Omar Da Fonseca has always loved football. From his childhood in Buenos Aires to his professional playing days and his current job as a pundit on French TV, his passion for the game has shone through. Quite simply, he lives and breathes it.<\/p>\n
When he chatted to us about the South American qualifying competition for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022\u2122<\/a>, the Argentinian could not resist waxing lyrical, telling anecdotes and stories aplenty about the sport closest to his heart.<\/p>\n Now 62, Da Fonseca is one of France\u2019s most loved football pundits. For the last 25 years, he has brought La Liga and South American football vividly to life for fans across the country, so much so that if he sees something remarkable on the field of play, he thinks nothing of yelling out loud or breaking into song or laughter. When he is at the microphone, anything can happen.<\/p>\n \u201cSome pundits play it safe because they\u2019ve got ambitions for the future,\u201d Da Fonseca, who currently works for beIN SPORTS,<\/em> told FIFA.com<\/strong>. \u201cMe, I just try to have an identity, to have fun. I\u2019ve got all these cards on which I\u2019ve written sentences, proverbs, oxymorons, and figures of speech. There are also things that just come out of the blue, when the adrenaline is pumping and emotions are running high. I try to be in tune with what I see.\u201d<\/p>\n No player excites Da Fonseca more than his fellow countryman Lionel Messi, whom he admires greatly. \u201cHe represents everything that children dream of becoming, especially in Argentina,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s the first player for whom it\u2019s not all about the result.\u201d<\/p>\n In Da Fonseca\u2019s eyes, the Best FIFA Men\u2019s Player 2019<\/a> is a phenomenon that defies description. \u201cStatistics are all the rage these days: the number of kilometres, the number of duels won. He doesn\u2019t always run, though, and when he\u2019s not running he\u2019s thinking. To my mind, it\u2019s better to think than to run around.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier in his life, there was another Argentinian player Da Fonseca admired: Diego Maradona. He rubbed shoulders with the great No. 10 during his brief international career, which began when Cesar Luis Menotti called him up in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was Maradona and the likes of [Gabriel] Calderon and Ramon Diaz. The first time I saw Diego it was crazy. We knew him as the \u2018untouchable guy\u2019. That was the paradoxical thing about Maradona, because he was also a kid from the streets. He was resourceful and had every trick in the book but there was something endearing about him too when he cried.\u201d Da Fonseca\u2019s love for the legendary Argentinian playmaker has stayed true ever since.<\/p>\n In 1984, Maradona signed for Napoli. Two years later, Da Fonseca joined Monaco. \u201cLuckily, we often played on Saturdays in France,\u201d said the TV pundit. \u201cWhenever he was in the north of Italy, I\u2019d get in my car on a Sunday and go and see him play; it didn\u2019t matter that we\u2019d been called up together or that we played against each other too. It just goes to show how much he blew everyone away, how much he excited us.\u201d<\/p>\n Da Fonseca is also getting excited at the prospect of Matchday 4 of the South American qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. In his eyes there are three teams that stand apart:<\/p>\n \u201cBrazil, Argentina and Uruguay are stronger than the others because of the players they have. Then there\u2019s Colombia, with [Duvan] Zapata and [Luis] Muriel, two hungry players who combine well and work well. [James] Rodriguez is in form too and [Juan] Cuadrado is still producing. After them, you\u2019ve got Chile, who are starting to age a little, and then Peru and Paraguay. Look out for Ecuador too. They\u2019ve made a really good start.\u201d<\/p>\n He also believes there might be a surprise or two in store, especially in these days of empty stadiums: \u201cSouth American fans really get behind their teams and cheer them on. They push the players on and create a hostile atmosphere. So things obviously change when there are no fans in the stadium. I don\u2019t see everything being turned on its head though.\u201d<\/p>\n beIN SPORTS broadcasts CONMEBOL qualifying matches for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 in<\/em> Australia, New Zealand, France, the Middle East and North Africa.<\/em><\/p>\n Read more at FIFA.com News<\/a> Omar Da Fonseca was a professional player between 1979 and 1993 Now working as a pundit on French TV A big fan of his compatriots Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi Omar Da Fonseca has always loved football. From his childhood in Buenos Aires to his professional playing days and his current job as a pundit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.fifa.com\/image\/upload\/t_l1\/v1605614019\/jjh69f0if5yniepcg9th.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[8563,4244,679,2481,2480,8561,371,4153,30,8562,120,80,188],"class_list":["post-40447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world-cup","tag-children","tag-dream","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-fifa-world-cup-2018","tag-fifa-world-cup-russia-2018","tag-fonseca","tag-football-news","tag-messi","tag-news","tag-represents","tag-south-africa-today-sport","tag-sport","tag-sport-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img.fifa.com\/image\/upload\/t_l1\/v1605614019\/jjh69f0if5yniepcg9th.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Admiration for two of the best<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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