London, July 08: Marcelo Bielsa will go down in history as just one of the coaching casualties in Argentina's troubled quest to recover World Cup glory after Diego Maradona left them in the lurch in 1994. Maradona captained Argentina to their second World Cup win in 1986, a second successive final in 1990 and a promising start to the 1994 tournament in the United States -- before he was kicked out for doping.

Bielsa had the chance to revive the glory days in Japan last month with one of the country's most talented squads, only to produce Argentina's worst world cup result in 40 years.

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The Argentine Football Association (AFA) has virtually ruled out offering Bielsa, whose contract expired on the day of the World Cup final in Yokohama on June 30, another chance to get it right.

But they have yet to announce who will take over as coach. ''Honestly, I don't have in mind the name of the successor,'' AFA president Julio Grondona said last week.

The AFA's technical director Jose Pekerman is favourite to step into the job with former Boca juniors coach Carlos Bianchi also given a good chance.

Argentina were eliminated in the first round of the 2002 finals after picking up four points from a 1-0 win over Nigeria, a 1-0 loss to England and a 1-1 draw with Sweden.

In the 1962 tournament in Chile, the last time they fared so badly, they began with a 1-0 win over Bulgaria, then lost 3-1 to England and ended with a 0-0 draw against Hungary. This time Bielsa had good players, attacking tactics and a brilliant record in the qualifiers. But when it came to the crunch he did not have the answers.

''Argentina paid for the fact of not having been through difficulties in the last two years, like France,'' former Brazilian international junior said.

''Sadly when Marcelo Bielsa got (to Japan) problems appeared and he didn't have the capacity to solve them. Nor were the players able to solve them.''

In 1994, under coach Alfio Basile, Maradona led Argentina to victories over Greece and Nigeria in their first two matches but then failed a doping test and was kicked out of the tournament. Argentina lost their final group match to Bulgaria and went out to Romania in the second round.

Four years ago, with Daniel Passarella in charge, a young argentine side reached the quarter-finals before being eliminated by the Netherlands.
Bureau Report