by Dan Rosenheck

BUENOS AIRES — “Soccer has a god. That god is Argentine, and his name is Diego Armando Maradona,” proclaims the Web site of the Church of Maradona, an online fan club of Argentina’s unrivaled athletic icon that claims some 20,000 members.

But this month, Diego Maradona, the country’s 48-year-old sporting titan, will try his hand at an all-too-earthly task: coaching Argentina’s men’s national soccer team, which has failed to reach the semifinals of the World Cup since “El Diego” himself starred for it in 1986 and 1990.

After retiring 11 years ago, Maradona has remained in the spotlight primarily as the country’s leading real-life soap opera star, waging a series of well-publicized battles with drugs, obesity, the news media and past lovers. Now, the hopes and dreams of 40 million soccer-mad Argentines will rest on the shoulders — much-slimmed after a stomach-stapling operation in 2005 — of a man who, in the words of the local newspaper columnist Horacio Pagani, will be “the least prepared manager in the history of international soccer.”

Given Argentina’s string of disappointing World Cup performances, the country certainly seems as if it could use a supernatural savior. The team was sent home by Romania in the round of 16 in 1994, by the Netherlands in the quarterfinals in 1998, and by Germany in the quarterfinals in 2006. In 2002, Argentina failed to qualify for the knockout stage.

But handing Maradona the reins represents a profound, if not reckless, leap of faith. His managing résumé is thin and checkered. In 1994 and 1995, he piloted two Argentine club teams to just three wins in 23 games, and he was once forced to call the shots from the stands because a suspension for ephedrine use prevented him from sitting on the bench. Moreover, his personal track record hardly suggests he is fit to keep a 23-man team playing in lockstep. As recently as March 2007, rumors of his death circulated wildly while he was hospitalized for alcohol-related hepatitis.

The controversial selection became official Tuesday, when the executive committee of Argentina’s national soccer federation met. But that group serves as little more than a rubber stamp for the decisions of the organization’s president, Julio Grondona, and his pick of Maradona is considered a fait accompli.

Grondona, who also serves as a vice president of FIFA, the game’s international governing body, is widely thought to run the national sport as a personal fief. During his 29 years in office, he has been accused of using his influence over referees, the news media, and the distribution of revenues to guarantee obedience from the club presidents who elect him — and to advance his business interests. The courts have ordered some 50 searches of his offices during his presidency, but few formal proceedings have ever been filed against him, and he has never been found guilty of a crime.

The leading candidate for the coaching job, which became available after Alfio Basile resigned in October, was Carlos Bianchi. As the manager of Boca Juniors — Argentina’s most popular club, for whom Maradona played from 1981 to 1982 and from 1995 to 1997 — Bianchi won four domestic titles, three continental titles and two intercontinental titles. But his poor relationship with Grondona appears to have disqualified him for the post.

Sergio Batista, who coached Argentina’s under-23 team to the Olympic gold medal in Beijing, was also passed over.

Maradona has, predictably, brushed off concerns about his readiness, noting that he spent two decades on the national team.

“Soccer hasn’t changed,” he told reporters in Argentina. “I don’t think anything will surprise me.”

The choice of Maradona is sure to increase the international profile of the Argentine team, which will probably increase its revenues. Tickets for his first match in charge, on Nov. 19 against Scotland in Glasgow, have sold briskly.

Public opinion, while divided, seems to lean against the choice: an Internet poll conducted by Clarín, Argentina’s largest newspaper, found that 74 percent of nearly 50,000 voters were opposed. Purists were particularly appalled, arguing that Maradona’s indubitable star power was no substitute for the years on the bench accumulated by other candidates, and that his postretirement antics put the country’s image at risk.

“He was a great player, but nothing more,” said Oscar Pereira, a union employee in the stands at a local league game on Friday night.

“We need someone more serious. You see him running around with Hugo Chávez talking about Che Guevara.”

Moreover, accusations of cronyism against Grondona are flying more freely than ever. “Whatever money they make off Maradona, Grondona and his friends will keep it for themselves,” said Raúl Gámez, a former president of the club Vélez Sársfield and one of Grondona’s most outspoken critics.

But Maradona’s stature among Argentines still leaves many believing he deserves a shot — or at the very least, that his all-too-public campaign for the position forced Grondona’s hand.

“We’ve had a lot of experienced managers, and they haven’t always done well,” said Alejandro Fabbri, a broadcaster for the TyC Sports network. “If Maradona wanted the job, he should get it.

“He’s the greatest Argentine player ever. At least they won’t be able to say he never got the chance.”

To compensate for Maradona’s lack of training, Grondona has also appointed a team of veteran tacticians to support Maradona, led by Carlos Bilardo, who managed Maradona on Argentina’s 1986 World Cup championship team. With capable assistants, Maradona’s devotees say, he will be able to focus on providing the players with his special brand of leadership and inspiration.

“He’s the biggest name there is,” said Pereira’s son, Nahuel, who accompanied him to the game. “He’ll pass on some of his magic to them.”

While Argentines disagree over the merits of the decision, they share a concern for Maradona’s well-being in his new role — perhaps a concern greater than their worries about the direction of the team as a whole. Will Maradona the deity survive Maradona the manager?

“I told him he was too big for this job,” Pagani said. “Right now, everyone loves him. Once he starts making decisions for the team, he’ll be held to account. He’s risking his legend. But he said that he wanted to do it.”

Thanks Ryan

From a series of animations Philip Glass made for Sesame Street in 1978.

