Is Banega Ready?

By: Cesar | January 7th, 2008

This, an article in today’s BBC by South American journalist Tim Vickery about South American football prodigies making their way to Europe. In particular, he’s talking about our newest signing, ‘adult film star’ Ever Banega. Is he ready? Is Valencia the right club? Should Boca Juniors have waited a little before selling him to us?

By the way, he doesn’t look all that happy in the photo to the left, does he? This is his arrival at the Valencian airport a few days ago. Someone decided to drape oranges over his neck. Nice touch … and what’s that? A Boca Juniors wrist band? Aww, cute …

Have a read here or click above. It’s a very interesting article.

South American clubs should think in terms of keeping their top young players for three years – one to adapt to senior football, and the other two to show their stuff and help win some trophies before the inevitable move to Europe.

This was the thinking of Mauricio Macri, who recently came to the end of a highly successful spell as president of Argentine giants Boca Juniors.

But Macri’s formula has not been applied to the career of Ever Banega, the teenage midfielder Boca have just sold to Valencia in Spain.

Banega is crossing the Atlantic just 11 months after making his first-team debut. In his case, though, that first year of adaptation hardly seemed necessary.

He came to prominence in January during the South American Under-20 Championships.

Within the first two minutes of Argentina’s opening game I had already made an annotation in my notebook – “passing of Banega”. He organised the play with remarkable maturity and outstanding technical ability.

Miguel Angel Russo, then in charge of Boca, was watching closely. And when the Argentine championship kicked off in February Banega was straight into the first team, and looked instantly at home.

So accomplished was he that he could even shine out of position. Juan Roman Riquelme came back on loan to take over playmaking duties, and Banega found himself in the holding role.

It is not his natural function, but he did it so well that he was keeping Boca legend Sebastian Battaglia on the bench, and if the defensive side of his game was not perfect, at least he was ensuring that the ball was played forward with quality.

Boca won the Copa Libertadores, South America’s Champions League equivalent. Argentina won the World Youth Cup. Banega could be forgiven for thinking that this game of football was very easy.

Now it becomes much more difficult. Boca have a new president, Pedro Pompilio, who is keen to step out of Macri’s shadow. He arranges to bring back Riquelme on a permanent basis.

It leaves the club financially stretched, so when Valencia bid a reported £13m for Banega, Boca were anxious to accept.

The player had seemed willing to stay a while longer, and described his last day at Boca as the saddest of his life. But the economic pressures had proved impossible to resist.

So Boca are happy. But from Banega’s point of view, the problem with accepting the first big-money bid is that it might not be the right time, or the right club.

It is not always easy for South American midfielders to adapt to the European game. The football is more frenetic, faster in the zone of transition, and hitting cross field passes to change the angle of attack can be a risky business.

Even Javier Mascherano, a player with sound distribution and the experience of a World Cup behind him, suffered some early mishaps in this area in English football.

The move to Europe would present new problems and challenges whichever club Banega joined. And Valencia are in the middle of a troubled campaign.

This is clearly not some smooth running machine which the youngster will be able to slot seamlessly into.

Even so, press and public will put him under pressure to justify the transfer fee – a heavy burden for a 19-year-old with a year’s senior experience to carry.

A year ago, when I picked him out in World Soccer magazine as one of the stars of the Under-20 Championships, I wrote that Banega was “just the type of player who should be allowed to develop in South American football”.

Against the forces of the global economy it was clearly a vain hope.

Now the best we can expect is that talent wins through, and that Banega has no reason to regret skipping that extra year in South America that could have left him better equipped to deal with his European adventure.