President Javier Milei went out of his way to praise Argentina’s national football team coach Lionel Scaloni during and after the World Cup. Scaloni, said Milei, has “an admirable leadership capacity” and, once he retires from coaching, “the best universities in the world, the business schools, will have him giving leadership classes.”
How about Scaloni starts teaching at home? Milei, Argentina’s leader today, could not be more opposite to the national team’s coach. One is inclusive, calm, and avoids all conflict; the other is confrontational, irate and fuels conflict. Scaloni prides himself on showing his weaknesses and vulnerabilities in public; Milei boasts of being invincible and infallible. In fact, Milei resembles the provocative Maradona rather than Messi.
If Milei were Scaloni, his re-election would be safe next year. Scaloni has hinted he might not continue to coach La Selección past next year, only to trigger a spontaneous wave of support. If Scaloni went into an election to be the national coach for life, he would likely win by a landslide, even in defeat.
Scaloni’s secret formula is simple and public: professionalism, humility, respect, and results. One of the last scenes of the World Cup final featured Scaloni separating and cooling down a couple of angry Argentine players, most notably midfielder Leandro Paredes, who were pushing around the victorious Spaniards. In more than three years in office and almost 10 years in the public limelight, Milei has never cooled down a controversy; on the contrary, he has been the one creating them.
If Milei wants to project himself in Scaloni’s image, he should start by making sure that the economic programme he is leading will get the results the Argentine public expects. Inflation, which is the main issue Argentines elected him to resolve, is back on a downward path (1.9 percent in June), and the government hopes that it will be closer to one percent than two percent in the coming months. This is Milei’s main achievement, but people are already taking it as a given.
What is still not ‘working’ is jobs and salaries. Nobody (meaning Milei) told Argentines that the cost of lowering inflation would be fewer or worse jobs and lower salaries. The economy has been haemorrhaging jobs for 10 consecutive months, but the paradox is that the economy is growing. In May, the last data point available, wages lost again to inflation after a small gain in April: since Milei became president, registered wages have lost almost nine percent on average to inflation.
This continues to be reflected stubbornly in the government’s approval ratings. An average of polls circulating shows that Milei is at a low plateau of around 34 to 36 percent approval. Milei is trapped in his own ideological karma because he would like the economy to deliver a better outcome for the broader public, but he does not believe there is anything the government should do about it – i.e. use part of the fiscal surplus to fuel public works or alleviate the burden on families struggling to cover piling debts with banks, digital wallets, or illegal money lenders.
The legislative agenda that the government is proposing for the post-World Cup second part of the year feels like more of the same. The priorities are a law that enhances the protection of private property (while reducing limits on foreign ownership), a new reloaded version of the Inocencia Fiscal tax pardon amnesty, a bigger programme of benefits for large investments known as ‘Super-RIGI,’ and a reform of the Central Bank’s charter. On the political front, meanwhile, there is one bill that is proving harder to sell to the moderate opposition: electoral reform – which includes the elimination of the PASO compulsory primaries.
Among the many things that Milei could learn from Scaloni, there are also the coach’s mistakes. Scaloni remained loyal to many of his Qatar World Cup champions, despite some not being in the best physical shape, as the final showed. Milei is also sticking to a libertarian tactic that has until now served a macroeconomic purpose but is showing limits in its impact on the microeconomy of Argentine households – this is the policy line that gets you re-elected or not.
Deputy Economy Minister José Luis Daza had the bad idea of saying in a radio interview this week that “the green shoots” of economic recovery for the people were already here. This is what former president Mauricio Macri and his team would say back in their day – only to not win re-election.
Like Scaloni, Milei should know by now that words alone don’t get you through a World Cup final.
