Daniel Gonzalez was fired up Monday night, talking about his recent appointment as goalkeeper coach for Major League Soccer's Chivas USA.
But the former Middleton-Yahara Soccer Club coaching director was quick to remember that he's had some lows along with those highs during his long career in the sport.
"Soccer sometimes can be great and sometimes can be the worst," he said.
Back in 1978 and '79, Gonzalez was the starting goalkeeper for the Argentina Under-20 national team as it prepared for the FIFA World Youth Cup (since renamed the Under-20 World Cup) in Japan.
"I played all the qualification games, I played all the exhibition games until two weeks before we went to the World Cup, and I got injured in Singapore," Gonzalez recalled.
"But that's sometimes what happens."
The ankle injury he suffered in that friendly against Singapore forced Gonzalez to watch from the sidelines as Argentina dominated the World Youth Cup, a tournament best known as the arrival of Diego Maradona on the world stage.
He scored six goals, one coming in a 3-1 victory over the Soviet Union in the final, and won the Golden Ball as the top player as Argentina outscored its foes 20-2 in six matches.
Gonzalez pointed out that the teams had played a friendly a year earlier in the Soviet Union.
"Snow on the field, playing with an orange ball, it was crazy," Gonzalez said. "(Maradona) didn't play for us and we lost 5-0; he was injured and he couldn't play. A year later, we play Russia in the final and he scored a goal and he was one of the best players at the World Cup. That's the magnitude that he had as a player.
"The thing people usually ask me about him is what makes him so different, so special? The only thing I can tell you about him is that when he came with the ball against you, you weren't even in the equation. He was looking at the third guy, not you. You already were done. ... He was that kind of player."
Gonzalez said that he last spoke with his former teammate during a trip back home to Argentina, probably in 2002.
"I met him at a hotel – he was staying two blocks from my hotel, so I arranged a meeting," Gonzalez said of Maradona, now the coach of the Argentina national team. "We sat down and we talked a little bit. It was good, it was good to see him. Hopefully, when I go back (again) I'll be able to see him."
