You will remember him as the handsome gaucho, long locks flowing behind him as he ran, arms outstretched, over the debris of the ticker-tape strewn across the pitch to celebrate scoring the goal that first won Argentina the World Cup.
On Thursday, amid the palatial luxury of the reception area of FIFA’s Fairmont Hotel he’s harder to make out. There is the familiar bustle of hangers-on and self-styled VVIPs.
Ossie Ardiles, England’s most famous Argentinian, is acting as go-between, relaying messages between myself and his old pal as we search for each other. And then, suddenly, out of the crowd, there he is: that same smile, the hair a little less unkempt and, though 68 rather than 24, still unmistakably the face of Argentina 1978.
Mario Kempes (pictured) took the golden boot at the 1978 World Cup after bagging six goals
‘Rob?’ Mario Kempes inquires politely. And then comes the smile, the easy familiarity and soon we are pool-side, overlooking Doha, with Ardiles on a video call issuing instructions and goading his friend.
They were team-mates together long before being World Cup winners together in 1978, the tournament which would elevate them into global celebrities.
Ardiles was playing for local club Instituto de Cordoba, in a city about 400 miles west of Buenos Aires, deep in Las Pampas, when he and Kempes, who grew up in Bell Ville, another 120 miles further west, met 50 years ago. Kempes was a callow youth of 17, Ardiles the established star of the team at 20.
Watching them interact here, Kempes in Doha, Ardiles at his Hertfordshire home, you realise some hierarchies from youth persist, no matter that one of them scored two goals in the World Cup final and won the Golden Boot with five goals.
Ardiles recalls: ‘He was a little bit of a fatty, to be honest.’ Kempes rolls his eyes, as though he’s heard this story before. ‘He wasn’t very good physically, so I was a bit surprised when he arrived. Nobody knew him. But then they put him in the team and he scored two goals in his first game…’
He may be without he flowing locks, but he’s still the face of their first World Cup triumph
Kempes, who has the advantage of being sat at the table rather than in Hertfordshire, takes over, keen to provide context.
‘Bell Ville is 200 kilometres from Cordoba and I used to travel in by bus every Tuesday and Thursday, and then on a Sunday for matches. I still had to finish my studies as I was in my final year at school.
‘I hardly knew anything about football in Cordoba, I just used to play football in my own town, I’d go to school, and I’d never really go anywhere else.
‘So when they told me that I’d have to go to Cordoba for a trial at Instituto, I’d never travelled anywhere by myself before. They were waiting there for me as I arrived, and on that very same night there was a tournament.
‘I didn’t know any of the young players there. The first thing the manager asked me was if I’d ever played centre forward and I said: ‘Yes’. And I’d never played as a centre forward ever, but that’s where they put me.’ Out of such moments, World Cup legends are made.
The two of them would play together at the 1974 World Cup, which ended badly in a 4-0 defeat against Holland — the footballing bad blood between those two nations runs deep — but by then Kempes had already moved on to Rosario Central and was soon to make a big money move to Valencia in Spain.
Then 24, he opened the scoring in the final and completed his brace in extra time
Their reunion came for a World Cup iconic and controversial in equal measure, hosted by Argentina in 1978 while still under a military dictatorship responsible for the murder of more than 15,000 ‘disappeared’ political activists. Sportswashing has a long history.
The Argentina players, a good team under mentor Cesar Menotti but far from favourites, were insulated from the horrors.
‘We went there to play football,’ says Kempes. ‘Just to play football, we had nothing to do with politics. Nothing about anything that was going on outside of the squad environment.
‘It was the military that were the problem, and it was us that were having to take the heat. But we never had any kind of contact with the military, never. After the event we learned about everything.’
But there must have been an unspoken yet immense pressure to win, not just from the fans but also the dictatorship?
The result came under immense pressure given the tense political situation in the country
‘In the Thirties, Argentina were under pressure to win the World Cup,’ says Kempes. ‘In the Seventies they almost had to win and nowadays in the 2000s they still are obliged to win. When you play football, you always have to win. Pressure exists whatever we do.
‘You’ve been following Argentina here and you can see what it’s like at this World Cup. There are more Argentinians than Qatari fans, Dutch fans or anyone else.
‘Football in Argentina is something really spectacular and so the fans give up everything they possibly can to come and support the national side. In Argentina [in 1978], this same thing happened.’
Ardiles was room-mate with that other iconic Argentinian, Ricky Villa, who would join him at Tottenham after the tournament. But it turns out they had another guest in their quarters.
As the only player arriving from abroad, Kempes came just a few weeks before the tournament started, while the rest of the squad had been in training camp together for six months.
Ossie Ardiles (right) was another of Argentina’s 1978 stars who later signed for Tottenham
‘I was in the last room, the very last, on my own!’ said Kempes. ‘Well,’ says Ardiles. ‘You were in our annexe, so you couldn’t go out without going through our room!’ Kempes is rolling his eyes again. It wasn’t the luxury of The Fairmont.
‘My bed was broken. When it got to 10.30pm there was a curtain and I was about 15 metres from the TV. They [Ossie and Ricky] would shut the curtain and chuck me out of the room and there was nothing to do in my room. These are the kind of friends I have…’
The tournament itself was a whirl, Argentina making the final with a 6-0 win over Peru, which allowed them to progress on goal difference, a game which would attract huge controversy, with reports of trade deals to facilitate the result. ‘Absolute bullsh*t,’ says Ardiles.
The final itself was against their old sparring partners Holland, the great side of the Seventies. Even if they were shorn of Johan Cruyff, most of the team had the experience of playing in the 1974 final.
There was a kerfuffle and a late start when Ardiles noticed Rene van der Kerkhof was wearing a cast on his arm. Amid protests and commotion, it was replaced with a bandage and the anthems played.
