Qatar 2022 will be the first World Cup without Diego Maradona after his death and the fifth for Lionel Messi, the two players who turned Argentina’s number 10 shirt into football’s cultural heritage. The beginning of that symbol of the World Cups -which Messi will continue again this Tuesday against Saudi Arabia in Argentina’s debut in Qatar and which also had other iconic representatives, such as Mario Kempes, Ariel Ortega and Juan Román Riquelme- is, however, a hole in time.
“I was the first 10 for Argentina in the World Cups and they had never asked me,” Alfredo Rojas, the Tank, at his lucid 85 years, participant in two Cups, those of Sweden 1958 and England 1966, but more recognized in his country by his nickname -the Tank- and his past in Boca -from 1964 to 1968- and River -1961-. Rojas lifts the veil of Argentina’s first 10 in the World Cups with two surprising facts: it was not blue and white but yellow -the color of its historic rival, Brazil- and the number on the number was affixed by the player himself, minutes before the game , with white adhesive tape. “We did it more or less and the zero was like a letter D. I played 1D more than 10″, he laughs at his house in Buenos Aires.
Those were times when Argentina and the World Cups treated each other like a loveless couple. After being runner-up in neighboring Montevideo in the first edition, Uruguay 1930, Argentina attended Italy 1934 with an amateur team that was eliminated on debut. After not having appeared in France 1938, Brazil 1950 and Switzerland 1954, plus the interruption due to the Second World War in between, the albiceleste’s return to the World Cups was almost a quarter of a century later, in Sweden 1958. The numbers on the backs of the World Cup jerseys, which were not yet so symbolic -at least the 10, later reserved for the most talented-, had begun to be used in Brazil in 1950. Argentina, then, used them for the first time in Sweden in 1958 The grace fell on Rojas.
“It took us about 20 hours to get to Sweden,” says the Tank about that World Cup, played two years before the birth of Maradona, during a hot afternoon in November 2022, already two years after the death of the idol. “We traveled in a Super Constellation, which had a propeller, but the most modern at the time. Now the planes fly at 10,000 meters above sea level but then they went to 4,500 and got into all the storms. If there was a storm at 3,000 meters, we would go over it. If they were a little higher, we passed them below. The players looked at those things. In the north of Brazil you always ate a strong storm. After the World Cup I played in Spain and you stopped everywhere, you had a thousand stopovers: Montevideo, Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife, there you crossed the Atlantic in nine and a half hours to Dakar, and then to Seville and Madrid”.
Ask: What did you know about Sweden and its rivals in the 1958 World Cup?
Response: I was 21 years old. There wasn’t much information at that time. I knew Sweden was there because I looked at it on the map. But he didn’t even know the color of the shirt they were wearing about the rivals. I found out that Germany was playing in white before the debut. I looked at the German flag (yellow, red and black) and was surprised that the shirt was white and the pants were black. The problem was that we only had the usual blue and white. There was no blue, the alternative now. The referee wanted a team to change shirts and we had to go to a draw before the game, in the changing room area. We lost it. And we had to rush to find a new shirt.
Q. Is that why Argentina debuted in yellow, in that World Cup, against Federal Germany?
R. We asked the club that played at the Malmö stadium if they had jerseys and the guys showed up with a yellow one (from IFK Malmö, a team then playing in the Swedish First Division and currently roaming the third, far from its nearest neighbor). known, the Malmö FF). But they didn’t have a number 10 shirt and they gave me one with the 11 on it. We had to fix it with adhesive tape, in a hurry, using our finger to measure the missing zero. with the black [José] Ramos Delgado [ defensor, luego figura de River y del Santos de Pelé], who was my partner in Lanús at the time, we used the leg of the second one, but we did it more or less and the zero was like a letter D. I played 1D more than 10″. And we also use that duct tape for the booties.
Q. For the boots of the first game?
R. El Negro Ramos Delgado encouraged me: “Alfredo, they give us a few pesos if we play with Adidas.” While there, we found out that Adidas gave us $50 to wear their shoes. Adidas and Puma were two brothers who had separated and those from Adidas arrived at the concentration of Argentina. For us, $50 was a fortune. Many of us accepted, but the size they gave me did not fit me, the boots [de Adidas] Boys were going for me, so I had to play with mine, the ones I had brought from Argentina, Realco brand shoes, very good, from a Constitución company [al sur de Buenos Aires]. But El Negro told me: “Alfredito, put them on anyway, that’s how we earn the 50 dollars’” We were both from Lanús, imagine. So I played with the Realco but disguised as Adidas: we asked a girl from Sweden who had white nail polish to lend us some and with that we painted the three Adidas stripes on the boots. We also used the masking tape -which they had used to shape the 10- to confirm the three lines. El Negro was a backup and we only got paid by the starters, so I gave him half: we earned $25 each.
Q. What did you do with that yellow jersey from your debut? Did you save it? It is curious but, the 10 most famous Argentina in the World Cups, that of Maradona against England in 1986, was also made in a hurry.
R. No, what am I going to keep, if we had to return it to the Malmö club after the game [Argentina perdió 3-1 contra Alemania Federal]. Later, against Northern Ireland and Czechoslovakia, we played with the light blue and white. But look, I was the first 10 for Argentina in the World Cups and no one knows, they had never asked me. The only bad one was me. Then came Maradona and Messi, but I was the first.
Q. Why do you say it was bad? What was he like as a player?
R. I was more of a scorer. I was a log but I played in River and in Boca, and I was in two World Cups, and I was the goalscorer in the Nations Cup, and I scored against England at the Maracana [se refiere a un cuadrangular internacional que Argentina ganó en Brasil en 1964]. But no, ‘the Tank was bad’ [lo dice con ironía]. I was left handed. Do you know any bad lefty? I was the opposite of what people think. He was a good header and used power to face his opponent. Yes I perfume [Roberto, emblemático defensor argentino de los sesenta y setenta] He weighed 70 kilos, and I 82, I couldn’t go dribbling him, I was going to crash him. But people said ‘the clumsiness of the Tank’. My intelligence was going to crash.
Q. Why did Argentina do badly in that 1958 World Cup and Brazil, which lifted its first Cup, did very well?
R. We lost 6-1 to Czechoslovakia and they called us ‘the disaster of Sweden’. Our team was very good, and in 1964 we won the Nations Cup in Brazil, but the tactics were different from those of Sweden. In 1958 we played 2-3-5, with five leading forwards, and every time we were attacked, there were four rival forwards left against two of our defenders. That is why Amadeo Carrizo, the best goalkeeper in Argentine history, had a bad time. It was another time, too, another mentality. I did not know Plaza Once [un barrio céntrico de Buenos Aires] and I already knew Sweden.
Q. But things went well for you: you continued your career in Spain.
R. Atlético de Madrid bought me, so it wasn’t that bad for me. But Atlético bought me in the first part of the World Cup and then, in the second, they also bought Vavá, the Brazilian who came out champion and scored many goals. And since only two foreigners could play, he gave me a loan first to Celta and then to Betis.
Q. He was also called up to the 1966 World Cup in England, but there the 10th was Antonio Rattín, Boca’s central midfielder.
R. If he Rat it was the five of Boca. But the numbers were just beginning, and before they caught anyone. It was different.
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