In a column written for The Coaches’ Voice, Pablo Aimar revealed who his real-life superhero was as he grew up in Argentina. Can you guess who?
Pablo Aimar has a real-life superhero as most children in Argentina did between the ‘80s and ‘90s decade. Much like kids have Lionel Messi as their hero on that country today, Diego Maradona was the same during his prime. Pablo Aimar has a unique story in football as one of Maradona’s favorite young players and Messi’s idol growing up. Today, he works inside the Argentina National Team’s technical staff alongside Lionel Scaloni. Unsurprisingly, Aimar revealed Diego’s massive influence in his life and his career.
“He was the biggest influence for those of us who were born in the 1970s and 80s,” Aimar wrote in an article published in The Coaches’ Voice. “By then the superheroes were already around: you had Spiderman, Batman and others, but we all wanted to be Maradona instead of those other superheroes.
“We pretended we were Maradona and we aspired to be the guy who was there in the Mexico World Cup in 1986, singing the national anthem and then in the Italy 1990 World Cup, insulting those who jeered our anthem. That was Maradona to us. There will always be someone who didn’t care about him, but for a lot of us he was what we wanted to be. Our families bought his boots and his shirt for us, not the Spiderman suit.”
Aimar’s take on Messi and Maradona comparisons.
If you ask Messi himself, he will tell you that Diego Maradona is the best player in football history. However, Aimar has a clear idea about Leo’s level: “Football accepts all opinions, that is what makes it so popular. That, and because it has so much to do with random chance. So, when a guy comes along who breaks down all the randomness, that is what happened with Lionel Messi, when he plays we all think Barcelona will win.
“He has exhausted every possible superlative; for the last 15 years he has done exactly what he had to do. Nobody wonders or considers that every year he plays between 60 and 70 games. He knows he will play them and he is the best 99 percent of the time. So there is nothing more to analyze. All of us who have played to a certain level keep out of the discussion of how many meters per game he covers.”
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