Masters of Reinvention

— LatinContent/Getty Images

Javier Aguirre – The Wrath of Mexico

But if Del Bosque is happy avoiding the press spotlight, the same cannot be said of his Mexican counterpart Javier Aguirre, "the Basque," as they call him because of his immigrant parents’ national origin. Aguirre, despite losing his post after the elimination of Mexico by Argentina, also experienced the pleasure of well-deserved vindication after qualifying Mexico for the championship in South Africa.
 
"I'm Javier Aguirre and I love Mexico. I don't know if I always understand it, but I know I always love it." With these words, the coach introduces himself on a video currently circulating on the Internet as part of the "Mexico Initiative," a communications effort designed to hearten his dispirited countrymen, battered by drug violence and political tension. The video is a good portrait of Aguirre: a man who seeks to motivate his peers, who speaks plainly and directly, looking to address issues beyond the realm of soccer and willing to generate controversy if necessary.
 
"Javier Aguirre is a serious, forthright hard worker who accepts responsibility for his mistakes in a country that excuses its own errors," says writer and columnist Juan Villoro in a phone conversation from Mexico City. "He managed to qualify Mexico in second place, behind the United States, and that raised excessively high hopes,¨ Villoro adds. Instead of leveling expectations, Aguirre made statements in Spain indicating that Mexico had become a disaster. ¨He was referring to crime, the economic crisis, and soccer. He received a barrage of criticism and had to apologize," says Villoro.
 
Aguirre did not seem intimidated by the wrath of Mexico. For him, it was about shaking Mexico and Mexican soccer out of the stupor of resignation and fatalism.
 
Accustomed to meeting the fight head-on since his days as striker, a trait that cost him a fractured rib and fibula while playing for Osasuna in Spain, Aguirre played in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and began his coaching career 10 years later, although almost immediately he traveled to Europe to complete his studies. Since then, his career has followed the same intermittent pattern, with a few seasons coaching Mexico and then a few seasons in Spain. In 2009 Atlético Madrid sacked him despite the team's good performance. Hurt and jobless, Aguirre didn't think twice when the Mexican Federation again offered him the head coaching position, a post he had previously held during the FIFA World Cup Japan/Korea 2002.

"I sensed a general discouragement in the air, in everything," he would later tell the Spanish daily El País, recalling his first days leading the Mexican team. "The atmosphere was tense. I asked for a six-month truce for all of us to understand that we Mexicans weren't the enemy, but rather that it was external."

Words to live by from a man used to picking himself up and reinventing himself, on and off the soccer field.