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Cesar Luis Menotti- a tribute

joe morris

Monday, May 6th, 2024

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Cesar Luis Menotti
Face like a tombstone
With inscriptions of
Pain, hurt, almost
Rejection
Carved with the first
Bold letterings of despair
Never really understood
Today we mourn his death
A man eaten up
By football’s eternal
Anxieties
Those curling tendrils
Of cigarette smoke
Swirling around him
Like a wintry fog
Melancholy Menotti
Trapped in a world
Of loneliness
And contemplation
Defined in 1978
By that sullen
Sulking snarl
But why
Since 1978
Was his year
Relishable,
Sweet as a
Chocolate eclair
Oozing with cream
Or the typical
Black Forest gateau
Of that time
Menotti, sunken cheeks
Swallowed up by the
Private tortures
Argentina
His Argentina
Did what Buenos Aires
And the sweeping pampas
Demanded of him
Hailed as Cesar
By an adoring Cordoba
And Rosario
Argentina amidst
A blizzard of confetti
And ticker tape of sheer
Elation that wrapped itself
Comfortingly around Menotti
Who rose above the wars
Militia and military
Around him
Held aloft the World Cup
Of 1978
Menotti beside himself
With a repressed joy
At first
But then persuaded
That chain smoking
Would benefit nobody
When Ossie and Ricky
Conjured images of
The Bossa Nova movements
Tantalising Tango
Stylistically perfect
And yet Cesar
Simply sat there
Vanishing in the
Nicotine Nirvana
Menotti misery guts
Nobody would ever
Know why that
Had to be the case
Smoke to his hearts content
Huge grey curtains
Never really revealing
His inner frustrations
As the World Cup of 1978
Unfolded
White fingers of smoke
Gripping Menotti, hiding
Itself in the corners
Of his mind
Fear not Cesar
Your day of World Cup
Victory, congratulations
To that Latin temperament
Which would be his fate
Oh doomed Netherlands
Would be overwhelmed
In World Cup Final
Tragedy of two successive
Defeats during the 1970s
A pity and somehow unfair
Cesar Luis Menotti
For he it was who
Waved the baton
In the dark depths
Of his deeply thoughtful
Dug out
Tormented with guilt
None knew why
Troubled with
With mysterious
Misgivings
He would never tell
Us why
But then Menotti
May well have kicked
The Benson and Hedges
Addiction into the
Long grass
Or maybe not
When his captain
Daniel Passarella
Appointed Argentina
World Champions
For 1978 read the present day
Still owners of
The Jules Rimet Cup

Notes

Here’s my tribute to the late Cesar Luis Menotti, the manager who guided Argentina to World Cup victory in 1978.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/cesar-luis-menotti-a-tribute/