecent or not, is premature. This is a country with a fabled football history and world class players. They have been the favourites in each of their previous matches including last weekend’s contest against Mexico. That match had all the trappings of the dramas the world has come to expect of Argentinian football: controversy (a goal that should have been called back), provocation (a Mexican player violently shoving Argentina’s Gabriel Heinze under an official’s nose) and outrageous talent (a magical top-corner goal by Carlos Tevez).

In Novecento, a bar in downtown New York where Argentinian expatriates have gathered for 20 years to watch football and drink Quilmes beer, the crowd was euphoric. When a technical glitch abruptly stopped the audio broadcast, they spontaneously filled the silence by breaking into jingoistic chants that each must have learned in school in Buenos Aires, Cordoba or Neuquen. They were cheering, though, for fulfilled expectations. It has been a relatively easy road for Argentina this tournament. Until now.

Today, Argentina plays a German team that deboned what was supposed to have been a very good English side. It will be a World Cup match between Germany and Argentina with huge consequences at stake. Again. In 1986, Argentina beat Germany to become world champions; in 1990, the results were reversed when Germany won on a late game penalty kick. Four years ago, Argentina’s run to the quarter finals again ended at the hands of Germany, and the match ended with a brawl between the two sides.

It will be a big match. And it is thus an ideal occasion to reach back in touch with an old friend. Eduardo Capdevila is a football journalist in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires. I draw upon Eduardo, who has a gift for precise language and patient explanation, when I want to better understand Argentinian thinking and football strategy, and, when the moment is ripe, both at the same time. Eduardo begins to sketch out some of the keys to the game.

The priority, Eduardo explains, is to avoid falling into “lagoons” of lacklustre play that the team suffered for most of the match against Mexico. Javier Mascherano, the team’s gutsy captain, will be critical for cutting off distribution to and from Germany’s Thomas Muller. Eduardo calls the midfield la gran incognita (the great unknown). Maradona will fiddle with combinations. Juan Sebastian Veron will be necessary to slow the pace if the attack from the Germans gets frenetic. Maxi Rodriguez gives the team a more offensive touch. The most intriguing option could be to bring in Javier Pastore, who is fast, creative, and has the profile closer to a forward, thus relieving star striker Lionel Messi from having to drop down to retrieve the ball, as he’s often forced to. These questions of tactics will be settled as the game unfolds before the eyes of 40 million Argentinians.

Norberto Lopez moved from Argentina to the US 31 years ago. He has not returned to his birth country in 14 years. He played against a semi-professional team in his hometown of Mar del Plata, but has not touched a football in 20 years. He was unmoved by the Mexico game. They didn’t play well, he says, and that’s not the kind of match that makes him “emotional.” What would make him emotional, I ask. “For Argentina to once again be world champions.”

Norberto is an elderly man who works night shifts and typically sleeps during the day. Today, though, as he has done with each of Argentina’s matches during the tournament, he will sacrifice sleep, sit in his apartment in a sleeveless undershirt, and eat a salami and cheese sandwich while his national team tries to return to the World Cup semifinals for the first time in two decades.

There is one last conversation to have with Eduardo before this larger-than-life match.

I ask him to tell me the first word that comes to mind when I mention a player in the Argentina team. I start with Messi, the best player in the world by many estimations. “Electricity,” Eduardo says. Tevez, a star for the beloved Boca Juniors before moving to the Brazilian and then the Premier League? “Heart.” Mascherano, immortalised in Maradona’s response when the press asked him who he had in mind for Argentina’s team — “Mascherano and ten others.” Eduardo thinks about it and then offers, “Valor.”

The redoubtable Heinze? “Drive.” Sergio Romero, the goalkeeper with a supermodel wife? “Security.”

Maradona?
“Magic.”

Michel Di Capua is a New York-based writer. He will write every week for the duration of FIFA 2010