Jorge Sampaoli was never going to slip into his new job quietly.
It had been an open secret for months that the new Argentina manager was set to leave Sevilla, who he joined only last summer, to take up the position he had long aspired to. The departure from Spanish club has hardly been peaceful.
Sevilla felt let down by his eagerness to take his next opportunity.
Sampaoli’s first game in charge of an Argentina plagued with self-doubts will be witnessed by close to 100,000 spectators.
A friendly it may be, but low-key it is not, the vast Melbourne Cricket Ground expected to be full for Argentina versus Brazil on Friday, one of the game’s most ferocious rivalries transported to a novel Australian setting.
The presence of Lionel Messi helped shift tickets, and there will be a special curiosity to see how the Sampaoli system suits the Argentine captain. Every Argentina manager faces that, and is judged on it.
Sampaoli is the eighth different man in the 12 years that Messi has been an international to deal with the sometimes suffocating question of whether Messi can influence his national team with the consistent brilliance he applies to his club, Barcelona, and, if not, why not?
“Our desire is that the best player in the world is happy with us,” Sampaoli said on his first day as successor to the Edgardo Bauza, who has now moved on to take over as the UAE manager.
“We need to make sure he is surrounded by like-minded players.”
First up, Sampaoli will hope his own energy and positive outlook can clear some of the residual gloom several stars who are like-minded right now in as far as they have all suffered setbacks at the tail of their club seasons.
Messi, whose Barcelona finished off the top of the Primera Liga for the first time in three years, will likely form a forward line against Brazil with Paulo Dybala and Gonzalo Higuain, both fresh from Saturday’s Uefa Champions League final, where they were part of the Juventus who lost 4-1 to Real Madrid.
Angel di Maria, meanwhile, comes off a season in which his Paris Saint-Germain performed below expectations, second in a French league they are used to dominating.
None of which is as grave as the position Argentina, twice World Cup winners, find themselves in qualifying for Russia 2018.
They are fifth in the 10-team South American group after 14 of the 18 matches, fully 11 points behind leaders Brazil, who have already secured their passage.
Slip farther back, and they will not participating in the finals at all.
Stay fifth, and they face a two-legged play-off in November against the best team from Oceania.
Being in Australasia this week may turn out useful acclimatisation.
The poor recent run – Argentina have lost three of their last five qualifiers and will resume the campaign with a tough trip to Uruguay in August – led to the departure of Bauza, who took over in the weeks after Messi, downbeat after losing the final of the 2016 Copa America on penalties to Chile, had announced his “retirement” from international football.
Messi later was persuaded to go back on.
In March, Messi was suspended for four international games after insulting an assistant referee in the qualifier against Chile.
Argentina again held its breath, relieved when the ban was lifted on appeal.
Sampaoli, who has enjoyed some of his greatest success as a manager outside his native Argentina, notably with the Chile national team and in guiding Sevilla to fourth in the Primera Liga, is sensitive to the pressures on his star player, and knows that Messi, who turns 30 this month, has limited opportunities left to win a World Cup.
It is the conspicuous missing item on his garlanded resume, an absence that keeps cropping up in debates around whether or not he should be considered the greatest footballer the game has known.
Messi has plenty of silver medals with Argentina, from the last World Cup and the last two Copa Americas.
Second place, however, as managers Alex Sabella and Tata Martino, the other two men to have occupied Sampaoli’s position in the past three years, have learnt, is too little.
And, as Sampaoli knows, being second to Brazil – even in a friendly – would leave Argentina feeling brittle once again.
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