The Right Foot of God

Before Maradona, Argentina worshipped Omar Corbatta, a genius on the pitch and a disaster off it.

- Jonathan Wilson

It Was Brilliant, it was scored by Argentina’s best player, and perhaps most important, it fit the self-image of argentine football, resulting from the sort of slalom dribble that Argentines refer to as a “gambeta.”

The goal it supplanted also stemmed from audacious individual skill, but it suffers from having been scored in a World cup qualifier in 1957, when nobody filmed the game. our idea of what it may have looked like stems from still photos and from descriptions by those who were there. It was scored by one of the saddest figures of argentine football, a man of enormous talent but no aptitude for living in the world, an alcoholic and a genius: Omar Oreste Corbatta.

After the 1934 World cup, Argentina opted out of every tournament until 1958, largely as a result of Peronist isolationism, although the inefficiencies of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) didn’t help. they won the 1957 campeonato sudamericano with a team that became known as las Carasucias—the dirty faces. the forward line of Corbatta, Humberto Maschio, Antonio Angelillo, Omar Sivori, and Osvaldo Cruz became fabled. they were the best Argentina had to offer, and they were the best at representing the picture argentine football had of itself. In time the Carasucias came to stand for the great lost past of the argentine game, a golden age in which skill and cheek and fun held sway, before the age of responsibility and negativity.