Argentina have now lot won a World Cup since Diego Maradona’s triumph in 1986
‘Singing the national anthem at home in Argentina is a special feeling,’ says Kempes. ‘But if you’re singing it with the backing of 25 million Argentinians it’s even better. In the stadium there were about 70,000 but, beyond that, everyone in the country was hanging on the result.
‘So that is a kind of a calming sensation, because if you’re feeling nervous you can belt it out more loudly and if you’re feeling pretty chilled you lower your voice. When the game gets under way, the nerves have gone.’
Kempes opened the scoring — Ardiles started the move — but Holland equalised through Dick Nanninga on 82 minutes and hit the post through Rob Rensenbrink in the 90th minute. In extra-time, Holland sat back, despite being in the ascendancy, and Kempes, with his mazy runs, took over.
It was 14 minutes into extra-time when he received a pass from Daniel Bertoni just outside the box. And in that typical Argentinian style, reminiscent of Julian Alvarez last week, he headed straight into the box, head down, pushing one challenge away and riding the next.
Lionel Messi took them to the final in 2014 but struggled to make an impact against Germany
Like Alvarez, there was some fortune involved, as Kempes’ first strike bounced off keeper Jan Jongbloed. For what must have seemed an age, the ball hung in the air spinning but then bounced kindly, so Kempes managed to squeeze it in from a tight angle despite the attentions of two Dutch defenders.
With the Dutch now throwing men forward, Kempes would set up the third goal for Bertoni with five minutes left.
‘We knew Holland could be better than us as a result of their greater experience,’ he said. ‘For the first 10 to 15 minutes we were all over the place. But as the game went on we gradually settled down and we were beginning to get on the ball a bit more.
‘The first goal came, but no-one was ever thinking that a single goal was going to settle the game.’ But what about that second goal? What about the comparisons to Alvarez’s mad dash through the Croatian defence?
‘It was very similar yes,’ smiles Kempes. ‘But how mine went in at the end had a bit more drama to it. It had all the excitement and emotion, the uncertainty of who was going to get to the ball first.
‘That was the only thing where it was different. But the important thing is that mine enabled us to end up as World Cup winners and Julian Alvarez’s goal has helped to get them into the final.’
There is one other player to discuss. Kempes was a No 10 and defers perhaps only to two others in the illustrious history of that Argentinian shirt — Diego Maradona and today’s captain, Lionel Messi.
It has been a long journey for Messi to reach this point with the national team, unloved for years in his home country where he was accused of playing with ‘pecho frio’, or a cold heart for the national team.
Kempes felt the number 10 had been ‘extremely happy’ in an Argentina shirt at this World Cup
The worry lines and tension were all too evident in those World Cups from 2006 to 2018, four separate journeys of Calvary for Messi, even when he reached the final in 2014 but was ineffective.
‘I came around to thinking; ‘Why doesn’t he leave the national team?’,’ says Kempes. ‘Because he would go on international duty and it was like it was a heavy weight for him. He was taking everything like it was something personal, that he had to win games in order to show people that he was a good player.
‘In Barcelona he was an absolute genius, but then he’d come back to Argentina and he wasn’t fulfilling expectations in the same way. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to perform, it was more that the team were giving him more duties than he should have been asked to do.
‘He had to take the penalties, drop deeper into midfield, take the corners, win the headers. He had to do everything! One player cannot do all of those things, even when it’s Messi, the best in the world.’
Leading the team to a Copa America win in Brazil last year seems to have broken the spell. ‘[The team here] has a different kind of player with a different mentality, a different character and personality too.
‘It meant Messi didn’t have all that responsibility. His responsibility now is looking forward, so he can be physically fresher and clear of thought.
The 68-year-old added that Messi was a ‘figurehead and clear leader of the national team’
‘This is what he’s showing now; he is just thinking about getting further forward and not having to look back all the time. He still carries the team on his shoulders, but right now it’s a lot lighter to bear. Right now, he’s extremely happy.
‘Watching him now — I’ve been saying this since he went to Paris Saint-Germain — it might have been a couple of backward steps for him personally, but going there has allowed him the chance to come to the World Cup in a much fresher condition.’
He also seems to relishing the leadership, a responsibility which also hung heavy in the past. When the post-match recriminations kicked off after the penalty shootout against Holland, Messi was right at the forefront.
‘Today, Messi has become that player who is the figurehead and clear leader of the national team,’ says Kempes. ‘Maybe he was like that before too, but he never showed it because he never had to show it in public.
‘But right now, he’s the captain and he has to step forward and defend his team-mates and stand up to anything he hears that he feels is wrong. What he’s been doing, to me, doesn’t appear bad at all.
‘When someone attacks or causes you offence, you have to defend yourself. How do you do that? By scoring goals and celebrating them in front of the fans but in front of the opposition team too!
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‘Messi the footballer is still intact, but we weren’t aware of this other facet of his character, and now we’re getting to know about it and it’s no bad thing! No bad thing at all because right now he is the boss.
‘The Argentinian people want Argentina to win the World Cup, people want us to win it for Leo Messi. Maradona had his time and Diego, bless him, is wherever he is right now.
‘He won it once for Argentina and the people still adore him for that. But today it’s all about Messi. And the public now have to love Messi, or rather the Argentina national team with Messi and all his other team-mates.’
One thing remains, however. One crucial detail, which Ardiles points out. ‘If you lose the final, you are forgotten.’
Kempes concurs. ‘Yes, you are forgotten. For me, the runner-up doesn’t exist. Because if you play in a final and don’t win it, it’s like: You played in the final? How did you get on? “I lost.” That’s almost like you don’t exist.’