This week’s guest is Argentinian writer and broadcaster Marcela Mora y Araujo. Marcela has been writing about Argentina through the prism of football for decades, and so we talk about how important the game is to shaping both the national story and the national character.
We also discuss the three great players in Argentina’s history: Alfredo di Stefano, Diego Maradona, and Lionel Messi. We talk about why Maradona was so important to his country, which brought a level of fame and reverence to which he became addicted - for better and, largely, for worse.
Marcela also abolishes a few myths regarding Lionel Messi’s standing in Argentina, traces his similarities and differences to Maradona, and explains why managing Brand Messi is as big an enterprise as anything seen before in football.
Plus: is Messi just a boring guy, or is he holding something back? She also shares extraordinary stories of the entanglement of the 1978 World Cup with the brutal military dictatorship, and how its legacy is a lot more complex than you may think.
Her picks were : Hoop Dreams and _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas _by Hunter S. Thompson.
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