Dunga and Maradona Fired, But Different Futures Await

But within a month of the eliminations of Argentina and Brazil at the World Cup in South Africa, the removal of Diego Maradona and Carlos Dunga from their national teams was unusually abrupt.

In Dunga's case, the Brazilian soccer federation had to move quickly to fire him before he quit. His brand of functional soccer failed, and his successor, Mano Menezes, immediately chose new talent for an exhibition game against the United States at the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 10.

Menezes said he was starting with good intentions to restore "the beautiful game," as Brazil's traditional flowing, rhythmic style of play is known. His focus is 2014, when Brazil hosts the World Cup, but if he lasts that long, it will surprise many in his country.

And Maradona? Who is ever surprised by anything he does or is done to him? For four matches at the World Cup, his Argentina team was the most compelling show in sight. Others dulled; Argentina thrilled. It attacked as if there were no defense, but in Argentina's fifth game, the apparent became obvious. Germany routed Argentina, 4-0, and Maradona's body language turned from joy to despair.

The bearded and suited Maradona, however, returned to a hero's welcome in Buenos Aires. He had gone down playing the only way he knew and arguably the only way his unbalanced team could play.

What Maradona gave the team was an irrepressible spirit. What he lacked -- and his players lacked -- was the knowledge of how to stop a superior team from laying bare Argentina's clueless defending.

Four victories and a thrashing seemed, initially, to go down rather well in Buenos Aires. The president of the Argentine Football Association, Julio Grondona, apparently told Maradona in the locker room after the Germany match that he was pleased with him. The A.F.A. then announced it was offering Maradona a four-year run to the next World Cup.

This week, its executive committee voted unanimously to rescind that offer. Maradona broadcast that Grondona had lied to him, that the national team director Carlos Bilardo had betrayed him and that Argentina's national association had conspired to get rid of him.

"Treason is everywhere," Maradona said to reporters from a prepared script. He said he was called to take control of the team 21 months earlier, when it was split by internal problems.

"They asked me to put out the fire, and we did it," he said. "I have given everything.