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Whoever said "better lucky than talented" understood the essence of life. People are afraid to admit that much of life depends on luck — it's frightening to think how many things lie beyond our control. In a football match there are moments when the ball clips the side of the net, and for a fraction of a second it might go in or it might not. With a bit of luck it goes in and you win; otherwise, it doesn't and you lose." That's how the famous Woody Allen film Match Point begins. And it applies to every aspect of life. It genuinely unsettles you to think how much escapes our control. We fear being unable to manage things that don't depend on us. That's where chance comes in — tangled up with that other element: superstition.
It was the 1980s, and Bilardo was managing Estudiantes de La Plata. In a world where Bilardo and winning combine, any crack or crevice is justifiable in order to celebrate a personality who was always different from everyone else. But the story told here would be inexplicable were it not real — and above all, were it not still alive in football's collective memory today. You can still hear voices from that era talking about the legend of Kiricocho on the streets of Buenos Aires. Everyone knows him. Everyone talks about him. He's more famous than Pelé and Maradona, and more international than Roberto Carlos. His name is heard in stadiums around the world. Strikers hate him; goalkeepers call on him at the crucial moment. The most beautiful part of all is that Kiricocho is not a footballer, and certainly not a manager. He doesn't appear in any club's records and has never played a single professional minute. And yet, despite all that, he delivered Estudiantes the Torneo Metropolitano in 1982 — and for that, Bilardo made him part of football history.
During the years when the legendary Argentine manager was in charge of Estudiantes, a chain of misfortunes began befalling the squad — particularly during training sessions. Nobody could find a logical explanation for why players were suddenly getting injured with such frequency. Any reasonable person would have put it down to rotten luck or the squad being out of form. But then someone noticed a fervent Estudiantes supporter who attended every single training session. His name was Juan Carlos, surname unknown, origins mysterious. You'd assume that the moment word reached Bilardo, he'd have the man removed immediately. He didn't. Remarkably, Bilardo decided to turn the jinx into an art form — a strategy. He gave an apparently irrelevant man a fundamental role within the squad.
Juan Carlos — devoted supporter of the La Plata club, known by the nickname 'Kiricocho' — became the team's lucky charm in the most quintessentially Bilardesque fashion: peculiarly. Without batting an eyelid, the great Carlos Bilardo decided it was a fine idea to have this devoted supporter take on the task of greeting the visiting teams who came to play Estudiantes at home. Through the particular logic of Bilardo, of football, or of those things that slip beyond our control — the legend of Kiricocho worked out brilliantly for Estudiantes. They won the 1982 Metropolitano title, losing only one home match. That was against Boca Juniors. In that match Juan Carlos was unable to greet the Xeneizes. A fact that, once the result became clear, only fed the Kiricocho legend in Bilardo's mind. And so he became an essential element of "the jinx" in football. Nobody ever heard from that good man again — not even Bilardo himself.
Bilardo moved on to other dugouts. He left Argentina and landed in Spain to manage Sevilla. A fresh start at an ambitious club. Not a trace of Kiricocho. Nothing suggested the figure could possibly resurface in the Andalusian city. But once again, through those things beyond our control — through chance or football — someone on the Sevilla bench bellowed a clear "Kiricocho" just as a Sevilla opponent was about to take a penalty. Bilardo couldn't believe it. Simeone and Maradona resolved his doubts — they'd been using it regularly, and it spread from there. Meanwhile, not a trace of Kiricocho himself. He only turns up occasionally on the lips of a goalkeeper or outfield player just before an opponent steps up from the spot. Sometimes it works and they miss; just as often it doesn't. For Italy's most recent European Championship, won on penalties, Kiricocho played a starring role.
'It genuinely unsettles you to think how much escapes our control' — just ask Bilardo, who turned a person just like you or me into a fetishistic legend simply because, at a given moment, he decided that person was the cause of the random things he couldn't control himself.