Los Angeles Plays Itself, 2003. The film is Thom Andersen’s 2-hour, 49-minute “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” a cinematic essay/meditation and labor of love on how this city has been depicted on the screen. Smart, insightful, unapologetically idiosyncratic and bristling with provocative ideas, it’s as sprawling and multi-faceted, fascinating and frustrating as L.A. (an abbreviation Andersen despises) itself.

It took Andersen, who teaches at Cal Arts, four years to put “Los Angeles Plays Itself” together. As with his too-little-seen last film, a keen examination of the output of blacklisted screenwriters called “Red Hollywood,” the new work reveals Andersen to be a director with a constitutional aversion to conventional thinking.

As with “Red Hollywood,” the heart of “Los Angeles Plays Itself” (and the reason why a commercial release is problematic) is brilliant and extensive use of clips from a hoard of feature films.

Starting with a startling opening shot of distraught stripper Sugar Torch running on a downtown street, from Sam Fuller’s “Crimson Kimono,” through a closing segment on the black independent films “Bush Mama,” “Killer of Sheep” and “Bless Their Little Hearts,” Andersen serves up segments of more than 200 films, from 1913’s “A Muddy Romance” through 2001’s “Hanging Up.” Truly, as the voice-over read by fellow independent filmmaker Encke King suggests, this has to be the most photographed city in the world.

These are not just any clips from any films. Andersen seems to have seen all movies made with a local connection. He’s familiar with everything from Laurel and Hardy’s 1932 classic “The Music Box” and the 1972 gay porn film “L.A. Plays Itself,” which gives Andersen’s work its name, to “Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf” and “Death Wish 4: The Crackdown.” Working closely with editor Yoo Seung-Hyun, he also has impeccable taste in what to select.

With its tart, acerbic tone and politically progressive stance, “Los Angeles Plays Itself” was clearly made by a sophisticated insider, someone who loves the city, is capable of comparing “Dragnet” to the work of Bresson and Ozu, and has no tolerance for the reason its name got shortened in popular usage (”Only a city with an inferiority complex would allow it”).

The bulk of “Los Angeles Plays Itself” is divided into three sections that detail the different uses the city has been put to on-screen, sections that try to answer the question: Have movies ever depicted Los Angeles accurately?

The first of these, “The City as Background,” recounts how Los Angeles has been considered so visually malleable that it could play as anywhere. Though the James Cagney-starring “Public Enemy” takes place in Chicago, there’s a scene in it in front of Bullock’s Wilshire. And downtown’s Bradbury Building has been used as sites including a Mandalay hotel, in what was then Burma (”China Girl”), and a European military hospital (”White Cliffs of Dover”).

Because Andersen is architecturally sophisticated, familiar with the critical works of Esther McCoy, and David Gebhard and Robert Winter’s indispensable book “An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles,” he shrewdly points out the many ways that modernist architecture, especially the work of John Lautner, has been denigrated by Hollywood by being repeatedly used as the major villain’s home of choice.

The next section, “The City as Character,” deals with films that gave Los Angeles a personality. Here Andersen, among many other things, tracks down the house that was Barbara Stanwyck’s residence in “Double Indemnity,” a film he says convinced everyone that Los Angeles is the world capital of murder and adultery. He also has some kind words for the late, lamented neighborhood of Bunker Hill, urban renewed out of existence but living still in “The Glenn Miller Story,” “Criss Cross” and “Kiss Me Deadly.” He also admires “The Exiles,” Kent MacKenzie’s landmark 1961 independent film about Native Americans who lived up on the hill.

The final section, “The City as Subject,” shows what happened when Los Angeles became conscious of itself as a place a film could be about. Some of his most provocative comments come in relation to “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential,” films he says jointly promote the notion there is a secret history of the city that it is futile for ordinary citizens to even attempt to know.

As the director says in the press notes, films like this can serve “to dissuade naive viewers from political engagement by telling them that they are condemned to ignorance and powerlessness no matter what they do.” This politicized point of view gets more intense when “Los Angeles Plays Itself” closes with an examination of the work of black directors Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima and Billy Woodberry.

Brilliantly discursive, filled with intriguing detours that follow connections only the director’s mind could make, “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” will please natives of this city more than any other. Finally, the film agrees with the narrator in Jacque Demy’s “Model Shop,” who says, “It’s a fabulous city. To think some people claim it’s an ugly city when it’s really pure poetry, it just kills me.”

My old friend Steven from the RF days, photographer and assistant to Terry Richardson, has just launched his own website which features some of his editorial work and a blog.

Other Galaxies: Amateur Football in Los Angeles

When: Monday, 9 June 2008 at 6:00pm
Where: Queen Mary College, Room RR2 (First Floor, Arts Building)
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Free and open to the public

Jennifer Doyle will read from Municipal de Fútbol, a collaborative art project about amateur soccer in Los Angeles (Edited by Jonathan Maghen of Parkside Fútbol Club). This writing explores the everyday experience of playing soccer in Los Angeles — pick-up games and weekend park leagues, the game as it is played far below the radar of media hype. Municipal de Fútbol will be available in June 2008 as a boxed edition that includes two books, nine artist prints, two posters and a football jersey. Published by Christoph Keller Editions and Textfield, distributed by D.A.P. (www.dapinc.com).

All are welcome: This is not an “academic” talk — it’s a love letter to Fútbol Angelino. Jennifer Doyle will happily field questions about art about football, about the L.A. soccer ’scene’, and about the origin of this project.

Note: Jennifer Doyle’s article on “art about football” will be published in the next issue of Frieze

Read all about it on RollingStone.com

It just doesn’t get any creepier.